Death and the Arts

Death and the Arts brings people together from all over the world to explore the topics of death, life and the arts. It is a safe space for interviews and conversations and to learn how people from different cultures view and do death.

About

When I began working as a hospice social worker in Los Angeles in 1994, I became fascinated with how different cultures view and do death. It is difficult for many people to talk about death but what I discovered was that people could talk about death more easily if it was related to art. It could be a song, a book, a photo, a film, a poem, a painting or a play about death that moved them to talk. My dream of exploring different cultures' views of death through art has been over twenty years in the making. 

Please email me with recommendations of artists that you may know, especially if they are from countries other than the US.

email:  betsy@betsytrapasso.com

Instagram: @deathandthearts

Twitter/X: @DeathAndTheArts

Death and the Arts Interview

Greg Nobile - Broadway Theater Producer

May 2, 2016

Greg Nobile is a Connecticut and New York City based entertainment and hospitality entrepreneur and theatrical producer. Greg is a Tony and Olivier Award winning theater producer and holds the distinction of the being the youngest Tony Award winning producer on Broadway. As Executive Producer at Seaview Productions, Greg has produced the Tony Award winning musical A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder, Side Show and Hughie, the Olivier Award winning revival of Gypsy and Show Boat on London’s West End, and The Absolute Brightness of Leonard Pelkey and Invisible Thread Off Broadway. Seaview Production's Broadway investment portfolio includes On Your Feet!, The SpongeBob Musical, Fun Home, Something Rotten, It’s Only a Play and Of Mice and Men. Seaview Productions also produced the award-winning documentary India's Daughter and Gypsy: Live from the Savoy Theatre in collaboration with the BBC.

In addition to his work in the commercial theater, Greg serves as Managing Director of the Branford, Connecticut nonprofit theater company Legacy Theatre supporting the theater’s efforts to restore a historic 1903 silent movie theater into a premier professional repertory theater and arts conservatory on the shoreline. 

In the food and beverage space, Greg is the co-owner / founder of The Stand, a farm market and BBQ restaurant and bar in Branford, Connecticut.

Greg is Crain’s 40 Under 40, Rotary International Paul Harris Fellow, and an American Red Cross Hero. His nonprofit work includes serving on the Advisory Committee of the Branford Community Foundation, Pine Orchard Chapel Association, Branford Cares, Branford Festival, and the Honest Accomplice Theater Company in New York.

Greg studied at Marymount Manhattan College and the Commercial Theatre Institute, both in New York.

Our Interview

In this interview, I asked Greg about the arts and how they influence his views on death. Enjoy his wonderful insights.

As far as art goes, Broadway shows are what I do for a living. I produce them, create them and nurture them. In the 1940's a famous musical was created by Rodgers and Hammerstein, Carousel. Carousel is iconic and very, very simple in what the show is. It is a basic love story. It is a bad boy and a good girl who meet and get together and they try to make a perfect life and a perfect love together. He ends up being and continues to be a not great guy to her and their family. This was one of the first shows to really talk about death. He ends up killing himself and there is this moment in the play where there is beautiful music. He goes to heaven and he is able to look back on his life and actually go back down into his life. He can engage with his life but he can't change anything, he just keeps watching it. He is replaying some things. Looking at the moments from his funeral, his daughter's graduation from school and some of those key moments that are beautiful. He gets to relive them again and to watch them and to realize the mistakes he made and it deals with some of those issues of like what happens after you leave this earth. There are some really beautiful moments. He watches his family cope. You see what coping looks like and how families deal with it and how communities come together. 

This was a conversation about death fifty to sixty years ago when it was not topical and not talked about on the surface at all. So for this play to tackle these issues and to have that conversation through this art form and to communicate it so beautifully is interesting. It still remains one of the most beautiful classic musicals of all time. By happenstance it happens to be my favorite piece of theater in the world.

It is interesting to tie this in on the death side. Goodspead Musicals did a production of the show a few years back. My grandfather was a subscriber and he had four tickets. One for himself, two for his two daughters, one of which is my mom, and me. We went to the theater since I was knee high. This was the first show we saw after he had passed. This was one of his favorite shows and it became one of mine. For me it was so beautiful and profound and it was introduced to me by someone who introduced me to the theater and introduced me to the art of Rodgers and Hammerstein. A few times ago when I saw the show, it was a very surreal sort of out of body experience to watch this show about death after somebody who introduced me to it has just died. That show in particular resonates with me in terms of the work you are writing about. This is a great way to explore this theme in an interesting way.  

I then asked Greg if there is a more recent play or piece of art that has influenced his view on death.

Dear Evan Hansen is a show that is currently in New York City and deals with a kid in school who in the course of the play kills himself. It is an Off Broadway musical and it is having some great success. We see how the community around this person engages with death. We see how this community of peers, families and community members want to have an association with this person who died. Why do we want to have that association? Is it because there is social media around it and we can feel better about ourselves because we draw ourselves closer to this person who died? Are we using the sympathy to feel better about ourselves? Do we feel bad that we never connected with that person? The person in the play was a bit of a loner in high school. Then he killed himself and they started a foundation for him. He was in all of the local newspapers and on the news but no one cared about him when he was alive. People were saying, he was my best friend and making up all these stories to have some association with him.

How it deals with death is much different than how Carousel deals with death. They are happening at different moments in time and the issues surrounding death are dealt with differently. It is such a different way how social media has affected how we mourn and how we connect to the community on issues like this. It is interesting to think about these issues side by side. To think about them thematically and how the landscape has shifted over time. Some themes that are topical and hard are coming to Broadway which is great because we need to have those conversations through art. That is when they are actually easiest.

Dear Evan Hansen is the first story that I have encountered in a meaningful way that talks about death today in 2016. I unfortunately have lost friends and classmates and watched communities come together in a little bit of artificial ways after that happened. I saw people that weren't friends with them step up and claim to be friends or want to become part of that world because there is a world in mourning. Dear Evan Hansen addresses that in a really fascinating way. 

As I lost friends and I lost colleagues it's been interesting to watch something onstage. To me the theater is church. You go in and you have the experience. I go to church too but theater is much more of a church for me. To go and understand through art some of the things that I don't understand in life is always helpful in a big way. For Dear Evan Hansen that was one of those shows where I was struggling. Why are people trying to make these associations? Why am I feeling like I want to be part of a community that I am maybe not? When someone died who was a little removed from my life why do I feel this urgency to be part of that world, to jump in? What is that emotional thing that clicks that makes you want to be part of that world that is mourning? Does it stem from the social network mentality? Society, as it is in 2016, is interesting, brave and ballsy. When you put these two plays side by side, Carousel and Dear Evan Hansen, it becomes an interesting look at death through art. For more information about all the amazing work that Greg is doing, check out his Seaview Productions website. https://seaviewprods.com