"Deadley" premiered in 2010

at the Vancouver International Fringe Festival.

Written by Shauna Johannesen

Directed by  Kelly-Ruth Mercier

Starring Gabriel Carter and Shauna Johannesen

Video by Andrew Lavigne

Finally.  A Grave Affair you can laugh about.

“Deadley” weaves myth, musical ditties, and a ficus into a comic patchwork love story.  Early on, Sam comes to terms with his grandfather's corpse, while Amy watches meaning flush down the toilet with her goldfish Charlie.  Between crystal balls, the harrowing tale of a spider and fly, and an Intergalactic Bank of Karma, Sam and Amy dance a bizarre, delicate tango from loss to…somethingness.

Check out more photos.

More on the background of Deadley:

Loosely based on the long form improv structure of the Harold, developed by renown Chicago improviser and teacher Del Close, "Deadley" is a fully scripted two-person, multicharacter series of short, darkly comic vignettes that slowly connect to build a web-like narrative.

Against the backdrop of a large web, various scenes relating in one way or another to death, dying, heaven, ghosts, halloween, Karma or reincarnation emerge.  We meet Harold and Margaret--crochety eighty-year-olds facing the end of their 57-year long marriage. John and Suanne bring us heartwarming ditties like "A lot of People have Died: A Tribute." And we find a Library of Souls, where Scott, a young apprentice, takes his Karma into his own hands by misfiling the soul-canisters. 

And in between all of these other stories, Sam and Amy appear. Reeling from early traumatic experiences with death, they  search for love and meaning--via fortune tellers, psychiatrists, astrology, and each other. The plots and characters begin to interconnect in a mosaic of silly, dark, touching stories--or one converging story perhaps. 

Meanwhile,  a spider and a fly--puppets who live on the large net surrounding the stage--interrupt the scenes to give competing versions of their own story of a death--Was the fly trapped, duped and killed by the spider? Or drawn to the magic of the rainbows, enchanted, and set free?  And are all stories about death simply different tellings of the same old story?

In a Nutshell:

It's a story about about fish.  About fear.  About life, death, love, and spiderwebs.  But mostly, it's a story about stories, and how we seek, create, and find ourselves in them.

The People of Deadley:

Director:   Kelly-Ruth Mercier                      

Actor:   Gabriel Carter

Actor:   Shauna Johannesen