Written and performed by Eleanor Shaw, medium dead is a bold, dark comedy exploring suicide, bureaucracy, and the search for meaning. In a bleak afterlife office, Bennie writes suicide notes, but when assigned the beloved chef Anthony Bourdain’s file, everything changes. Struggling with detachment and mortality, Bennie confronts grief, purpose, and the limits of control. Directed by Ellie BW, this sharp, thought-provoking solo show challenges audiences to rethink suicide with unflinching honesty, dark humour, and heart.
You’ve said you wanted to write something “death-affirming” — can you unpack what that means for this piece?
Basically, I was bored of the Mental Health Play. We know suicide is bad and preventable. We know depression sucks. We are post-destigmatisation.
We’re scared to talk about suicide frankly for fear of encouraging it or condoning it, but studies show that this isn’t strictly true. I believe that by having fearless discussions around it – to the point of having a laugh about it – is the key to prevention, to progress.
We’re afraid to discuss the upside to a celebrity suicide because it sounds like we’re condoning it. Make no mistake: I wish Anthony Bourdain was still alive. But he isn’t.
I think it is a good thing to love someone and accept that they died of their own accord – a crime of passion against the self – and look for what came of that self-elected end. It meant a legacy stayed intact, someone beloved became a martyr. We turn to him like a patron saint of second chances, now, a teacher of travel. His suicide was not a good thing – but we can choose to look for the good in what was left behind.
The show is an exercise in affirming – not condoning – but affirming and memorialising a tragic act.
What challenges did you face in tackling such a sensitive subject with comedy?
My producer and director both have direct personal experiences of suicide bereavement, and they’ve been fully on board with the show and the concept since day one. We’ve cut a few jokes and lines that were too close to the bone. But audiences are grown up enough to tackle this, now.
We were turned down from one venue for fear of being too controversial – but candidly, I don’t think they read to the end of the show.
What role does Anthony Bourdain’s legacy and story play in the larger narrative?
His suicide rattled us in a way that other ‘high profile’ suicides haven’t, stirring an existential terror; if this man whose entire existence represented the vision, the ideal of a well-lived life, travelling the world and dining across divides, feasting on the world’s best food, what hope is there for the rest of us?
He was already globally admired – patron saint of second chances, audacious, inimitable writer, charming and acerbically honest television presenter. It was a rags to riches tale – the opposite of suicide – the living of what appeared to us as the ideal life.
I’m not so much interested in who he actually is as a person but him as a creation, as a character.
The play was effectively inspired by comments on his YouTube clips: some of the most earnest, heartfelt eulogies to a stranger. Parasocial relationships get a bad rap, but if someone you don’t know showed you how you want to live – how can that be a bad thing?
My play is a defence of dissonance: a horrible thing happened, but the legacy is beautiful and intact and lasting. His suicide was not a good thing. We’re fearful of talking about suicide at all, but I believe that this outpouring of love, the search for sadness in post, appreciations on television teachings, should be protected and promoted.
What inspired the concept of the afterlife as an office full of bureaucracy?
To be clear: it came before Severance! It’s obviously not a totally original idea, but I wanted people to know exactly where they are, to be able to immediately relate to the surroundings, before the highest possible stakes emerge.
The concept underwent so many iterations – at one point, it was a real life job, then she worked remotely and couldn’t get out of her flat, and then I thought ‘remote work is pretty sweet, actually, so long as you get outside and have a coffee with your mate’ – what’s hellish is going into the office.
The best thing about going into an office, however, is the people you’re in the trenches with – what if all that went away? A cubicle is the most civilised form of abject isolation. And Teams meetings are modern-day purgatory.
It’s inspired by all the red tape you come across. As an artist, you just want to do things – you don’t want to wait around for funding or approval. As a human, you want to live the way Bourdain did on the screen, bouncing from country to country. In real life, you have to put in those office hours to save up to get to.
How do you prepare emotionally and mentally to perform such an intense solo show?
I listen to the score from Aftersun and think about the pint I will have afterwards.
I remind myself of why I’m doing it. The call to action is to pour crisps into a bowl. To watch an episode of Parts Unknown and consider a trip beyond an all-inclusive. I’d like to think Anthony Bourdain would love the idea.
ZOO Playground 2 from Thursday 1st – Sunday 24th August 2025 (not 6th, 11th, 18th) at 16:50. Tickets are available here.