We sat down with Nikol Kollars for a quick chat about her upcoming project, Fickle Eulogy. For ticketing and info, please find here.
Fickle Eulogy balances humour with raw grief—how did comedy become a tool for telling the truth rather than softening it?
Humour was necessary to counter the heavy parts of Fickle Eulogy. I was aware while writing it that too much intensity and darkness can drag us down into depression and boredom. But using comedy to actually touch on the rawness, to lean into it rather than distract is a powerful tool. Shining a comedic light and absurdity onto something overwhelming provides a greater release. It helped me with my own grief process, so I felt it might help others navigate their relationship with grief.
Writing a eulogy is both deeply personal and strangely performative. What did that tension unlock for you as a solo performer?
The tension between the personal and the performative unlocked a radical honesty for me. In a eulogy, an intimate and personal relationship is expected to be publicly available. Then we feel a social pressure to present a coherent, “acceptable” version of the deceased and our relationship with them. We rarely see adults being their true, contradictory selves in their most vulnerable moments. By leaning into the theatricality of it, I found the freedom to explore the blurred lines my character encounters, but also those shared between me as the performer and my character. The stage gives me permission to tap into the darkest, most fleeting parts of my psyche without the fear of social fallout. As a solo performer, I get to embrace the “whole rollercoaster ride.” Early on, the challenge was not letting the words destroy me. I had to learn how to be deeply connected to the grief while maintaining the craft of the performance. Ultimately, this tension transformed the play into a vessel for catharsis. In a way that in the writing process it hadn’t brought me. I wonder what kind of collective healing we would find if we all allowed ourselves to be this raw and unfiltered during our final goodbyes.
The presence of an unhelpful AI in the show feels darkly contemporary—what does it reveal about how we outsource meaning and comfort in moments of loss?
Since I wrote Fickle Eulogy in 2021, AI has evolved at an alarming rate. Now more than ever people use AI as a therapist or a companion. Even though we know the algorithms are only regurgitating what humans essentially told them to. But I can see why some people prefer generic catchphrase pacifier algorithms, to messy and complicated humans. Future generations will show how desensitized we are becoming and how much real danger we face in losing our capability to contemplate, theorize, and analyze. Maybe even really feel.
How did shaping multiple characters inside one grieving body change the way you understood Ann’s inner world?
While allowing space for the sadness, rage, frustration, doubt, and loneliness, the unique tones and textures of the characters in the play were free to reveal themselves. There is so much freedom in those characters. Giving permission and discovering through the characters made me realize that Ann has bravely surrendered to the chaos of grief. And that we are not different from her if we allow ourselves to find ourselves in Ann.
Grief from Covid carries a specific kind of rupture and unfinishedness—what felt essential to honour about that experience on stage?
It seems that so many of us have not acknowledged how traumatic the pandemic was, regardless of individual experience. For those of us who lost someone during that time, the uncertainty, panic, and frantic distrust in the media and governments added even more fuel to the fire. This play unites us in that shared experience. Knowing my mother was essentially alone in her last days breaks my heart over and over. In this strange way while she is honoured in this piece, maybe I can assuage my regret for not being with her, for being so far away to begin with. A Scottish friend of mine lives in California and her father in Scotland died from covid19 that first month in 2020. She had to watch her fathers funeral online at 3 o’clock in the morning.
After performing this work across different cities, what shifts—if any—have you noticed in how audiences respond to loss, humour, and intimacy?
I have had a wide variety of responses during the performance as well as afterwards, and they are not necessarily defined by the city or culture. I have had some performances in which the audience was reserved, in a city that theatre is a cultural institution. But afterwards, I am greeted with warmth, emotion and an eagerness to share. Sometimes it depends on the particular audience that comes and how they collectively decide to which extent they will experience the play. I have had performances in which an international audience is completely immersed and engaged in theatrical exchange, laughing and crying. I have also enjoyed seeing a balanced mix of genders. Many men attend the show and give testimonials afterwards with their feelings about loss, how vulnerability is strength, how they feel acknowledged. I would love to perform Fickle Eulogy in Ireland and Mexico, it seems their relationship with death is celebratory and familiar.