AustLit

'A somewhat autobiographical tale of Hmong parents, death and ghosts.   

'As Australia careened from deadly bushfires to the beginning of COVID-19, and as Hmong-Australian writer Michele Lee was working on Asian ghost TV shows, she rang her parents for 30 minutes each day.    

'Lee wanted to figure out how to talk to them about death: their death, the deaths they’ve endured here and in Laos, the Hmong perspective on death. In asking herself, ‘How do I let my parents die on their terms?’ Lee sought to reconcile vast emotional, cultural and geographical distances.    

'How Do I Let You Die? assembles an extraordinary team of Asian-Australian artists to weave together phone calls, Asian ghost tropes, Hmong horror stories, and the simple potency of an adult child coming to term with a parent’s eventual death.   

'As moments of acute and layered crisis bring mortality achingly close, this charming and tender work of theatre offers moments of humour and nuance, and moments of contradiction, to wonder on our approaches to this life and the next.' (Production summary)