In her 1978 book Illness as Metaphor, Susan Sontag sets out to diagnose the problem with the way we think about illness. Her discovery was not to focus on sickness itself, but the language surrounding disease - language that can, in her view, quite literally kill. 

Working with six participants living with long-term illness, Dead Centre adapt this groundbreaking text for the theatre, which is itself a metaphoric space. So, if all the world’s a stage, how can theatre deal with reality?

Perhaps, through inviting in some real people, theatre can be re-invented as a place where we might live, and die, without metaphor.

After all, the one thing you can’t do on stage is pretend your body isn’t there.

Illness as Metaphor premiered on September 8th 2024, at Project Arts Centre as part of Dublin Fringe Festival. For all touring information, please contact info@deadcentre.org

WINNER Best Ensemble at Dublin Fringe Festival Awards 2024

“A clever, moving and genuinely new piece of theatre… The production has everything audiences have come to expect from Dead Centre - it explores deeply serious ideas with considerable wit… But its real achievement is in the way it presents the lived experience of long-term illness of the six remarkable performers. It’s theatre at its best.”
★★★★★
Irish Times