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N.S. actor's comedy about medically assisted death makes it to New York

It may not sound like a natural source for comedy, but medically assisted death is the inspiration for a Halifax woman's new one-act comedic play.

Aria Publicover's play, The Maid — named after the term medical assistance in dying — had an off-Broadway reading in New York City on Friday evening.

The piece is based on her experience witnessing her father, Ken Publicover, go through the process of receiving a medically assisted death. Publicover was a longtime director at the CBC and died in the fall of 2017 after a journey with brain cancer.

Aria Publicover said writing the play was initially meant to be therapeutic, to help her grapple with her emotions and make sense of what was happening. At some point, it "morphed into a comedy," she said.

"I was reading what I was writing and I was like, 'This is funny. These conversations and these events are so absurd that this has to be a comedy,'" she said. "There's some events in the play that you absolutely just couldn't make up."

Submitted by Aria Publicover
Submitted by Aria Publicover

The play includes a toast over the recently deceased's body, a zany and overly spiritual doctor and some "emotionally distant coroners" who recount a story about having a body roll off a gurney into the street.

"Sometimes the best thing you can do is find the humour in the darkest situations," she said.

And that's exactly what her father did, Publicover said.

"Even on his deathbed in the last couple of hours … he was still making jokes. That was just the person he was."

She said on one occasion, she and her grandfather thought her father was asleep, and they were having a conversation in the next room about the progression of technology.

"And he yells from across the room, 'That's what I wanted to talk about the entire time, not this boring emotional stuff.'

"And we couldn't help but laugh.… He always had the best humour and he tried to find the humour and the lightness and the good in everything that happened and that included his situation."

Publicover said she hopes to stage the play in Halifax someday.