The final episode of The Euthanasia Debate focuses on Geraldine’s story. She has bowel cancer and knows, from her experience as an ex-nurse, that palliative care cannot always alleviate pain and suffering. Her husband still hopes for a miracle cure overseas (which is fanciful because of COVID-19 travel restrictions, let alone anything else – not that that’s mentioned here).

All Geraldine wants is the right and wherewithal to choose whether or not to “take the emergency exit” if unrelieved agony is the only the option.

With Jan Bolwell as Josie, the ‘Death Café’ facilitator, and Annie Ruth in the remarkably differentiated dual roles of Geraldine and Joan, the committed Catholic whose faith lies with her priest and the teachings of St Paul, this concise episode plays out under the following subtitles: ‘Getting the Drugs’; ‘Attempting to Change Minds’; ‘The Drugs Arrive’; Geraldine Shares her Decision’.

What stands out for me, in this thoroughly researched work, is that people are already taking matters into their own hands. They have to trust the drugs ordered in from overseas are what has been promised. They face lonely deaths if they take go ahead with it, in order not to compromise others legally. And if they don’t use it, there is the prospect that someone else might find this lethal drug lurking in the back of someone fridge without know what it is, let alone how to dispose of it.

Obviously we are led to feel compassion for Geraldine in her predicament but all she is arguing for is her own right to choose. We too have the right to choose how we vote on the End Of Life Choice Referendum, and this series is well crafted to get us focused and thinking it through from our own perspectives and in terms of collective rights and responsibilities. (Here is the link to official information about the yet-to-be-enacted End of Life Choice Act 2019.)

Episode 3 takes less than 9 minutes. All three episodes remain available to watch online until Saturday 17th October (election day).  Here are the links:

Episode 1: GETTING TO KNOW DEATH

Episode 2: WELCOME TO THE DEATH CAFÉ

Episode 3: THE PROS AND CONS OF EUTHANASIA

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In this episode playwright Jan Bolwell takes the role of Josie (played by Julie Edwards in the original stage play: Welcome to the Death Café). As she sets chairs for the next ‘Death Café’ meeting in a Masterton hall, Josie tells us – direct to camera – why she is doing this, despite her husband’s opposition.

‘Outside’, as if in her car, Geraldine – played (as in the original) by Annie Ruth – monologues somewhat obliquely about her situation. She has a husband who believes miracles may happen and she claims to know what is really going on up and down the country as seniors seek self determination in managing the manner of their own exits. Her observations about ‘the law’ and ‘optics’ are intriguing.

Back inside, however, a newcomer to the group is the first to arrive: committed Catholic Christian and NZ First voter, Joan. Originally played by Vivien Bell, now Annie Ruth takes the role in an extraordinary transformation that owes more to inner truth and an authentic voice than to her wig and spectacles. Joan’s concern is for her aging next-door neighbour, Jack, an ex agri-scientist “who says he’s had enough” and has accumulated the wherewithal to take matters into his own hands.

I have to say I balk at Joan saying, “I don’t want Jack to feel the only choice he has is to kill himself.” In this context, it seems she is checking out an alternative whereby others will kill him instead. But thinking it through, I guess she is aware that the End Of Life Choice Referendum offers the possibility of his getting assistance in having his own wishes fulfilled. Does she realise, however, that his eligibility will require a great deal more than simply feeling he has “had enough” of being alive? Meanwhile one would hope Joan and her church friends will be instrumental in helping to make his life worth living.

Of course the purpose of this three-part online adaptation of Welcome to the Death Café is to provoke such responses. The characters come not with answers but with questions on behalf of us all, and inevitably there are misapprehensions to be cleared up. Hopefully. Either way, we are provoked to get prepared to vote in the referendum – and Episode 3 will doubtless bring more focus to the issues.

Episode 2 takes only 12 minutes. Episode 3 becomes available this Friday 11 September. All three episodes remain available to watch online until Saturday 17th October (election day).  Here are the links:

Episode 1: GETTING TO KNOW DEATH

Episode 2: WELCOME TO THE DEATH CAFÉ

Episode 3: THE PROS AND CONS OF EUTHANASIA
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Late last year Jan Bolwell’s Welcome to the Death Café offered us a non-confronting opportunity to consider the vexed questions concerning euthanasia, in anticipation of this year’s End Of Life Choice Referendum. Any plans for a return season to refresh our awareness were, well, ‘put to sleep’ by COVID-19.

But never one to succumb to such slings and arrows (as a cancer survivor she choreographed and performed in Off My Chest which then formed part of Gaylene Preston’s 2001 film Titless Wonders), Bolwell and collaborator Annie Ruth have re-visioned it as a three-part digital production.  

By way of a primer for the main events, Episode One – entitled Getting To Know Death – simply has Jan sharing her experiences of the very different deaths of three family members: her father, her mother and a sister. As factual accounts they nevertheless provoke compassion, empathy and a healthy degree of inner debate as we consider the implications of the subtext.

I recommend tuning in, in anticipation of the episodes to come:

• Episode Two – available from Friday 4 September, 6pm – Welcome to The Death Cafe
• Episode Three – available from Friday 11 September, 6pm – The Pros And Cons Of Euthanasia. 

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