The Undertaking is a "morbidly funny" and "thought-provoking" (The New York Times, Critic's Pick) playful and idiosyncratic take on the classical trip to the land of the dead.
For the ancients, it was essential: a journey unto the land of the dead as the only means of retrieving something crucial to life.
In The Undertaking, the Civilians offer a playful and profound 21st-century take on that underworld excursion. Using transcripts of actual conversations with shamans, morticians, philosophers, and mystics as their script, two actors toe the precipice, inhabiting the twilight between being and non-being, transcendent visions with ayahuasca, flirtations with existential dread, and bouts of cosmic bliss.
Inventive video and sound contribute to this engrossing attempt to see the unseeable, moving toward the light while illuminating how to live.
