Dead Man's Cell Phone

Jean really shouldn’t have answered that phone.

A man sits alone in a café. His phone rings. And rings. And rings.

At the next table, Jean has had enough.

So she answers it.

There's just one problem. The man whose phone she's answered is dead.

What begins as one small act of interference soon draws Jean deep into the life Gordon has left behind. There is a grieving mother, a widow, a brother, another woman and an increasingly complicated collection of secrets. And somehow, Jean finds herself becoming the unlikely connection between them all.

Sarah Ruhl's Dead Man's Cell Phone is a wonderfully strange comedy about what happens when our attempts to connect with each other become tangled up with the technology that's supposed to make connection easier.

It's funny, absurd and occasionally downright peculiar, but there's something beautifully human underneath it all: grief, loneliness, love, the stories we tell about people after they're gone, and the things we wish we'd said while they were still here.

Ballarat National Theatre presents Dead Man's Cell Phone, directed by Benj Beatty, at the Ballaarat Mechanics' Institute from 23 October to 1 November.

Content warning: This play contains strong language and mature themes. Recommended for mature audiences only.

Run time is 2 hours including 15 minute interval.