Where did the original idea for the script come from?
– I wanted to explore the moment, the moments after dying. I was curious about how it might be to be dead as well as wanting to describe the days in the family left behind after one of them dies, the way it brings all the family together (the dead and the alive) in a period of limbo where time both unforms and drives relentlessly on. I am interested in time between moments and read the ‘Tibetan Book of the Dead’, which gave a structure to this. I also read a poem, ‘Helen in Egypt’, by a modernist poet called HD, which meets Helen (of Troy fame) at the moment of her death, when she is led into what is called the Amen Temple, or timeless time, in order to solve the riddle of her life before she can leave it and die in peace. I thought that was a fascinating idea of what might happen to us if we die at a moment when there are unresolved questions from our lives. How long did it take to write and how was the script process? – I wrote it in stages, with breaks between drafts (I was alternat
