The Birth/Death project
The only thing all humans share is that we are all born and we all die. Yet we often feel disconnected, lonely, or isolated in our journeys through these experiences.
The Birth/Death Project seeks to change that, one story at a time, weaving our truths together.
RLT members gather in 2025 to begin shaping the project, a brainchild of RLT co-founder Ellen Morbyrne
Share Your Story
We are developing a new community-based performance and oral history project exploring our human experiences of birth and death.
We invite you to reach out to us to learn about our process and to schedule an interview so you can share your own stories about your experiences with birthing and dying.
The interviews will be preserved in a public archive and these stories will inspire a performance piece that we will present in our local communities across the Valley, first as a work-in-progress in the summer of 2026, then as a full production in 2027.
We will be scheduling interviews in ongoing waves, beginning in the spring of 2026. We can hold interviews at The LAVA Center in Greenfield, Forbes Library in Northampton, Holyoke Public Library, and Wistariahurst Museum in Holyoke. Please let us know if you would like to participate but none of these locations are accessible to you.
Interview sessions will be conducted with care. Participants may remain anonymous if desired. No special experience is needed - everyone has a story to share!
If you are interested in participating, or would like to learn more, please contact:
Ellen & Lena at birthdeathproject@gmail.com
We welcome people of all backgrounds, identities, and experiences.
Thank you for helping us build this project together, for all of us.
Meet Our Team
Ellen Morbyrne, she&they
Co-Producer, Interviewer, Director
Many of Ellen’s loved ones have died over the years and she has given birth to two wild humans now taller than her. As a prenatal and postpartum yoga teacher and someone with several aging and dying parents, they are deeply invested in co-creating community around these powerful thresholds of birthing and dying.
Lena Vani, she/her
Co-Producer, Recording Technician, Performer
Lena is planning to give birth in the next couple of years, so she is thinking a lot about it. Her mother had a near-death experience this year, and Lena has been caring for her through her recovery. This project gives her a space to think about these thresholds in close proximity to each other, as it directly relates to her life.
Rachel Hall, she/her
Assistant Producer, Recording Technician, Performer
Rachel spent a year caring for her father and sat with him at the time of his passing. She has volunteered for hospice and feels deeply connected to the threshold of death. She hopes to one day experience giving birth, but she needs some more time before fully committing to that decision.
Trenda Loftin, she/her
Interviewer, Performer
Trenda knows intimately both anticipated and unanticipated death of close beloveds. She holds birth and death as two of the most sacred transitions a human experiences.
She’s chosen to birth projects instead of humans.
Annie DelBusto Cohen, she/her
Interviewer, Performer
Annie has intimately experienced both birth and death of many beloveds. She is the mother of a fiesty young human and experienced birth during a pandemic in many unexpected ways. Her experiences of such have made her dedicated to living life to its absolute fullest.
A separate invitation:
We are looking for a few more folks (aged 18+) to join our team (as performers and/or conducting interviews). We are especially looking for folks in the following demographics to uplift the stories of the many identities in our Valley: men (cis and trans welcome), elders, native Spanish speakers.
Folks who hold any identities OTHER THAN white cis U.S. citizen able-bodied women ages 20s-40s are also encouraged to connect with us (we already have that demographic well represented).
Reach out to us if you’d like to explore joining our teams.
This phase of the project is supported in part by grants from the Conway, Hadley, Holyoke, and Shelburne Cultural Councils, local agencies which are supported by the Mass Cultural Council, a state agency.
Flower and flame images by Dietmar Rabich from Wikimedia Commons.