Playfight Productions Presents MERELY BELOVED by Shoshana McCallum

International Emmy Award Winner, Shoshana McCallum, aims to make you laugh at the loss of a loved one. An unflinching, hilarious, yet deeply compassionate examination of what happens when we try to avoid grief, Merely Beloved invites us all along to the catastrophe that is not death itself but every single day you wake up without your person. It's got country music, it's got terrible dancing, it's got thousands of cardboard bananas.

A darkly comedic, one woman show, Merely Beloved is about Elaine who has just lost her beloved husband, Joe, to a medical event which she may have accidentally caused. She'd be devastated, maybe even a little guilty, if she could just get over the fact he's now in heaven with his first wife, Jenny. As Elaine finds herself obsessively investigating her husband's possible cheating, (as much as one can from one realm to another), she successfully manages to avoid reality, and the sadness that comes along with it.

Preferring projects that deal with rich, confronting and nuanced themes, that subvert our accepted wider social conditioning, Shoshana loves to create layered characters that hold contradictory beliefs and complex internal worlds. With a firm focus on characters who ask simple yet unanswerable questions, widow Elaine fits perfectly into this raging, screaming abyss.

Having been a pathological commitment phobe for most of her adult life until she accidentally met her husband - death's relationship with love, and vice versa, have been a massive preoccupation for Shoshana. With Merely Beloved she explores this relationship, both in hopes of making sense of her own dysfunctional attachments, and tackling one of the most important questions in the universe; where does love go when we die?

"Merely Beloved has the heart of my own story - a woman rejecting love in hopes of avoiding sadness, while simultaneously obsessively fixating on where her love has gone."

Shoshana has written and produced television and theatre, to wide acclaim for more than a decade. Most notably she won an International Emmy for her series INSiDE in 2021. Madam (which she co-created, show-run, and wrote), starring Rachel Griffiths, picked up Best New Creation at the 2024 Monte-Carlo Television Festival, and Best Comedy at the 2024 Berlin International Television Festival, Best Comedy Drama at C21 International Drama Awards, and Best Comedy at the Asia Creative Academy Awards. It has just launched in Australia on Channel 9.

Merely Beloved - Shoshana McCallum

Auckland

Dates: Thu 8 - Sat 10 May, 6.30pm
Venue: Herald Theatre, Aotea Centre, 50 Mayoral Drive
Tickets: $30 - $35
Bookings: aucklandlive.co.nz // 0800 111 999

Wellington

Dates: Tue 20 - Sat 24 May, 7pm
Venue: The Dome at BATS Theatre, 1 Kent Terrace
Tickets: $25 - $30
Bookings: bats.co.nz // 0508 ITICKET (484 253)