Bess Welden - Death Wings

Death Wings Project

Image by Nori Hilton

Death Wings Project (www.deathwingsproject.org) is a web of visual and performing arts offerings that promotes open dialogue about and an invitation to redefine our relationships to death, end-of-life, grief, loss, and challenging life transitions. The Project, centered on Bess' award-winning script, will also include an interactive art installation and a series of hands-on, community death wing making workshops.

The play unfolds over the last 100 minutes of Grand’s life - her memories, visions, feelings, and questions that help her discover the five sentences that tell her final story. She's dedicated her life to making wings that she believes helps others die, and to raising her granddaughter Rachel, a scientist who is determined to fly. Full of poetry, songs, and a radical re-visioning of the Daedelus/Icarus myth, Death Wings asks us to marvel at the wonder of flight - real and metaphorical - and the mysteries of human love, connection, loss, and letting go

Read about Death Wings Project in The Portland Phoenix, Portland Press Herald and American Theatre Magazine.

Grant Award, 2022 New Work New England, New England Foundation for the Arts

The Death Wings Project is made possible with funding from the New England Foundation for the Arts' New Work New England

program, with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, the American Rescue Plan, Seedlings Foundation, the Fund

for the Arts at NEFA, and individual donors.

Grant Awards, 2022, Arts Jobs & Organization Project Grant, Maine Arts Commission

Funded in part by a grant from the Maine Arts Commission, an independent state agency supported by the National

Endowment for the Arts.

Grant Award, 2022, Puffin Foundation

Funding has been made possible by The Puffin Foundation.

Winner, 2020 Maine State Prize, Clauder Competition for New England Playwrights

Semi-finalist, 2020 Eugene O'Neill Theater Center New Play Conference

Semi-finalist, 2016 The Bridge Initiative Playwriting Award

Becca's Monologue from Death Wings published in The Best Women's Stage Monologues, 2021, Smith & Krauss

Production & Development History

Production with Dramatic Repertory Co., Meetinghouse Arts, and Theatre Project, Spring 2023
Ink Spot Festival Reading, Fresh Ink Theatre, Boston Center for the Arts, November 2019
Studio Series Workshop Reading, Portland Stage, May 2019
Three-day developmental workshop, Colby College, October 2017
Staged reading with Real Live Theatre, Northampton, MA, March 2017
Reading with Dramatic Repertory Company, Portland, ME, November 2014

Portland Stage Studio Series Workshop photo by Lauren Kennedy