There are four Artistic Directors at our company – Kate Harman, Chloe Ogilvie, Grayson Millwood and myself. It was Kate who originally raised the idea of death as a topic for us to contemplate. There was a sense from all of us that the reason to talk about death was to have a greater engagement with life; that it is a necessary part of living. So, I think the production is almost more of a spiritual engagement for us – how do we really deal with our existence?

The Brisbane Festival hero image for No One Gets Out of Here Alive. Photo © Set in Stone Media

We started The Farm in 2013 and we’ve always worked with people we know. But with this one, we decided to open it up more and spread the net very wide. We thought, “We can’t make a show about death that only comes from us,” so we ran an audition process and saw everybody who applied – over 90 people.

One of the people who auditioned was Wendy McPhee, who we already knew. She is 65 now, I think, and the...