Weddings and funerals have one thing in common: floral arrangements. The bundle of roses on a bridal table and the white lilies on a coffin share a common goal – to celebrate life. Or, as we’re told part-way through WAKE, The Rabble’s soaring new masterpiece for Melbourne Fringe, to remind us that “Death is part of life”.

WAKE. Photo © Pier Carthew

There are blue roses and carnations arranged on every table in the Italian Social Club Altona when we walk in. “Tonight is a celebration”, we’re told over loudspeakers, “a night to commemorate the ordinary and the extraordinary”.

Eight women, all in their sixties and seventies, walk through the audience dressed in various white getups: a jumpsuit, a wedding dress, an Elizabethan costume. We have gathered to celebrate their lives and grapple with the joys, obstacles and questions that they have encountered while ageing.

WAKE is a collaborative project intended to platform these women, many of whom have never performed in a show before. Drawing on real-life discussions conducted in Melbourne’s West, it’s part verbatim theatre, part theatricalised round table discussion and performance art piece in one.

The Rabble is Melbourne’s pre-eminent...