Using immersive theatre to support empathy, reflection & community connection
Our Loving Companions is an immersive theatrical experience combining short plays, poetry, music and guided audience reflection to explore how the strength of the human-animal bond gets us through dying, death, and grief of our pets and animal companions. Tender, awkward, and often unexpectedly humorous, each piece offers a distinct perspective on loss. Through innovative storytelling and optional participation, the experience creates a supportive space for honest dialogue—inviting audiences to challenge stigma, examine cultural assumptions, and reconnect through shared stories. Thought-provoking and deeply human, the project uses art to open conversations too often left unspoken or disenfranchised.
Next Performance October 2026
Elizabeth Coplan
Producer
Alan Stewart and Gracie
Co-Producer
Dani Davis
Director
Michael Bud
Creative Producer
& Director of Design
Production Team & Vision
Our Loving Companions is the result of a shared artistic vision between Grief Dialogues founder Elizabeth Coplan and co-producer and playwright Alan Stewart. Recognizing the need for an animal-centered immersive experience, Coplan envisioned a space that honors the distinct and deeply personal nature of the creatures who share our homes, our routines, and our unconditional love. Stewart, a producer, playwright, Dramatist Guild Foundation Fellow, and former trustee of San Francisco’s Magic Theatre, brings a distinctive artistic voice shaped by his first career as a veterinary internist and a lifelong belief in the human-animal bond as a language of the heart. Together, they create theater that invites audiences not only to witness grief, but to experience it in a way that clarifies, deepens, and transforms.
The loss of an animal companion carries a unique emotional weight. It is profoundly intimate, yet often misunderstood or minimized by society. These relationships are woven into daily rituals — morning walks, quiet evenings, familiar sounds, steady presence. When that presence is gone, the silence can feel disorienting. Through immersive staging, storytelling, music, poetry, sculpture, and Stewart’s innovative incorporation of animals — often through evocative puppetry — Our Loving Companions creates space to honor this sacred bond. The production challenges audiences to question how we measure love and loss, and to leave the theater with greater clarity, reverence, and compassion.
Under the direction of Dani Davis, Our Loving Companions living, immersive theatrical experience invites audiences to move through a curated landscape of short plays, poetry, music, sculpture, shared reflection, and personal stories. Blending warmth, tenderness, reverence, and moments of gentle humor, the production explores death, loss, and remembrance through what follows the final goodbye…the empty leash, the quiet food bowl, the space at the foot of the bed.
Each performance is carefully choreographed behind the scenes to create an atmosphere fostering connection, validation, and collective witnessing for those grieving animal companions. In a culture where pet loss is sometimes dismissed as “lesser,” this experience affirms that love is not measured by species, and grief is not ranked by hierarchy.
Michael Bud serves as Creative Producer and Director of Design for Our Loving Companions, shaping the audience experience from arrival through reflection. Working across promotion, staging, production design, and visual storytelling, he translates the project’s artistic and emotional vision into a cohesive immersive environment. His role supports both the creative flow of each performance and the deeper intention to witness, honor, and hold space for those mourning the loss of cherished animal companions.
