Backstage at Midsumma with Jack Francis West | Dead Mum

In today's Backstage Blog, we spoke to Jack Francis West, creator and performer of Dead Mum, the smash hit cabaret returning to Explosives Factory in the final week of Midsumma after a sellout season in Melbourne Fringe.

Jack’s mum is dead. This show is about her… It’s also about you. Death is the most universal experience of the human condition. So why don’t we talk about it? Hey, why don’t we sing about it?! Dead Mum is a cabaret about death and grief, written by Jack Francis West in 2021 as a response to a world that he assumed didn’t want to talk about it. Well, it turns out he and many others, actually do! After a sold-out development season in 2021, the show had a second life at the Sydney and Melbourne Fringe Festivals in 2022. But much like grief, Dead Mum is always evolving alongside Jack. And he’ll never be done telling this story. Part eulogy, part stand-up and 100% emotional self-flagellation, Dead Mum is raw, funny, and stupidly honest. With a four-piece band dressed as funeral directors, Jack takes us through the year he turned 19: the year he lost his mum to liver cancer, fell into an abusive relationship, and had to reconcile with the sad, hilarious person he was becoming. Told through songs and brutally candid storytelling, Dead Mum explores the unspoken nuances of grief and the catharsis of confronting death together.

Q: Take us back to the start. When did this show first drop into your head? How did it get to where it is now?

In 2018, my Mum choked on a jellybean at the Apple Store and died. Just kidding, it was just cancer. 

Two years later, this show just kind of poured out of me. Honestly, it was less about the grief I was experiencing and more a reaction to everyone around me who, for some reason, seemed to think I didn’t want to talk about it. And I get it; death is taboo in our culture, grief is private because it’s uncomfortable, sure. But it’s also one of humanity’s most universal and inevitable experiences, like, hello?!

So the resistance I kept encountering felt absurd to me. I was like, “This is the craziest thing that’s ever happened to me, and it’s gonna happen to all of us. Of course I want to talk about it!” 

So I wrote this show to do exactly that. 

Since then, the show has had many lives (haha, ironic). Since its sold-out development season in 2021, it’s gone on to Sydney and Melbourne Fringe in 2022 and then again in 2025. Each time, the audience response has been absolutely wild - the laughter, the tears, the catharsis. That’s how I realised that this show was something special. The magic of that collaboration - between me, the incredible musicians, the amazing prod team and most importantly, the audience - keeps it coming back. Not just because I’ve always got more to say, but because being able to facilitate something meaningful for people is incredibly gratifying. After such a whirlwind Fringe run last year, we’re so excited to do it again, gay style, for Midsumma! 

Q: What will people find in your show that they won't find anywhere else in Midsumma?

“Call Me Mother” by RuPaul as a funeral march. It’s what Mum would have wanted. 

This is a gay-ass comedy cabaret about death, grief and gastro. We’ve got a live band of musicians dressed as funeral directors, cowboy hats, a ballad about shitting your pants, and my director sitting front row with a spray bottle to stop me from going on a tangent about Susan Sarandon while doing crowd work. It really should be a shock collar. 

But seriously, this show is just built different. It’s a delicate tone to pull off. The subject matter is taboo, sometimes morbid, and earnestly confessional, but the comedy is disarming in its stupidity and chaos. Together, it works. It’s not a show you see every day. 

Q: What will surprise audiences about this work?

That it’s not depressing! 

I am really funny. I feel kind of shy sharing this… but I actually just won Funniest Girl in the World (DO NOT go searching for this, it is real and the trophy is huge). 

The rule of the show is that comedy earns tragedy. No one cries unless you’ve made them laugh first. This show isn’t about self-indulgently processing my trauma in public and making everyone uncomfortable. It’s about confronting something together, something that we all share. 

Something we can laugh about, cry about and be reminded that we aren’t alone. 

Q: You're on a blind date. Nervously, you walk into the bar. Across the smoke and pool tables you see them - there they are. Your exact target audience member, personified. Can you describe them?

Dead Mum Club. 

So much of our culture is built to further estrange us. There’s a throwaway, unnamed, dead mother in every movie, it’s too uncomfortable to joke about, too alienating to talk about - so where does that leave us? This show is all about letting it out. Letting it be said. Letting it be sung! Letting those unspoken nuances of death and grief step into the light. 

I know how validating it is when a piece of art actually represents this experience, and that's what the show aims to do. But I think anyone can come to it. Because death will touch all of us, and in that universality there’s an opportunity for connection instead of isolation. I want the show to be somewhere fun, somewhere safe, where people can hold those feelings and leave a little lighter.

Q: What has been the most memorable moment in the process so far?

Without question, the audience response. It is something I could never have anticipated. People have cried in my arms, thanked me and shared their own stories. About their loved ones, their families, their grief. That this silly, gay little show makes people feel comfortable enough to share this means a lot to me. 

People laugh, people cry and somewhere in between they feel catharsis about something existential that we all share. I love performing it. Through remembering my Mum and sharing that part of myself, I get to invite the audience to use me as a conduit for their own grief and for an hour, we both get to feel a little less alone. 

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Dead Mum returns to Explosives Factory after its sell-out Fringe season 3 - 7 February as a part of our Midsumma Festival Hub lineup.

Click here to get your tickets!