NOTE: If utilizing this play for performances, authorization must be made with the author, Alan W. Hounshell.
The Bellenasto and Garrison families were once close, but over the years, time, distance, and old disagreements have pulled them apart. When each family unexpectedly loses a loved one at nearly the same time, they find themselves brought together again under the most unlikely of circumstances.
Looking to save both time and money, the families agree to hold their funeral services on the same day at Causeway Funeral Home, owned and operated by Marshall Causeway. Unfortunately, Marshall’s business is struggling to survive against his biggest competitor—the corporate-owned Burroughs and Burroughs Funeral Emporium. Desperate for business, Marshall offers the families a deal they can’t refuse and unveils his bold new business strategy: putting the FUN back into FUNeral.
Unfortunately, nobody told the grieving families.
As the services get underway, condolences give way to confrontations, old grudges resurface, and long-buried family secrets begin crawling out of the grave. Among the biggest revelations: the deceased Bellenasto patriarch had been having an affair with the Garrison family matriarch.
And the dead aren’t the only ones with a romantic history.
Long before either married their now-deceased spouses, Shelly and Stanley—the newly widowed members of the two families—were once a couple themselves. With both suddenly single again, old feelings begin resurfacing at possibly the worst time imaginable.
Between Marshall’s increasingly desperate attempts to put the FUN in FUNeral, two bickering families, two deceased spouses, an old romance, and enough buried secrets to fill a cemetery, something eventually has to give.
Will the Bellenastos and Garrisons forgive the dearly departed? Will Causeway Funeral Home survive in the new corporate world of death and mourning? Will Shelly and Stanley pick up where they left off now that their spouses have kicked the bucket?
And, most importantly, what other family secrets are about to come falling out of the closet?
Putting the Fun in Funeral is a two-act dark comedy about death, family, forgiveness, old flames—and discovering that sometimes the biggest surprises at a funeral aren’t in the coffin.