Our Loving Companions
The Marsh San Francisco
October 15, 16 & 17 at 7:30 PM
October 18 at 3:00 PM
The Marsh Berkeley
October 22, 23, 24 at 7:30 PM
October 25 at 3:00 PM
Online ticket sales close 2 hours before each performance.
Additional tickets may be available for purchase at the door.
Using immersive theatre to support empathy, reflection & community connection
Our Loving Companions is a groundbreaking immersive theater experience celebrating the beautiful bond at the heart of pet ownership. A bond strong enough to propel us through deeply painful loss, time and again. Over 90 minutes, audiences journey through the laughter, devotion, inexplicable joy, and grief that define our relationships with our animal companions.
Most shows will have a facilitated discussion afterwards for those who desire to partake.
A portion of each $100 Companion Circle Ticket is donated to Bay Area animal charities to support animals in need.
Run of Show
Core Plays:
“The Bridge” by Jay Cross
“What We Know” by Stephanie Weisman
“A Dog Dreams” by Jeffrey Fisher Smith
”A Little Bird Told Me” by Marilyn Anderson
“Must Love Pitbulls” by Jenny Mead
“Tomorrow” by Alan Stewart
Shorts:
“Outside the Box” by Emily Turner
“A Good Dog” by Laura Neill
“Ellie’s Goodbye” by Leslie Corn
“Like a Dog”by Anya Martin
“The Love of Buddy” by Dayna Moririson White
“Roll Over, a monologue from the cat’s point of view” by Tommy
The format is a “choose-your-own-adventure” model, with audiences selecting one of two plays performed simultaneously in different rooms, except at the beginning and ending when we’ll all be together.
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.
As founder and Artistic Director of The Marsh, Stephanie Weisman brings a deep appreciation for work that blends storytelling with emotional truth, making her collaboration with Our Loving Companions a natural and meaningful fit. She is delighted to welcome Grief Dialogues to both The Marsh San Francisco and Berkeley—spaces long dedicated to bold, intimate, and transformative performance. Through hundreds of productions each year, alongside classes, youth programs, and live music, The Marsh has become a home for stories that matter. Stephanie’s own work in grief-centered theater, including her play 180 Days, To Die. To Live., reflects that same commitment to exploring life’s most tender moments with honesty and care. And at home, her own loving companions—Marsh mascots Marsha and Junior—are never far from heart, a daily reminder of the deep bonds this experience so beautifully honors.
Under the consulting 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.
Pamela Hollings (she/they) is a theater-maker, working as a director, dramaturg, educator, actor, deviser and writer, depending on the project. Her career has focused on developing new work; working with playwrights as both director and dramaturg and as a devisor of new work, often site-specific. She is an ensemble member of Aviva Arts (formerly foolsFURY) where most recently they served as a co-writer, dramaturg and performer for Burning Wild a climate catastrophe devised piece performed outdoors in both Sonoma County and San Francisco. She was the Curation & Education Director at 3Girls Theatre, and the Board Chair (2013-2021), as well as an ensemble member (2018-2022) of foolsFURY Theater and the former Artistic Managing Director of both The Yat/Bentley Centre for Performance, SF Bay Area and Soup Kitchen Theatre, Melbourne, Australia. They trained in Theatre Direction at Australia’s National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA) whose distinguished alums include Cate Blanchett, Sara Snook, Baz Luhrmann and many more. Pamela is also a breath practitioner / voice teacher working at the intersection of theatre, education, ritual and somatic wellness.
Anna Takayo Walden is a San Francisco-based theatre artist, AEA actor, and the Founding Artistic Director of San Francisco Classical Theatre, a site-specific classical theatre company that launched in June 2026 with a sold-out inaugural reading of
Chekhov’s The Seagull directed by Carey Perloff. She is a Directing Fellow at Oakland Theatre Project, a member of the Actors Reading Collective, and Associate Artistic Director of Hawaii Public Theatre.
As a director, Anna is drawn to work that lives in the body and in space — theatre that asks audiences not just to watch, but to feel, move, and reckon. Her practice is rooted in classical text, physical theatre, and ensemble, with a particular interest in immersive and site-specific forms that dissolve the boundary between story and world.
As a performer, Anna’s credits span classical theatre companies across the United States and internationally, She holds an MA in Acting from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London and an MFA in Classical Acting from The Shakespeare Theatre Company at George Washington University,
Please read our
Health, Safety and COVID-19 Information
Our commitment to our patrons