Emmy award-winning filmmaker and artist Lynette Wallworth brings her renowned storytelling skills to the stage in a surprising new work that sheds light on the seduction of cultish extremism. It’s a story she had never planned to tell, mainly because in it she plays the central character. As implausible conspiracies like QAnon gripped millions around the world, and a team of charismatic self-styled prophets, the Evangelical Advisory Board, advised Donald Trump throughout his presidency, Wallworth saw a chapter from her past come rushing into the present. Using her artworks as touchstones, Wallworth navigates a young woman's slippage into a shared belief system that divides and polarizes. HOW TO LIVE (after you die) upholds the voice of an artist in her prime, while pointing to the plethora of extremist influences that can manipulate and mold us, unless we find our way back to the creation of our own story.

It’s never been my wish to tell my own story but, as sometimes happens, the times we are living through began to remind me of a life I had long left behind. Increasingly, I found myself hearing stories of loved ones being lost to extremist groups and the severing of ties that at one time seemed unbreakable. I have watched reports of growing groups of ‘believers’ of one extreme mindset or another who feel they alone must act to save the world from conspiracy theories that seem, to most of us, completely implausible. I hear polarizing political leaders using language designed to register with the ‘devoted’ who believe they have inside knowledge on the very specific plans of God. In every one of these stories, I recognized myself, the young, aspiring and fragile self who wanted to belong. When we are young, poised on the edge of adulthood and full of hope we can be lassoed into belief systems that steal our promise and take years to escape. The purpose of art is to take the singular and find the universal. So I dragged my memories out from where they had long been stored, because, for better or worse, I am uniquely positioned to know the way down this particular rabbit hole and, thankfully, to shine a light on the path out of it. So let me tell you a story…

—Lynette Wallworth