“Stories of laughter and love, of lightness and depth, of suicide and slices of Battenberg cake.”
Opening up space for honest, creative conversations about death and dying: events by The Modern Funeral.
Event Details:
📅 Date: Thursday 8 May 2025
🕖 Time: 6:45pm
📍 Location: The Modern Funeral, 19 Station Road, Preston Park, Brighton, BN1 6SF
🎟️ Tickets: Book here via Dandelion Events
💻 More info: https://www.jamespretlove.com
Content note: This event and blog post include themes of suicide and bereavement.
At The Modern Funeral, we’re interested in more than just how we say goodbye – we’re interested in how we live with loss, memory, and mortality. In a world that often rushes past grief, avoids awkward conversations, or treats death as something to fear or ignore, we believe there’s real value in slowing down, making space, and approaching these topics with curiosity and creativity.
That’s why we’re piloting a new event series: The Modern Funeral presents…
Our hope is to run a bi-monthly programme of events – films, talks, performances, and gatherings – that inspire open discussion and offer fresh ways of thinking and feeling about death and dying. Whether through art or conversation, tea and cake or tears and laughter, these events will offer thoughtful invitations into one of the most profound parts of life.
We’re starting with a performance we’re honoured to host.
Seventy-Eight Thank Yous by James Pretlove
Seventy-Eight Thank Yous is a one-man show written and performed by James Pretlove. It tells the story of his mother who died by suicide at the age of 78. Drawing on memories both tender and humorous, James explores how the power of gratitude can transform grief – not by avoiding pain, but by honouring it with love and presence.
Through warm storytelling and gentle honesty, James invites us into a deeply personal narrative. The show touches on family, ageing, memory, food, love, and the quiet resilience that grows from connection. It’s moving, thoughtful, and thought-provoking.
Almost all of us live with some kind of grief, few of us give ourselves the space to talk about it openly. Seventy-Eight Thank Yous does just that. Not in a clinical or academic way, but in a human one.
@jamespretlove
Join us
This event is a one-off, for now – but we hope it will be the first of many. If you’re curious about what The Modern Funeral presents… could become, this is a beautiful place to start.
With a maximum of 25 in the audience, this promises to be an intimate and transformative evening – a space to listen, reflect, and perhaps see grief, gratitude, and connection in a new light.
📖 Learn more about the show and James’s work:
https://www.jamespretlove.com
🎟️ Book tickets here:
https://dandelion.events/e/val
We’d love to welcome you – and to begin a conversation that goes far beyond the evening.
