I Will Celebrate My Death (Celebrarè mi Muerte) saw its first rendition in English at Spazju Kreattiv on June 2 and 3.

It centres on the true testimony of Marcos Hourmann – the first medical doctor to be convicted of performing euthanasia in Spain. He makes his case before the jurors in the audience, having originally been denied the opportunity after accepting to plead guilty when offered a deal by the prosecution.

Directed by Alberto San Juan and Victor Morilla and written by the directors and Hourmann, the performance centres on the protagonist and his story. It takes the form of the doctor narrating the events that befell him accompanied by a documentary playing on a screen behind him.

In 2005, Hourmann met his patient Carmen at the hospital where he worked. She was 80 years old and on the brink of death. The patient told him that she wanted to die. Carmen was sedated but still in much pain. Her daughter asked him to end her suffering. Skipping all medical protocol, the doctor injected 50mg of potassium chloride into her vein and Carmen died seconds later.

‘I Will Celebrate My Death’ (‘Celebrarè mi Muerte’) saw its first rendition in English at Spazju Kreattiv last weekend.

He makes the case against terminal sedation – the act of sedating patients into unconsciousness when there is nothing more that could be done for them medically. This act, he says, only delays the inevitable, unlike euthanasia which is immediate. Why delay, he asks, when all that remains is suffering. “She was already almost dead, so why delay for nothing?”

Looking back upon his life, he tells us about his mother and father. After his mother died, his father suffered a stroke that left him paralysed. He recounted the pain he felt at seeing his father in such a state in a period of suffering that lasted two years.

He interjects throughout the performance a dry, somewhat dark humour. He confessed to having a prickly character and to not being much liked while practicing as a doctor in the UK.

Hourmann narrates events accompanied by a documentary playing on a screen behind him.

While there, news broke of his legal troubles. ‘Killer doc worked in UK hospitals’ read a newspaper headline at the time, accompanied by candid photographs of him smoking a cigarette in his backyard, which he regarded with embarrassment.  In the midst came a short interlude on horseback riding (Hourmann doesn’t ride all that much anymore, he tells us, for the sake of the horse). He expressed his fascination with cowboys as a boy. I furrowed my brow when he made the analogy of a cowboy mercy killing his horse despite how much he loves him.

Death is not bad, not good. We see it as a failure. If we want to live well, we must learn to die well too

Right before the end, Hourmann asks the audience to issue their verdict – “you can judge me now,” he tells us. He disappears momentarily behind a curtain, emerging soon after to read out the decisions. The majority found him innocent, or at least not guilty.

Hourmann said after reading that the scope of that exercise was not to prove his innocence but to express the importance of unobstructed choice and the free exercising of one’s will.

He worked in hospitals in the UK.

He recounted in the end how he would want to die if he were given only a week to live. He describes a hedonistic escapade which ends in the arms of his wife and surrounded by his family. 

“Death is not bad, not good. We see it as a failure. If we want to live well, we must learn to die well too,” he said.

“I will do anything to die well because I love to live.”

I Will Celebrate My Death is centrally a personal case for euthanasia. Its main point is that choice is sacrosanct – that how one dies is one’s decision to make when there is a decision to be had, and that half-measures like terminal sedation only serve to cause more suffering. The intricacies and difficulties of the issue of euthanasia, however, did not make it to the stage. 

Right before the end, Hourmann asks the audience to issue their verdict.

While inevitably stirring debate on the issue (the Taħdita Teatru that followed was as much a part of the production as the performance itself), the case for euthanasia remained on the level of personal opinion bolstered by the tumult this inflicted on Hourmann’s life and expressed through the sad cases of Carmen and his father. The only fault with the production is that it is an appeal from emotion, largely one-sided.

That said, it is heartening that Spazju Kreattiv had the vision to bring this production to the stage in a country where public debate is very scant. It is often that discussions on such thorny issues descend into appeals from emotion, clumsy and indignant. My only hope is that we may someday hold debates without falling into the usual traps.