Camp for Dead People is a darkly funny, gothic romance musical set in Red River Gorge, Kentucky at a strange, remote rock climbing camp for young adults with terminal illnesses. 

Before dawn outside a dusty roadside motel, Lucy—who is 22 and avoids human connection with the discipline of a Marine—steals cash from the sleeping man she just had meaningless sex with, climbs out a window, and drives toward Red River Gorge, where her uncle Rick runs a remote rock climbing camp for people who are dying. 

The camp sits buried deep in the wild, down a single winding road. Ancient sandstone cliffs tower overhead, hemlock forests choke out the light, and the air hangs thick and wet, with a rain that never quite breaks. 

Lucy has taken a job there driving the shuttle van to and from climbing sits because nothing else worked out. She just finished college, can’t find work, can’t get into grad school, and can’t quite make herself care. She plans to stay safely on the edges while at camp. Besides, it’s kind of perfect—a lot of these people won’t be around long enough to get to know anyway

The next day, a camper named Craig arrives late. He’s from working class London, 25, and living with a degenerative illness that moves slow until it doesn’t. He’s magnetic and goofy, and he’s been dying for most of his life. 

Lucy doesn’t look at him with pity. He doesn’t try to fill the silence. That night, they fall into each other fast. The next morning, they both shut it down. But something has already shifted, and neither of them can quite undo it.

As the days close in, storms roll through. The road floods. Time warps. The other campers move through rituals of therapy and initiation: screaming into the void, dancing around firelight, peeing off of cliffs... Lucy refuses all of it. She will not be pulled in. Craig becomes more and more volatile. He will not let her be pulled in.

Camp for Dead People is a show about the futility of trying to outrun life or love or loss—and the damage done in the attempt. And it’s very funny, promise. The score blends a lush musical theatre sound with country, bluegrass, and folk rooted in the setting.