Pigeon Theatre make experimental work that incorporates non-traditional spaces, unconventional social arrangements, and shared intimacies between performer and audience. A trilogy of site-specific performance texts, "The Rehearsal" raises questions about the interplay in contemporary theatre between the processes of rehearsal and the theatrical metaphors that shape our everyday dealings with trauma, including death. Accompanied by critical essays from Anna Fenemore, Allan Kellehear, Carol Komaromy and Alan Fair in the areas of Performance Studies, Sociology, Death Studies/Health and Social Care, and Psychoanalysis and Cultural Theory, these collaboratively written performance texts explore the double meaning of 'playing dead'.