The Dead Dad Dining Club (DDDC) is a series of public meals that explore fatherlessness through reenactment and embodiment. Each meal is based on a poetic recipe about a meal that reminded the contributor of their dead or dead-beat father. All recipes were collected and published as a collection of poems in “Dead Dad Dining Club Vol. 1”. For each public meal hosted at MadArt Studio, a felt banner was created to commemorate the reenactment.

The DDDC project asked the following questions: Can we have conversations and somatic experiences about difficult questions like loss, absence and death through re-enactment? How can a project make space for people individually explore the deeply personal topic of fatherlessness publicly?

Public Meal Collaborators

Gail Grinnell
Timothy Firth
Michelle Peñaloza
Nora Kates
Paulette Perhach
Sara Lee Coleman and Rachel Ravitch
Leah Gerrard

Download a copy of “Dead Dad Dining Club Vol. 1”