The DMDT Team
Lana Smithner Greenleaf is the director and creator–tender–curator of death, me, dying tree. As a grief guide, death midwife, herbalist, gardener, green funeral advocate, and filmmaker she works to bring reciprocity with the wilds of our world into art and storytelling. Her efforts seek to navigate the harms we humans have done to each other and the planet. Her desire to support a tidal shift in how we care for the dying, the grievers, and the earth is at the heart of this project and series.
Lana was awarded the Puffin Grant and received a Mitchell Fellowship in order to develop this project and docuseries. She’s been a recurring guest expert on death and grief for organizations such as School of the Sacred Wild and the Freelance Artist Resource Producing Collective. As a death midwife she co-facilitated a companion animal death doula course, co-created a colonization wound ritual workshop, and devised/produced a participatory ritual play with La Lune De Mort that addressed climate crisis grief through hilarity called YOUR FUNERAL.
Her ongoing grief work includes curating a recipe and art book called “Mourning Elixirs”, supporting gardeners and community-minded folks in creating grieving gardens around the world, and hosting monthly grief gatherings since 2020.
She is currently a death field consultant for the feature “Home” (in development), director of photography for the documentary “David” (in production), and the director of a mockumentary about death doulas “Women Weaving a Casket” (in development).
Kasey O’Brien, Creative Producer for Docuseries, is a director and producer working across fictional narratives and documentaries. As a producer she has worked on many projects including the first project ever to be filmed at the The Martin Scorsese Virtual Production Center, “Crossing Over” (ft. Judy Marte, Raising Victor Vargas, and Okieriete Onaodowan, Station 19, Hamilton) and “Keeping It Together” (ft. Jordan Tyson, The Chair, The Notebook Musical). She is the writer/director of short films “Breaker Box”, “Secret Service”, and “The Pageant” (ft. Hannah Adrian, FBI: Most Wanted, Law & Order), all of which have screened at festivals around the world. Some of these festivals include Tacoma Film Festival, MINT Film Festival, QFest St. Louis, Montreal Independent Film Fest (award winner “Best LGBTQ”), Toronto Intl Women Film Festival (award winner “Best LGBTQ”), Reel Love Festival (award winner “Best Performance”) and Portland Short Fest (award winner “Best Actor”).
Kasey’s upcoming projects include a documentary which features a senior living with a developmental disability (director, titled “David”), and a fictional body horror feature film centered on an alternative climate future (in development). She is a guest juror for the 2026 Santo Domingo Global Film Festival in the Dominican Republic.
She led the launch of a new Master’s of Professional Studies in Virtual Production program at NYU Tisch and serves on the board of the PANO Network, a nonprofit organization that champions underrepresented voices in film and media.
Abigail Vega, Creative Producer for the DMDT Project and Live events, is an organizer, theatremaker, and the Director of Programming of The Jar, an organization building a cultural community at the intersection of equity, relationships, and art in Boston, MA.
She was one of the founding members of the Freelance Artist Resource Producing Collective, and the first Producer of the Latinx Theatre Commons (LTC), a network of Latinx and allied theatre practitioners working to grow the field by forging new connections, from 2014-2019. With the LTC she produced eleven convenings in Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, Seattle, Princeton, Austin, Miami, and New York.
Her writing can be found in Micha Espinosa’s Monologues for Latino Actors, and her directing has been seen in Chicago, Atlanta, and Houston. Abigail was named one of Latino Leaders Magazine’s “Latino Leader of the Future” in 2014 and she is a graduate of the NALAC Leadership Institute. Abigail was a participant in the Leadership U: One-on-One Mentorship Program, funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and administered by Theatre Communications Group, where she worked under Dr. P. Carl and David Dower at ArtsEmerson.
Nicole Richwalsky, Live Event and Docuseries Producer, is a creator, director, producer, and performer. She worked on the Oscar winning film Pinocchio with Guillermo Del Toro and has produced works with Emmy award winning Meister TV. She is an internationally recognized puppeteer, and has toured across the US and Europe with Manual Cinema Club.
She holds a BFA from Northern Illinois University, studied under playwright Andras Visky in Romania, and was selected to study with the Moscow Art Theatre School. After surviving a decade of Chicago winters, she relocated to the Pacific Northwest, where she rekindled her love of nature and its influence on her artform. Since arriving in Portland, she has also worked with the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, The Portland Ballet and Portland State University, Pendleton Woolen Mills and Rejuvenation. She is honored to be a part of this amazing team!
Kate Marie Smith, Docuseries Producer, is a Chicago-based producer, photographer, and interdisciplinary storyteller with over a decade of experience creating and supporting socially engaged performance, documentary, and community-based arts projects.
Kate was a company member with One Year Chekhov for six years, where she co-produced hundreds of performances staged in nontraditional venues, including local bars across the Chicagoland area. This work emphasized accessibility, experimentation, and bringing live performance into everyday public spaces.
For six years, Kate produced and performed One Woman Hamlet: Shakespeare the Stigma on Mental Health, a solo performance project exploring classical text through the lens of contemporary mental health narratives. The project toured nationally, including a presentation at United Solo Theatre Festival, and was later adapted into a filmed version during the COVID-19 pandemic. The film received multiple awards and expanded the project’s reach beyond live performance.
In partnership with Connecting Routes Project, Kate toured One Woman Hamlet to libraries throughout the Chicagoland area, pairing performances with facilitated discussions and mental health resource sharing. Each event was designed to reduce stigma, foster dialogue, and provide audiences with tangible support tools beyond the performance itself.
In addition to her producing work, Kate is a narrative photographer and founder of Mythos Lens, a Chicago-based photography practice centered on intentional storytelling.
Business Business, Stop Motion Animators for the Docuseries. Partners in art and life, Ryan McCarthy & Avery Ferguson are on a mission to prove that stop motion animation is not just a nostalgic throwback to a bygone era, but a vibrant, versatile, and vital art form that continues to captivate audiences of any age.
With a shared commitment to innovation, Avery and Ryan enjoy pushing boundaries and experimenting with new techniques to create evermore immersive and engaging work. But at the heart of it all is their deep love of puppets, miniatures, storytelling, and a desire to use stop motion as a means of exploring the human experience one frame at a time.
Andrew Boeder, Docuseries, Live Event & Project Producer
Brittany Bares Licensed Social Worker and Advisor
Email us to get in touch: deathmedyingtree@gmail.com
We are collaborating with artists and professionals throughout the world to bring as many perspectives as possible to this series. Many of the death care folks and artists who have enriched DMDT are featured below, we do recommend reaching out to them to learn more about their art and community services:
Lashanna Williams death midwife, educator, human tender
FayePatrick Kennedy Vocal Sonic Medium & Healing Artist, Animal Translator & Death Doula
Oceana Sawyer Former End of Life Doula, current grief guide, home funeral celebrant, Living Funeral Ceremony facilitator, Conscious Dying Educator
Amber Jeffrey founder of the grief gang podcast, grief advocate
Podcast- https://anchor.fm/amber-jeffrey
Instagram- https://www.instagram.com/thegriefgang/
Stefanie Lyn Kaufman Mthimkhulu Founding Director of Project LETS, Disability Justice educator & cultural worker, writer, care & grief worker, facilitator, non-clinical healer
www.stefaniekaufman.comwww.projectlets.org @stefkaufman / @projectlets
Thabiso Mthimkhulu (Gogo Ndlondlo) Sangoma, Indigenous ancestral healer, spiritual teacher, ritual ceremony holder, maker of medicine
@thabisoheals
Darling “Shear” Squire mixed media artist, dancer, choreographer, movement therapist, fashion stylist
Marlee Weinberg dancer, multimedia artist
Cassy Schillo visual artist, set and prop designer
Founder of Campfires & Sass
Joy Brandsma visual anthropologist, filmmaker, writer
Instagram @joybrand
Caroline Kingsley actor, writer, comedian
Abuela M’api Rainflowa Calmecac Tonantzin Yolilitzyotl elder, founder of Calmecac Indigenous Arts organization in Houston, teaching artist, performing artist, rapper
Ladybinx@gmail.com
Eve Rydberg director, producer, performer
Jessica Headley Ternes ancestral lineage practitioner, animal death doula
Kristen Houser founder of fauna speak, animal communicator
Emily Joan Smith, devotional singer/musician
