Chekhov’s gun is a famous rule of the theatre.
Remove everything that has no relevance to the story. If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it’s not going to be fired, it shouldn’t be hanging there.
-Anton Chekhov
A similar rule might be, if there’s a child in a show that isn’t a comedy, they are there to die. Okay maybe not always, in The Duchess of Malfi by John Webster, the kid lives but the rest of his family and just about everyone else is dead.
So I died a lot in my early years of acting. The Plough in the Stars by Sean O’Casey was the second show I did with The Upstart Crow, and just like in my very first play, I died. Not only did I die, but a child sized coffin comes on for the last act, and the other characters play poker on it.
The truth is, I didn’t quite fit in the coffin (no I never had to be inside of it, it was nailed shut). It was exactly my height, so with the thickness of the wood, I wouldn’t have fit. We kept that coffin for years. Or rather two members of the company Jim and Geni kept it in their barn. They found it rather amusing when they had guests who saw it, and wondered why a child’s coffin was being stored. We did eventually use the coffin again when we did the show a second time. It didn’t fit that actress either.