Elizabeth Coplan

Elizabeth Coplan is a 40-year marketing and public relations veteran who turned her personal loss and grief into the groundbreaking play, Grief Dialogues. She is also the founder of the nonprofit Grief Dialogues, a theatrical movement to create new conversations about dying and death. After a few years as a young, struggling actor in NYC, Elizabeth became the managing editor of Chief Executive Magazine under the tutelage of Henry Dormann. She later moved to California where, for the next six years, she worked her way from technical writer to Director of Corporate Communications for Collins Foods International, a Fortune 500 company in Los Angeles. Elizabeth's next career move was to Seattle, Washington. Considered one of the pioneers in professional services marketing by the Puget Sound Business Journal, Elizabeth served as the first Northwest marketing director for the Big 8 accounting firm Touché Ross, followed by a position as the Director of Client Service and Development for the law firm Davis Wright Tremaine. When Elizabeth joined Davis Wright, the firm had three offices. Six years later the firm had expanded to 10 offices across the country. During this time, Elizabeth developed the concept of strategic sponsorships for law firms, and Davis Wright was rated the most respected law firm in the Pacific Northwest the year she left to start her own consulting firm. For the next 20 years Elizabeth advised clients such as Merrill Lynch, Green Diamond Resource Company, Laird Norton Wealth Management, and the University of Washington School of Law. Elizabeth is a published author with essays in numerous anthologies and is the editor of Grief Dialogues: The Book Her early love of theatre pivoted to playwriting when her first play, the award-winning Hospice: A Love Story was performed in Seattle, WA; Sedona, AZ; in LA at The Group Rep, and in the UK. Elizabeth workshopped her play Hospice (now titled Over My Dead Body) at 18th & Union theatre (Seattle) in 2017. Hospice received a 2021 Writer's Digest Award in the Script Category. Grief Dialogues: The Play opened the Seattle Death Salon in September 2017. In June 2018, the original cast performed the show in the Seattle area to sold out crowds. Since then, the play, or a portion of the play, has been performed in New York for the Dramatists Guild National Conference, and in Las Vegas (to honor the First Responders on the anniversary for the Las Vegas shooting), and in Portland, Pittsburgh, Memphis, Los Angeles and in the UK, as well virtually performed for Reimagine: Life, Loss, Love. Elizabeth produced the Overcoming Womxn Play Festival in Seattle 2019 where she debuted her short play Untold. Also in 2019 Honoring Choices PNW commissioned Elizabeth to write the play Honoring Choices. Since the COVID 19 shutdown, Honoring Choices has been performed on Zoom numerous times with three different casts including an all African-American cast and a Latinx cast (in Spanish). Her play, Independence Day, a collaboration with playwright/actor Jeffrey Grover, was filmed and screened at the Western Region Aging Life Care Conference held in Seattle September 2021. Elizabeth is the Executive Producer of the film 8 AM, the producer, director and script consultant for Juntos Nos Ayudamos/Better Together, and screenwriter for Honoring Choices. She is now working with Dr. Jessica Zitter on a new play, Extreme Measures, an adaptation of Dr. Zitter's book by the same name. Elizabeth has also recently been featured in a chapter of Robert A Neimeyer's book, New Techniques of Grief Therapy, Environment and Beyond. And is a contributing author to Claudia Coenen's latest book Grief through the Creative Lens. Even before becoming a playwright and producer, Elizabeth never lost her early love of theatre. She and her husband Scott are financial patrons of Seattle and New York theatre, and she is a past board member of the Intiman Theatre in Seattle where she served as the Strategic Planning Chair. Elizabeth and her husband live on an island in the Pacific Northwest.