Death and the dead can be represented in many different ways, both in the arts and in everyday life. A permanent challenge for the theatre is the representation of death. Naturalistic and stylized acting handle this issue differently. In handbooks for actors, there have been different methods and suggestions on how to enact dying on stage. When an actor arrives in his personal life to his forthcoming death, these acting methods lose their usability. Péter Halász (1943–2006) directed and attended (alive) his own funeral ceremony in February 2006, subverting and challenging all major features of the representation of death. The second part of the essay discusses the issue of repeatedly and only once carried out performances, while the final part turns to the topic of the death of many. There is an antecedent to the COVID epidemic, namely AIDS, which initiated a special performative way to commemorate the several hundred thousand victims of the disease. This is the NAMES project AIDS memorial quilt, which can be understood as a form of performative memory.