Washington Post columnist Alexandria Petri has often wondered what her funeral will be like.

“If you read Tom Sawyer at a formative age,” Petri says, “you have this fantasy of someday getting to walk into a room where people are actually doing the funeral without the inconvenience of physically having to die, which seems unpleasant and I hope will never happen.”

The writer, known for her satirical takes on politics, is one of two local media personalities taking part in a remount of Washington Improv Theater’s In Lieu of Flowers, which improvises a funeral during each show. For all but two performances, the deceased is plucked from volunteers in the audience. On Nov. 1, WIT will stage Popville blogger Dan Silverman’s funeral; Petri’s services are on Nov. 8.

Silverman hasn’t thought much about his funeral but he does have two requests: He hopes President Barack Obama will attend and that, in lieu of flowers, there would be terrariums set up for decoration.

“I really like terrariums,” Silverman says. “I think that would be a nice touch. And then people could take the terrariums to go, like when they leave [with flowers]. That would be a sweet funeral.”

In Lieu of Flowers, which runs Nov. 1-23 at Spooky Action Theater, was first staged in 2018 by co-directors and WIT improvisers Lura Barber and Zach Mason. The idea came from a series of conversations after the death of one of Barber’s acquaintances.

“I had been personally affected by it but also had really observed how the effect of her death rippled through my friend group and how people responded,” Barber says. There was also “a feeling that I had at her memorial that [the service] didn’t necessarily reflect who I knew.”

While this is an improv comedy show at the core, it’s still a funeral, so don’t expect it to be packed full of jokes in the way that weekly Harold team performances might be.

“We make explicitly clear up top that this is not going to be a roast,” Mason says, adding that he estimates the shows are often 70 percent serious, 30 percent humorous. “It’s not something where you’re sort of opening yourself up to be ridiculed, which sets the tone for the audience to be a little more respectful of the material and a little more present, a little less looking for jokes.”

Each show begins with a little crowd work so Barber and Mason can suss out the best funeral candidate using a very scientific method: asking whether they prefer cake or pie, and why.

“Because if somebody says, ‘I don’t know,’ it’s like, OK, this person is not really right for the interview,” Mason says. But if someone is really passionate about pie, or “if they easily transition into an anecdote—like, ‘my great aunt made the best blueberry pie of my life’—you know this person is gonna be wonderful.”

After they choose an audience member, Barber and Mason interview them in front of the audience, starting with basic questions about what they’d want their funeral to be like before moving on to increasingly more personal questions. Then the cast (which does not include Mason and Barber) stages a funeral. The improvisers play family and friends from the deceased’s life (both real and imagined), deliver eulogies, have conversations as they mill about the service, and act out a montage of scenes from moments in the deceased’s life.

To help prepare for the show, Barber and Mason ran practice sessions where they and each cast member had to take a turn as the subject.

“So they understand the slightly disorienting feeling that can arrive when you’re seeing this,” Barber says of the cast. “When I experienced mine, there was this odd sense of, ‘Oh, wow. I will one day have a funeral and I won’t be there.’ But I felt really lucky that I kinda got to see it, and to be able to laugh about things.”

For his funeral, Mason says he sidestepped questions about family because he isn’t close to his—but that didn’t stop a cast member from playing his sister.

“I don’t even have a sister and I still teared up when I saw this quote-unquote sister’s eulogy,” Mason says. “If I had a sister, that’s the exact eulogy I wish they would give. It just felt very affecting. One thing that I’ve learned from this is how the people that make themselves vulnerable and really open themselves up to the experience get so much out of it.”

Petri, who is also a playwright, isn’t sure what she wants to gain from the experience. “I hope it will have jokes,” she says. “I think the one thing I want my actual funeral to have is jokes.”

Silverman, meanwhile, is opening himself up to the spirit of improv.

“Apparently, I’m getting myself into some heavy, heavy shit,” he says. “And, you know, I’m a pretty lighthearted guy. I don’t take things too seriously. So I’m looking forward to some deep stuff, some fun stuff, some happy stuff, some sad stuff. Wherever the night leads, I’m willing to go.”

In Lieu of Flowers runs Nov. 1-23 at Spooky Action Theater. $15-$18.