Estate Planning Seminar in Mock Mourning

Upstairs at Chicago's Goodman Theater: Women in mourning clothes. Funereal organ music. Ushers in tasteful black, some sporting veils.

The organ music faded…."Good morning friends," [estate attorney Robert] Hamilton said in a warm, tender baritone. "I am brother Hamilton, your minister for today's service, 'In Memoriam of the Estate Tax.'"

***

This was an estate-planning seminar in mourning clothes. (Indeed the federal estate tax itself is not even actually dead, just largely irrelevant to the vast majority of tax payers.) The title was "Outfoxing Uncle Sam: How to Plan Your Estate," and the goal was donations — the kind of large, end-of-life charitable donations that a theater patron might bequest in a will.

Thus does the Chicago Tribune describe estate planning enlivened by a touch of theater. Three-fifths of FUNDS, as my bride learned in her fundraising days, is FUN. Funereal fun, in this case. 

Anyone know of other examples of estate planning seminars imaginatively staged?