Five days before curtain time for her one-woman show, Noella Murphy is finessing a detail, specifically, "putting some folded flowers into pill bottles," she says. It's a prop for Flower Bed — a performance that blends clown performance, puppetry, visual art and theatre — but it also feels like a tidy encapsulation of Murphy's approach to life: finding small moments of beauty while living with long-term illness — and seeing the inherent effort required by both.

"I don't have an end date to my illness," says Murphy, a multidisciplinary artist who lives with chronic illness in Halifax. "I feel like even just having seen more examples of how people live through these things, it would have helped me understand a bit more."

Flower Bed aims to do just that, by exploring Murphy's chronic pain and overlapping diagnoses (she's been "sick for many years with chronic pain and sort of a medical mystery," as she puts it) in a piece that aims to be considerate of its subject matter while still being fun to watch for spoonies (a term for people who live with chronic conditions, based on the concept that everyday tasks are harder for them) and healthy folk alike.

"I draw when I'm stuck in bed, and often I find it hard to think through pain," Murphy says, "So drawing something that I see is the easiest, and often I draw flowers."

The inclusion of many of these drawings in Flower Bed feels both straightforward and meta: these very drawings chronicle — through their existence — the inherent unpredictability of her conditions, and how planning ahead often comes with an asterisk. The best example of this is that this show itself has been years in the making, having been pushed to 2025 after Murphy was too ill to perform it in 2024.

But when Murphy takes the stage on May 9 and 10, it'll be worth the wait: Flower Bedis billed as "creatively explor[ing] what life is like when your full-time job is Living With Pain." It's part of the Mayworks Festival, a festival focused on working people and the arts, and how work shapes our lives. The play introduces another vision of labour to its audience: the work of managing a long-term illness, and simply living through one while being confined to a bed for months on end.

"I think the thing that interests me about Mayworks is that it's not just about labour, but about all the groups who are most in need of equity and respect and who feel underserved by society," says Murphy. "I would definitely group ill people in that too, since our needs are constantly brushed aside. Beyond that, for an ill person to meet the bare requirements that it takes to be a human — getting out of bed, going to work, leaving the house, keeping social engagements — it takes a huge amount of labour, physically and mentally, which I don't think most people realize."

Just like a plot of perennials, Murphy has been prepping fertile ground for this show, letting the ideas take root: First, Flower Bed was envisioned as a silent film. Then, earlier works she made of flowers sketched while sick became stand-alone visual art shows.

"My health journey has not been the easiest," says Murphy, explaining why adding an element of clown performance to the show was important. "And so I, being a trained clown, I was drawn to this weird juxtaposition between these serious subjects, but then looking at it through a sort of a humour and a lighter view."

In its final, blooming form, Flower Bed offers a view of the grief and absurdity Murphy feels are inherent in navigating an unending illness like hers.

"I have definitely gone through phases with my friends and my family, of them discovering a bit more of why I sort of disappear and them going, 'Oh, it is really bad,'" Murphy says.

She adds it's not so much about educating people on chronic illness as it is delivering a representation of people living with long-term conditions.

"I was a drama queen when I was a kid, and I struggled with a lot of things," she says. "So, I even found it hard to believe myself when I was so sick. I think part of it is just talking about it, and I hope that the play brings up more conversations."