“Life: A Delightful Show About Fear & Grief” arrives at Wildhorse Cinema & Art this weekend, bringing a mix of stand-up, stories and spoken word focused on how people carry fear and loss.

The performance will begin at 7 p.m. Saturday.

The show started as a writing collaboration for three Colorado performers who shared a comedy coach and a goal to get better on stage. Comedians Elaina McMillan and Andrea Sodergren planned a standard lineup until collaborator Katie Mason asked for something different.

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Katie Mason expressed to both McMillan and Sodergren that she didn’t want to just do comedy — she wanted to do something more in a different way.

They tried it once, expecting to move on. Since then, they’ve staged it 13 times.

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“Once we did that show, it was magical,” McMillan said. “We still do comedy separately, but I almost have the feeling every time that this is going to be fun; but we’re not even going to make anybody cry.”

Sodergren said the format widened what they could talk about and how they could talk about it.

“It’s both comedy and tragedy,” she said. “It’s really getting raw and real and it’s just been a beautiful thing.”

The content comes from their individual lived experiences and the feelings that formed the glue of the writing. Sodergren discusses a divorce and the sudden death of a family member. McMillan has worked through family challenges that unfolded while the show was touring.

“Since we’ve done this show, my son has survived a fentanyl overdose and I put my mom into memory care for Alzheimer’s,” McMillan said. “Life doesn’t stop lifing.”

They follow a clear rule when those events hit close to home.

“We have an agreement and a commitment to only sharing material we have fully processed,” McMillan said. “When my son had an overdose, I couldn’t just write a piece and go perform it. It was way too fresh.”

Mason is a practicing therapist. The trio credits her with helping shape sensitive material so it lands with care.

“She has been very significant, a significant part of helping us navigate this in the most empowered, healed way possible,” McMillan said.

Sodergren said the writing is therapeutic, but the goal is more than that.

“It was very therapeutic, but also coming from the lens of moving through the grief or the fear and getting to the other side of it with some sort of observation,” she said. “A different personal take that ends up being universal to so many people that we oftentimes don’t even talk about.”

That connection is why the piece has reached so many audiences.

“People feel very seen when we get up and talk about something that maybe not everybody is comfortable talking about,” McMillan said. “That’s their takeaway more than the fact that there are so many bold jokes.”

McMillan said the performers’ differences help the audience find what they described as an entry point.

“We are wildly different,” she said. “Because we are so different and we bring three unique points of view, we’ve come to find that people can identify with something at least one of us is saying throughout the show. It turns out our points of view that we thought were so unique is actually a shared experience.”

Even with that bond on and off the stage, opening up came with a lot of nerves attached.

“I definitely was super scared the first time,” Sodergren said. “We’re really sharing some pretty personal things about our feelings and we really don’t know how people are going to take them.”

She added that timing a joke about a hard topic can feel risky.

“I hope they get that I’m joking. I hope they know that this is a joke,” Sodergren said. “It’s not me thinking that my mom should move into a tent.”

The team sees the show as part of a wider community effort to face mental health challenges in open ways. Sodergren said the format offers a different kind of setting than a one-on-one appointment.

“One of the things our show offers is just a different way to be with your grief,” she said. “A way to have a shared experience in a community where people are kind of seeing that it’s okay, that there’s no shame in expressing these things.”

McMillan also pointed to the fact that cultural norms about addressing grief and loss are shifting.

“It used to be don’t air your dirty laundry,” she said. “There’s such great relief in realizing it’s not that there’s something wrong with me. I’m just human, it turns out, and this is a human experience.”

The night follows a steady arc. Mason now opens with a new poem that frames the themes. McMillan takes the first stand-up set, followed by stories and poems.

At a few points all three step in for “round robins,” where each shares a fear or another prompt.

Mason later does a comedy set, which leads into Sodergren’s stand-up. A group piece on anger provides a release for the audience near the end, and Mason finishes with a poem that McMillan said leaves the room in an honest, hopeful place.

“This was never about trauma bonding,” McMillan said. “It was about sharing something with a point of view that might make a difference for somebody.”

The show also changed how they approach solo work. Sodergren said she now likes to add a little depth to club sets.

“I do now tend to really enjoy going a little bit deeper and getting a little serious in my comedy,” she said. “I think that allows the audience to be a little more connected to you.”

McMillan said she brings more openness to standard lineups after touring as a team.

“I want to take myself a little less seriously, and I want to be a little less separate,” she said.

When the show is performed, no two nights are identical.

“We have really never done the same exact show twice,” McMillan said. “We’re always looking for the next thing that wants to be spoken or shared.”

The performers have started working with directors to deepen the production and bring it to new audiences. Steamboat felt like a natural next stop.

“It’s such a community-oriented town, and this is such a community-oriented conversation,” McMillan said. “It just seems like a really good fit for Steamboat.”

For more information about the show, or to purchase tickets, visit UndiscoveredEarth.org/event/life-a-delightful-show-about-fear-and-grief.