Grief and mental illness take center stage in the drama Coping, written by Jacob Marx Rice and directed by Anna Strasser. In this play at the New York International Fringe Festival, a group of four friends gather to come to terms with the sudden death of one of their own, a promising young med school student named Connor. In the wake of his inexplicable suicide a week earlier, Connor’s friends are left reeling in a sea of assorted feelings of sorrow and despair.

Connor’s girlfriend Sarah (Lauren LaRocca) is at a loss for how to deal with the tragedy and with his older sister Jessica (Lipica Shah), whose rage is palpable. Her girlfriend Taylor (Lauren Hennessy) comes to town to support her, but Jessica’s anger threatens to unravel their bond. Meanwhile, Connor and Sarah’s roommate Lucas (Scott Thomas) roams their apartment in a haze of drugs and Taylor Swift.

Coping takes the universal human experience of death and turns it into a heartfelt meditation on love and friendship in the midst of great loss. The play handles mental health issues, such as depression and obsessive compulsive disorder, with dignity. Tackling mental illness in a society in which it is still largely misunderstood and taboo, Coping brings light to the strength it takes to put the pieces of one’s life back together. Without oversimplifying emotions or events in an effort to wrap grief up into an easy to digest, self help-ready pill, the talented cast (which also includes Dinah Berkeley) brings raw emotion and plenty of humor to characters that are both real and accessible.

The play offers lovely moments of catharsis, most memorably in a scene in which Jessica’s feelings are released, and she finally lets go in the arms of a tearful Lucas. It is a powerful moment, and an example of the power of theater to bring people together to understand difficult things and feel comfort in the fact that they are not alone to cope with the bitter realities of life.