Zombies just will not die.

Yes, they are reanimated dead people obsessively stalking the land and feasting on the flesh of the living and can only be killed by complete incineration or the total destruction of their brain. True.

But, in another — perhaps a more important — way, they’re even harder to keep dead than that.

The shambling undead have been making cinematic appearances since the early ’30s, and, much like the mutant pathogens they carry, have proliferated within our culture. True, they’ve fallen in and out of vogue at times, but they always persevere, dragging themselves ever onward, staggering into the future and onto the next comic, movie, TV show, costume party, etc., like some kind of relentless, unstoppable, uh, zombie, actually.

In fact, the undead have become so prolific in our collective culture that the new zombie whatever can already seem kind of rote. Almost every story deals with the outbreak of the undead virus, the collapse of society and order and the aftermath — both immediate and long term — as the struggling band of survivors attempt to rebuild some semblance of order. The stories are all set during and after the zombies are wreaking havoc, which got Ricky Coates to thinking about why nobody ever wrote from the perspective of a man who is actually in the process of turning into a zombie?

His new one-man show “The Death of Brian,” coming to the Bainbridge Performing Arts stage for one-night-only at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Oct. 30, tackles just that idea and attempts to return some real philosophy to the zombie story — What is it to be human? When is somebody truly dead? What is the nature of change?

Of course, it’s also got puppet fights, blood, sex and lots of laughs too.

Coates said his inspiration for the play, which he wrote and performs, was two-fold: sitting in on a writing session with some friends who produce a zombie comic book and teaching a children’s after school writing program.

“All they wanted to write about were zombies and robots,” he laughed, remembering his young students’ affinity for the undead and the artificially intelligent.

These “modern monsters,” he said, are really indicative of our current fears, that of becoming nothing more than “soulless consumers and a cog in a machine.”

“It allows us to explore that side of us that is consuming the earth,” Coates said about the zombie story. “Our loss of identity [like] ‘Frankenstein’ allowed Mary Shelley to talk about the Industrial Revolution.”

Coates, whose last appearance on the BPA stage was in “The Kentucky Cycle,” wrote the play in a few months and has been touring all of North America, from Orlando, Florida to Canada, terrorizing and entertaining audiences.

The show is directed by K. Brian Neel, who specializes in the unique theater sub genre of one-person shows.

“He, like me, is not interested in doing a story-telling show,” Coates said of Neel. “It’s a very different one-man show.”

The piece combines elements of physical theater with classic radio drama techniques. Other characters are brought into the story through pre-recorded voiceovers — and at least one puppet — with which Coates must time his responses and interactions.

“I wanted to do a one-man show to isolate the protagonist,” Coates said. “He’s a zombie without a horde. He’s actually a pretty lame monster.”

Recently, Coates performed the show at a zombie festival in front of some of horror culture’s most loved celebrities.

Michael Berryman, the infamous Pluto from 1977’s “The Hills Have Eyes,” and Linnea Quigley, the blonde scream queen known for her roles in “The Return of the Living Dead,” “Night of the Demons,” and “A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master,” both gave the show two thumbs up, Coates said.

“They were both super stoked by the show,” he laughed.

Due to its content, the show is appropriate for adults only, BPA officials cautioned.

“There’s a lot of content warning,” Coates agreed. “Violent situations and sex situations and some nudity, everything you’d expect from a zombie film.”

Tickets for “The Death of Brian” are $25 each and on sale now.

Visit www.bainbridgeperformingarts.org to purchase and to learn more.