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The Philadelphia Theatre Company this weekend opens a new musical on an unlikely subject: cancer treatment.

“Night Side Songs,” by Brooklyn-based songwriting brothers Patrick and Daniel Lazour, follows a fictional woman named Yasmine whose life changes when she is diagnosed with breast cancer and faces a long, difficult treatment process.

An earlier version of the show was recently performed at the Lincoln Center in New York City as part of the Under the Radar festival. It has since undergone further development at PTC by director Taibi Magar.

The title comes from writer Susan Sontag’s 1978 book “Illness as Metaphor,” which proposes that life has two realms: the kingdom of the well and the kingdom of the sick, where “illness is the night side of life.”

“One of the main reasons we wanted to write this piece is that so much of these experiences that are so integral to living, were so private,” Daniel said. “They were spoken in whispers in a bedroom or in the hospital room. With ‘Night Side Songs,’ we wanted to bring it out into the open.”

Although the subject matter is sobering, the musical includes moments of levity and mirth. When Yasmine is in a lull from chemotherapy cycles and at the beginning of a romantic relationship, she feels well enough to take a stroll.

“Let’s go walking in the garden, let’s go walking in the park.

Let’s go walking in the daytime, let’s go walking in the dark.

Let’s go walking to the tree with our initials in the bark.”

Songs about small pleasures, like taking a walk or enjoying a glass of wine, take on a heightened meaning when set against a life-threatening illness. They take on even more meaning when the audience sings along. “Night Side Songs” is, in part, a group activity: The actors-musicians on stage teach and direct the audience, in real time, to join in.

The Lazour brothers knew it would be a heavy lift to get audience members to sing. People often go to the theater to watch a show, not to be in it. But the pop-infused songs are sometimes jangly, sometimes melancholy and often catchy and infectious.

“It’s not putting anyone on the spot, not making things weird and ‘woo-woo,’” Patrick said. “We can talk about the writing all we want, but what makes the audience feel comfortable is they’ve realized that they’re in a room with real humans who are telling the story.”

Toward the end of the show, the performers lead the audience through a song akin to a funeral dirge:

“Will you let me know

I can let you go?

Can you softly say

You will be OK?” 

“Our dad came to the Under the Radar festival and we’re like, ‘We’re going to get you crying. We’re going to make you sing,’” Daniel said. “He said he got misty-eyed, which I think is a success.”

“Daniel wanted tears,” Patrick laughed. “Waterworks.”

A recent pop-up performance at Pennsylvania Hospital offered a preview. Boxes of tissues were placed in the audience seating and proved useful.

“This one hit very close to home,” said social worker Stephanie Chando, who teared up during the performance at Penn’s Surgical Amphitheatre, America’s oldest surgical room that dates back to 1804.

“I feel heavy but validated about a lot of feelings about loss and death,” she said. “It’s a heaviness but it’s a relieved heaviness, if that makes sense.”

“Night Side Songs” is jointly produced by PTC and the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts (the Lazours are originally from Boylston, near Worcester), and it draws on interviews the brothers conducted with people in the health care industry, including doctors and nurses at Penn Medicine’s Proton Therapy Center.

Dr. Susan Block has been a champion of the project. She is a physician, psychiatrist and founding director of Harvard Medical School’s Center for Palliative Care. The Lazours consulted her early in their writing process and even name-dropped her in the script.

“When I heard that this was going to be a musical about cancer, I kind of cringed a little bit. It just didn’t seem like it fit,” Block said. “But what I loved about the music and the way it was used in the play was how it created emotion in the audience. There was a feeling of community in the room by the time we got to the end of the production. That was one of the most lovely parts of the whole experience.”

Despite recent films that center terminal illness, Block believes American culture shies away from looking squarely at death by disease. The 2016 documentary “The C Word” suggests the unspoken nature of cancer in its title. The high-profile 2024 film “The Room Next Door,” about terminal cancer and starring Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore, was written and directed by Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar.

“Europeans say the United States is the only country where people believe that death is optional,” Block said.

Daniel Lazour believes American culture emphasizes heroic progress and productivity, into which the inevitability of illness and disability does not fit. He sees the communal nature of “Night Side Songs” as the musical’s greatest strength.

“I hope people come away from this show thinking that we get through it together. It’s cliché only because it’s true,” he said. “It’s so simple, but it does ring true: The only thing we have to get through this is each other.”

Philadelphia Theatre Company’s “Night Side Songs” runs Feb. 21 through March 9 at the Suzanne Roberts Theatre.