When I was small, stage deaths used to upset me – even if I reminded myself that actors and characters were not the same, and while one may have expired the other lived on, preparing for the curtain call. (If I could see the actor breathing, so much the better.) But then I grew taller and perhaps more callous. A fake knife shoved under the armpit and the contents of a ketchup-red blood pack ceased to trouble me; I was free to turn my attention to just how awful the conventional run of stage deaths usually are.

When it comes to most things on stage, the boundaries between actors and characters are surprisingly permeable. An actor can speak just as a character does, an actor can really sing and really dance and really eat, to say nothing of the actions called for in more experimental work. But unless something goes terribly wrong (or unless what you're watching is a lions v Christians gladiatorial spectacle), performers don't generally die when their characters do. What usually happens is an actor's attempt to feign death disrupts the theatrical illusion, reminding us that what we're seeing is only fiction.

Some disruptions are more severe than others. Take the opening night of Mata Hari, in 1967. The legendary spy is executed by a firing squad, only for one of the actor's false eyelashes to come loose. The dead Mata Hari reaches up and pops it back into place. Maybe you haven't seen anything so glaring, but if you go to the theatre often, then you've seen actors collapse from blows that didn't connect or rise spryly from where they lie as the scene closes.

Playwrights know the difficulty of making a stage death look convincing. Maybe it's why the Greeks kept all those deaths off-stage. Can you really imagine affecting a convincing expiration while clothed in a tragic mask and buskin? And Shakespeare certainly made great fun of it in A Midsummer Night's Dream, in which Bottom stretches out his death throes for as long as he possibly dares.

But there are a lot of plays that call for something more credible. The deaths conjured up by actors and directors rarely satisfy. That's why I was so thrilled during Ivo van Hove's production of Cries and Whispers here in New York last week. Van Hove doesn't approach death in a naturalistic manner. Instead, while a voice calmly describes the heroine's last moments – the rattling breath, the decline into unconsciousness – the lead actor walks to the front of the stage with a tub of Yves Klein blue. She unrolls a length of canvas and, having doused herself in the paint, falls to the floor writhing and screaming. While most stage deaths are ridiculous, this one was absolutely harrowing. By eschewing the conventions of realism, Van Hove delivered a stage death more poignant and persuasive than any number of studied judders and convulsions.

Still, for those productions that prefer something less metaphorical, I polled several colleagues for advice on how best to die out there:

1. Don't. Keep the death off-stage.

2. Perform the death on stage but avoid showing it directly, as in the famed stoning scene in Edward Bond's Saved.

3. Keep convulsions to a minimum.

4. Better blood. (The RSC keeps correctly coloured fluid in three different viscosities.)

5. Try to die on your stomach or with your back to the audience so they don't see you continuing to breathe.

6. Actually die. There are – a very small number of – actors who have perished while treading the boards. (This method is not recommended. Not only is it tremendously sad and frightening, but it's terribly inconvenient for the next day's matinee.)