James Green is dead. He's lying on a classroom table—eyes closed, hands across his chest—while Donna Belk, who lectures on do-it-yourself funerals, explains how to wash a corpse at home. "In my experience, bodies leak a negligible amount of fluid, but you may want to put a plastic sheet down, just in case." She turns to Green: "You don't have to do any leaking." The ersatz corpse cracks a smile and the dozen students in the room shout, "He's alive! He's alive!"

The playacting is part of the annual conference of the Funeral Consumers Alliance, a watchdog group for the death-care industry that advocates simple, personalized and environmentally sound alternatives to the typical American burial.