THE STORY: An aspiring young director rampages against the art created by his mother’s generation. A nubile young actress wrestles with an aging Hollywood star for the affections of a renowned novelist. And everyone discovers just how disappointing love, art, and growing up can be. In this irreverent, contemporary, and very funny remix of Chekhov’s The Seagull, Aaron Posner stages a timeless battle between young and old, past and present, in search of the true meaning of it all. Original songs composed by James Sugg draw the famously subtextual inner thoughts of Chekhov’s characters explicitly to the surface. STUPID FUCKING BIRD will tickle, tantalize, and incite you to consider how art, love, and revolution fuel your own pursuit of happiness.
“Aaron Posner’s savvy, petulant blitz through Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull [is] less an adaptation of Chekhov’s landmark drama than a funny, moving slugfest, a ripe mashup of mock and awe…sometimes it blows Chekhov up, and sometimes the play explodes with a genuinely Chekhovian release of emotion. The show is smart enough to have it both ways: It mines The Seagull for classical heft even while giving it the bird.” —Washington Post.
“Like the play that inspired it, this adaptation offers a unique glimpse at the state of the theatrical art form and more broadly, the difficult pursuit of art and creativity. Angsty, raw, and real, this play does not shy away from the hard, but well-discussed philosophical questions about art, reality, love and life and what it all means. Yet, it does so in a way that’s likely to engage contemporary theatrically savvy audiences.” —BroadwayWorld.
“…an accessible and unfailingly delightful jaunt into misery (or maybe we should say compromised happiness)…It’s absorbing in its every glance and revealing in its every sigh.” —Washington City Paper.
“STUPID FUCKING BIRD, like The Seagull before it, demands a realer theater…It is an act of historical importance to tear theater down in order to have it start anew. But it is an act of grace to challenge theater to become greater without tearing it down.” —DC Theatre Scene.
“STUPID FUCKING BIRD, Aaron Posner’s splendid, irreverent adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull [is] a refreshing splash of cool water on dry, well-trod terrain…STUPID FUCKING BIRD is what you get from a writer who not only adores the material he’s adapting, but understands it precisely.” —DCist.
