Program Note

Stupid Fucking Bird is, at its core, a play about what it means to create art. In the real world, people create art for a variety of reasons. Some create art because they enjoy it, some use art as a way to express themselves, and some create art for the sole purpose of trying to achieve fame. What art means to all of these people differs. Subsequently, as all of the characters in Stupid Fucking Bird are creating art for a multitude of reasons, the meaning of art for each of them is distinctly unique.
An interesting aspect of this play is the “love sixtet”. What makes it fascinating is that although the play focuses on the relationship problems, it is not a traditional love story. It is more of a commentary on how love functions and how people deal with heartbreaks and moving on. It is also a commentary on how love does not always work out. The particularly compelling part is that every single character has a different experience with love and, quite frankly, with life. As an audience member, there will be at least one character to whom you can relate and share an experience with.
Most importantly, Stupid Fucking Bird is about learning to live in the moment and living with what you have. The only characters who actually end up satisfied with their lives recognize that they need to take life for what it is, instead of what they want it to be. All of the other characters have a preconceived notion of what their ideal life looks like for them, and they do everything that they can to fit their lives to that ideal mold. Until a person accepts where they are in the present, however, they will be unsuccessful in trying to change their future, and these characters are not able to do that. This brutal and hard to swallow theme is ever present throughout the play.
Through the myriad of conflicts, high emotions, conversations, and moments of discovery in Stupid Fucking Bird, it is clear that no character is as black and white as they may first seem at the beginning of the play. Their pursuits to create art, their relationship issues, their heartbreaks, and their inability to live in the moment highlights their inner turmoil which makes them more relatable. It is true that these characters are fictional, but it helps the audience members to remember that every person we come across in our day to day lives has an entire life that we do not know about. Every character in this play is flawed. But so are all of us. Every character in this play is redeemable. And so are all of us.