San Francisco Playhouse continues its twelfth season with the regional premiere of Aaron Posner's Stupid f-ing Bird-irreverently based on Anton Chekov's The Seagull-directed by Susi Damilano.
You've never seen Chekhov like this.
Aaron Posner's bold and cheeky update of "The Seagull" thrusts us into a country house where unrequited desire is drowned in equal parts alcohol and sarcasm. In true Chekhovian fashion, actresses, playwrights, doctors, and novelists bare their souls as they search desperately for the truth of love and art.
An aspiring young theatre director struggles to get out from under the shadow of his mother, a famous actress. Meanwhile, his young muse falls for his mother's lover, and everyone discovers just how disappointing love, art, and growing up can be. In this contemporary riff on Chekhov's The Seagull,
Aaron Posner skillfully remixes the renowned "subtext" of the classic play into exuberant and hysterical scenes and songs.
"Stupid f-ing Bird, like The Seagull, is mostly about love, art, hope, and disappointment," said playwright
Aaron Posner. "It pits passionate dreams of ideal love and artistic success against the simple hard realities of quotidian life. It's been fascinating to explore The Seagull-a play I truly love and, in some odd ways, loathe-to find my own resonances and rebellions within it. What has emerged, I hope, in this rough-and-tumble, meta-theatrical mash-up, is a deliberately unfaithful re-imagining that I hope will challenge, amaze, engage, and delight."
The cast includes El Beh, Martha Brigham*, Joseph Estlack, Adam Magill, Johnny Moreno*,
Carrie Paff*, and
Charles Shaw Robinson*.
Aaron Posner (Playwright) is a
Helen Hayes and Barrymore Award-winning director and playwright. He is a founder and former Artistic Director of Philadelphia's Arden Theatre, an Associate Artist at both the
Folger Theatre and
Milwaukee Repertory Theatre, and has directed at major regional theatres from coast to coast including ART, South Coast Rep,
Seattle Rep, Portland Center Stage, The Alliance, Actor's Theatre of Louisville,
Arizona Theatre Company, Milwaukee Rep, California Shakespeare Theatre, Shakespeare Santa Cruz, Roundhouse Theatre,
Studio Theatre,
Signature Theatre, Theatre J, American Player's Theatre and many more. His adaptations include
Chaim Potok's The Chosen and My Name is Asher Lev (both of which have enjoyed successful runs at more than 50 theatres across the country and the latter of which ran for ten months Off-Broadway in 2012/13 and won both the Outer Circle Critics Award for Best New Off-Broadway play and the
John Gassner Award), as well as
Ken Kesey's Sometimes a Great Notion,
Mark Twain's A Murder, A Mystery, and a Marriage, an adaptation of three
Kurt Vonnegut short stories, entitled Who Am I This Time? (and other conundrums of love). His Chekhov inspired Stupid f-ing Bird debuted at Woolly Mammoth and won the
Helen Hayes Award for Outstanding Resident Play as well as the
Charles MacArthur Award for Outstanding Play or Musical. The LA production at Theatre@Boston Court received nine Ovation Award nominations including Best Playwright. Aaron was raised in Eugene, Oregon, graduated from
Northwestern University, is an Eisenhower Fellow, and lives near Washington, DC.
Susi Damilano (Director) is co-founder and Producing Director of the San Francisco Playhouse. Directing credits include Playhouse productions of Into the Woods, A Behanding in Spokane, Den of Thieves and Wirehead* ; the West Coast Premieres of
Honey Brown Eyes*, Dead Man's Cell Phone, Coronado, The Mystery Plays and Roulette and the world premieres of Rhett Rossi's >From Red to Black and Daniel Heath's Seven Days in the Sandbox Series. She is a five-time recipient of the Bay Area Theatre Critic Circle (BATCC) award for Best Female Performance in Abigail's Party, Harper Regan, Bug, Six Degrees of Separation, and Reckless. At the Playhouse she has performed leading roles in Tree, Bauer, Abigail's Party, Harper Regan, Coraline, Slasher, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Landscape of the Body, First Person Shooter, Jesus Hopped the 'A' Train, The Crucible, Kimberly Akimbo, Our Town and The Smell of the Kill. (*nominated for BATCC Directing award.)
Founded by
Bill English and Susi Damilano in 2003, San Francisco Playhouse has been described in the New York Times as "a company that stages some of the most consistently high-quality work around." Located right in the heart of the Union Square Theater District, San Francisco Playhouse is the city's Off-Broadway style company, an intimate alternative to the larger more traditional Union Square theater fare. San Francisco Playhouse provides audiences the opportunity to experience professional theater with top-notch actors and world-class design in a setting where they are close to the action. The company has received multiple awards for overall productions, acting, and design including the SF Weekly Best Theatre Award and the Bay Guardian's Best Off-Broadway Theatre Award. Presenting a diverse range of plays and musicals, San Francisco Playhouse produces new works as well as re-imagining classics, "making the edgy accessible and the traditional edgy." The San Francisco Chronicle raved: "On the verge of opening its 10th season, the company that lived a hand-to-mouth existence for its first few years has become 'the little playhouse that could.' It quickly established a reputation for attracting some of the Bay Area's best acting and directing talent, as well as for its exciting play choices. And with its bold Sandbox Series, it's become a player in developing new works as well." San Francisco Playhouse is committed to providing a creative home and inspiring environment where actors, directors, writers, designers, and theater lovers converge to create works that celebrate the human spirit.
