Stupid Fucking Bird

by Aaron Posner

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.

Genres: Plays, Theatre, Drama, Fiction, Contemporary, American, Adult

78 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 2016

Reviews

[Doug · Rating 5 out of 5]

Update: I wanted to re-read this after reading Posner's second Chekhov adaptation ('Life Sucks', based on 'Uncle Vanya') to compare the two. Both are brilliant and I would love to see and/or direct either.

Original review: An absolutely amazing, brilliant 'sort of adaptation' of Chekhov's masterpiece, keeping the characters and basic outlines of the plot, but exploding them into something startling, original, and hilarious. (PS I definitely want a t-shirt that says 'You Shouldn't Shoot the Things You Love'!) Posner has also done a modern version of Uncle Vanya also, that I can't wait to read....

[John · Rating 1 out of 5]

Honestly, I don't understand what everyone loves about this. I don't find it funny. I don't find it witty. I don't find it intelligent. I don't find it provocative. It's a bunch of people saying "fuck" a lot and talking over each other and being presentational.

[Emily Heaps · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sigh…

[Janine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Meta-textual wild ride into existential angst and authenticity. Part of me wishes I had read this play 4 years ago, but another part of me is glad I didn’t. In any case, I don’t think I’ve felt so specifically seen by anything before, especially Sorn and his arc.
I usually roll my eyes at meta things these days, I feel it’s gimmicky and overused at this point more often than not, so remember that when I say this nailed it with that aspect. Took that and ran with it.
Also, it’s really funny!

[daynna · Rating 5 out of 5]

just end the fucking play.

[wilson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Boutta shit myself I’ve read this so many times

[Liv · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a play that really makes you think about it’s characters. None of them are particularly likeable—except maybe Dev, Conrad’s close friend who is seemingly stuck in a perpetual “friend-zone” with Mash—but you find yourself caring for them anyways.

Something that really stuck out to me was Emma’s characterization as a mother. She’s never been good at showing affection towards her son, yet she expects him to hold a certain respect for her regardless. Conrad is aware, perhaps too aware, of the fact that she will never view him as anything other than an age marker; she looks at her own son and is ultimately reminded of her status of an aging woman who lost everything at a young age.

Yet—I couldn’t help but feel bad for Emma. Despite her narcissism and ignorance when it comes to any topic other than herself, she is still a woman growing up in a society that will never seen her as an equal to her male counterparts. All she wants is to be recognized, acknowledged, PRAISED for her hard work and perseverance—something her parents never gave her as a child. She never achieves that comfortable feeling in her life, so instead she continues the cycle with her only son; his art will never be appreciated, and he will feel the effects from his ancestors trickle down into his own life. That is, until he can’t take it anymore.

[Gavin · Rating 3 out of 5]

He’s not stupid he just needs some practice 🇺🇸🦅

[Zayn Khan · Rating 5 out of 5]

give him some practice and put belief in him, then he will just be a fucking bird. 💯🙏🏼🙏🏼

[Quaye Dydasco · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m back on my seagull grind. A LOVELY modern adaption- give me more Masha and Nina scenes irl please.

[Brock Birkner · Rating 4 out of 5]

my favorite piece of art that lives in the nanosubgenre of "Screaming Into the Void and Waiting to See if Something Answers"

[elle? · Rating 3 out of 5]

Much much better than its older brother The Seagull. I have to read it for my Playscript Analysis class and it was actually very entertaining. Much easier to read, actually funny, and well written.

[Edward Cheer · Rating 3 out of 5]

I may not have read the Sea-Gull by Chekhov, but this play definitely made me want to take a look at it.

Stupid Fucking Bird is, apparently, an adaptation of Anton Chekhov's The Sea-Gull. I'll see just how faithful it is if I ever get around to reading that play. But the main premise is, there are seven people each with their own existential crisis and they each go about their own manic ways to try and fulfill their problems and eventually either solve their problems or settle for something else.

I enjoyed the majority of the play's characters and identified with their struggles and the play paces it all out so nicely that you just can't help but get involved in the drama onstage. However, Sorn and Mash were a bit lacking in personality. They just didn't seem as fleshed out as everyone else and I saw that as a missed opportunity to reach out to the crowds Posner was obviously trying to reach out to.

Along with that, the relationship between certain characters seemed a little vague. Every character appeared inside the kitchen, and I assumed it was Trigorin's and Emma's kitchen, but everyone seemed to walk around inside it liked they owned the place which left me a little confused on where Mash, Dev, and Sorn fit into the picture.

And probably my biggest problem with the play is the excessive amount of pandering Posner puts into the character of Con. He's a great character and I identified with him the most... but I couldn't help but notice that it seemed like he was putting a little too much into the metatheatrics that made it come across as though he were puffing up his own ego as a writer.

I still enjoyed this play, but I unfortunately felt like I left the play feeling nothing new like Con feared the audience would. It does some new things here and there and there are some fantastic moments to be had within, but I felt that Stupid Fucking Bird was lacking in some areas to really shine with originality.

[Brock Eastom · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fantastic adaption of Anton Chekhov's original play, "The Seagull," which is a classic, but definitely drags and is extremely hard to follow in today's world, as it was written in 1895. However, "Stupid Fucking Bird," was great! It was funny, fresh, original, and a brutally honest commentary on the world. It was extremely well written, and definitely worth a read. It kept many great moments from "The Seagull," and took some of its own liberties and modernized it. It was an absolutely well written adaption from the source material.

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5/5

Very fun, amazing play. Glad I spent my Sunday night procrastination time watching this play instead of going home and doing my homework like a responsible adult.

While sometimes being a little too overt with its commentary, I felt it was at its best when it was being a little more subtle and utilizing its incredible humor. I laughed out loud too many times to count and was awestruck a similar number of times. Haven't read The Seagull, but I suppose I should now!

[andrea hartmann · Rating 5 out of 5]

If there was one thing I could criticize regarding Stupid Fucking Bird by Aaron Posner, it would be the overuse of the word 'fucking'. Why is it that contemporary plays love to just drop that word 100x the amount actual people use them? It makes the play sound so much more superficial.

[Ari · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really love how clever this work is. Posner corrupts the characters enough to make them his own while allowing us to reflect on their Chekhovian counterparts and their relationship to us today.

[Casey Lynn · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great fucking play.

[EJ Paras · Rating 5 out of 5]

“To love with all your heart and know that it will never, ever be returned. And to be loved by someone else whose love you cannot possibly return, even if he were the last man standing. What kind of a God needs a laugh that bad?”

Today's the day. Day one of the 2-year professional conservatory at Stella Adler, where I will be a student, continuing to develop, to train, to hone the craft! To grow as a person. To better understand art. To better understand the world around me.

“But this need to create is… absurd, really. I mean… why? Aren’t there enough things already? Do we really need more? And yet on we go. More books. More plays. More painful poetry poured out in the small hours. And the songs! My God, the songs alone…! Sometimes I think there should be a moratorium on the creation of Art for 100 years. Let’s just take a good look at everything we already have and then maybe decide what else we might need.”

I auditioned for the conservatory with a monologue from Con in this play. I hadn't read the play before, just found it in a book of monologues for young men aged 18-29 (kinda crazy I'm almost outside of that range, eep).

"Why do I want to change the world? BECAUSE IT NEEDS CHANGING! And once upon a time, somewhere, maybe in Eastern Europe, or at least the Eastern Europe of my imagination -- the theater -- was something that could maybe be some tiny, tiny, tiny part of that. And it has got to find its way back to that again. Or it should just go the way of the dodo, and the bellbottom, and the newspaper... and just go away."

Regardless. Tonight I will be performing it one more time (I mean, I'd love to perform it again, because having now read the entire play, Con is such a good role! Either Con or Dev would be tremendous). I figured I needed to read the play, to best understand the character, give the purest performance possible.

And wow. This is just wonderful. At its core, it's just about love and art; and why we love, why are we so crazy to love; and why we make art, why we consume art, why we need art. It's messy, it's raw, it's meta, it's funny, it's heartbreaking. It's life itself. It's enlightening, it's enchanting, and it's stupid. It thinks so highly and so poorly of itself. But Aaron Posner's play is something new. And I feel better having had read it. And here I am logging it on Goodreads. The play gets so meta in saying that the audience will be looking at their phone even before they finish exiting their row. Just to get back to "real-life." How moved actually were you by this? Is Stupid Fucking Bird actually saying something? Or is it just pseudo-intellectual bullshit?

I'm choosing to attach importance to this play forever because it was "my monologue," so to speak. I found it in a random PDF of monologues online, chose it, workshopped it with my voice & speech teacher Celeste, performed it in front of some friends, auditioned in front of Tom & Luis with it, did it again for my callback (this time, filmed) and now tonight. And bringing it back to Stella Adler herself, and having read her book on the Technique of Acting recently, a role like Con is scary for me, but one I'm excited to dive more into. It's giving me permission to swing, to go balls to the wall, to fucking go wild. Because what else are we here for. It's vital and it speaks to the human condition. Con says the quiet parts out loud.

Now I should read Chekhov's The Seagull, but Stupid Fucking Bird is such a wonderful, funny, inspiring entry-point into the legendary Russian text. I love these flawed, fucked-up people.

“You’re all so fucked up in such endlessly fascinating ways that I can’t help but love you. And if you love someone you want to know them, get them, get inside them… so to speak.”

[Jessica López-Barkl · Rating 5 out of 5]

From David Fox's 2016 Review of the Arden Theater Production:
"Stupid Fucking Bird is subtler and far less jokey than it sounds. It’s also much closer to Chekhov than I expected. (All of this is very much to the good.) Though set in contemporary times and riffing considerably on current topics, it shares many fundamentals with The Seagull. This, too, is a play about the theater — more importantly, it’s a study in romantic hopes and the all-to-frequently disappointing reality. “Thwarted” is a word frequently repeated here by aspiring playwright..."

I am re-reading this in preparation to teach THE SEAGULL in Modern Drama. My husband has been teaching Modern Drama for a while and using THE CHERRY ORCHARD for his Chekhov offering, but the students do not love it as much as we do, so I'm going to teach THE SEAGULL and pair it with this amazing modern adaptation. Upon re-reading, I found a lot of monologues and scenes that students would really love, and I have earmarked them for future coaching or classes.

My favorite part of this play is the third act, and I often always love the fourth act of any Chekhov play because the philosophies of the previous acts are explored. I have always thought this was a painfully Russian identity trope: to experience and see the pain and then to reflect on it...that is true "catharsis" - a witty joke at the end of this play.

Anyway, my favorite part of the third act was the Thorton Wilder derivative line that Sorn says, "Do you all...feel all the feelings you say you feel?" Very Emily from OUR TOWN with, "Do people ever realize life as they live it...every...every minute?" And, yet, my neurodiverse self now what it is to be a "high-masking female autistic" and all the feelings that I feel all the time but never show...or try very hard not to show...

[Reader · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think the choice to have Con not kill himself, or at least to leave it ambiguous as to whether he will in the future speaks to a modern audience much better than the original ending. I enjoy The Seagull, but the melodrama of Chekhov is not a productive way to live life. Yes, life is full of suffering and hardship, but it is the choice to persevere and sometimes to chose to be happy even if you don’t feel it that makes life worth living. I was so so on this play for most of the read- it really just felt like the source material written in a more modern and condensed way than any translation you’ll find. However, the ending made this play worth it to me. Solid read, would recommend to anyone who has sat through a production of The Seagull and had a hard time not laughing at the ridiculousness of it all.

[Michael Anderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stupid Fucking Bird is a modern adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull. There are characters cut out in this adaptation but it is not noticeable. This play uses meta theatre to weave the tale of people seeking love they cannot have or cannot maintain. Con is in love with Nina, Nina is in love with Trigorin(Con’s mothers boyfriend and famous author), Trigorin wants Nina but is under Emma’s thumb (Con’s mother), Dev loves Mash, Mash loves con, and Sorin just wants to feel love. The Seagull is arguably one of the greatest plays ever written and Stupid Fucking Bird is a love letter that preserves/updates it for modern audiences.

[Cassandra · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked it okay, until the end, which bugged me. The story was good, and I appreciated reading this in more accessible language (In spite of the excessive swearing). As a writer, the monologues annoyed me. Each one seemed to exist to explain a character to the audience - their feelings, their motivations - all the things that a writer should not tell the audience. Let me draw my own conclusions, thank you very much! And at the end, we are told the ending shortly before the end... which would thoroughly piss me off if I was in the audience.

[Natalie · Rating 5 out of 5]

A just-clever-enough adaptation of The Seagull to make *you* actually look at it in a new light without just feeding Posner’s self-gratification. Also just a good play with good dialogue and a cast of characters that all stack up to each other well

This play came to me, also, amidst a total eclipse of the directing side of my heart, which was incredible timing. It re-excited me for creating and trying new things.

[Rebekah · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this play and I think it captures what's great about Chekhov, especially Chekhovian humor. At times though, I felt this play leaned too heavily on how meta it was and I felt like saying, "yes, yes, I know, you're meta, it's super meta, I get it!" But I definitely liked this play a lot.

[Nate Petsche · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 Stars

This was the first play I read with my new play reading group and it was a great way to kick things off. This was also the first time I’ve been able to do any sort of acting since quarantine began almost a year ago, so that may put some rose-tinted glasses on this one. Either way it was an awesome experience.

[Lyle]

Annoyingly vulgar at times (“I’m a seagull. And seagulls can’t act. That should be on a t-shirt too”), but just the same one senses a true understanding and conveying of both the Chekhovian pathos and humor. The numerous points where this adaptation’s uniqueness truly does shine and add do deserve mention as well - the play seems at all times to be almost exploding beyond itself.

[Ray · Rating 3 out of 5]

been a minute since i read this — back when i was doing the seagull. it's a decent, faithful retelling, but i really do loathe the way that arkadina and masha (ESPECIALLY masha) are adapted into this script. the ending, though? insanely powerful. 10/10 for the last line alone.

TW. suicide, suicide attempt, child abuse, child death, adultery, animal death.

[Stella · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was my first Aaron Posner play and the first Chekhov adaptation I read. I read The Seagull right before reading this and I was fond of how modern they made this adaptation. I can vividly picture everything that is happening in the stage directions or every line a character speaks. I will be picking many of my monologues from this!!!

[Dorothy · Rating 3 out of 5]

“It’s just a stupid fucking bird!!!!!”

as far as sort-of-adaptations go, this was decent. highly emotional and (tries to) be very deep. would have given it two stars but bumped it to three because the live production I saw of it was good, and I think it translates better on the stage than on the page.