BLUEBIRDS
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Stage Manager and Lighting Designer: Shania Scott
Set Designer: Carey Nicholson and Iain Moggach
Composer and Sound Designer: Lyle Corrigan
Costume Designer: Brenda Thompson
Production Assistant and Scenic Support: Ari Leroux
Production photography by Barry McCluskey
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Maggie: Shannon Pitre
Bab: Justine Christensen
Christy: Alea Carrington
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There is a special magic in Bluebirds. Ever since my first read of the play a few years ago, it has stayed with me in a way that stands unique - even among the high bar of Vern Thiessen’s works. Three nurses stationed at a WWI hospital: a simple premise that unfolds into something far more epic, and far more human. Not a war story, but a reckoning with Time, with Loss, with Legacy. With Hope.
At its core, Bluebirds is about connection - about finding the people who help us become more ourselves. About whom we trust to carry our stories, and why that matters. About whom we reach for when the world feels like it’s ending…
Our production leans into the script’s fluidity, uniqueness, and little clues hidden throughout. We have built a world where memory and presence exist side by side; where present choices reframe the past and provide new insights.
In addition, I have always been drawn to theatre that uses minimal means to generate maximal feeling. With these three fearless performers - and a few suitcases - we have aimed to create something intimate, raw, and emotionally relentless. Not focused on realism, and yet, more real.
Thank you to Carey and Theatre on the Ridge for their trust in me. Thank you to Marissa and my family for their endless support. Thank you to the whole team, especially our cast and Shania, for embracing the magic of Bluebirds and diving in.
And thank you, truly, for being here.
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After not renewing my contract with Theatre by the Bay, Carey Nicholson, the intrepid Artistic Director of Theatre on the Ridge and a friend, reached out to see if there might be some opportunities to collaborate. At the time, I wasn’t ready to make any kinds of decisions. The last few months at TBTB had taken a huge toll on me and I needed time to recover, but the offer stayed in my mind.
At the same time, Vern Thiessen (playwright of Icemen and a friend), had been keeping in touch about how we could keep working together as well. He mentioned that Carey had reached out to him - something I helped to facilitate - as she was interested in working closely with him. You can see where this is going, I suspect.
Knowing a bit about the scope and style of programming Theatre on the Ridge offered, once I was sufficiently healed from TBTB, I suggested to Carey that I direct Vern Thiessen’s Bluebirds. It was 85 minutes, three female characters of indiscriminate age, and a powerhouse for both direction and design. A homerun, in my opinion. Carey agreed, Vern was thrilled, and the work began.
Bluebirds is a deceptive play. It seems straightforward enough, but there is SO much going on beneath the surface. Its structure especially creates great dramatic potential, but needs to be handled with a lot of thought and consideration. I am quite thrilled with my concept for it, and the actors, when I introduced them to it, bought right in as well.
I wanted to lean into the tension between memory and presence, realism and the ethereal. The design reflects that: the floor evokes the reality of a beach (Étaples) where these women return again and again. This is the 106th time they’ve come back to fulfill their vow.
The costumes are intentionally more blue than they would have been historically - less about how they looked and more about how they felt wearing them: royal, proud, powerful. Ghostly in the best sense - especially under Shania’s purple lighting. Making it clear we are not in the realm of the ‘real’ and conveying the beauty in that. Around the raised playing space, suitcases and trunks line the corners. The trunks double as hospital beds and provide levels, but also as memory vessels -everything they’ve brought with them to France, literally and metaphorically, is stored there: lovers, family, longing, hope, loss. And in the end, when the dam breaks, all of it is spilled out onto the floor. The final truths. Nothing left hidden.
There was a stage direction in the script suggesting the uniforms appear “as if by magic.” I decided to make audience members hand the uniforms to the performers. A kind of quiet, magical transference. I have always been delighted to hear who stepped up to do the transfer such as parents of the actors, members of the military, and even nurses. It made the moment not just about the needs of the story, but about lineage and love and the invisible hands that carry us forward.
At the heart of this version is a decision: what if, this time, they didn’t just remember Annie or Jack or Grandpa but became them for one another? What if, on this 106th time, in doing so for each other, they could understand their lives differently, more fully? That imaginative leap cracks the cycle wide open. And so at the end, rather than returning to the vow, they stay. They hold each other. They choose presence over repetition. The vow is fulfilled and they have found peace.
It is pretty powerful. We cried almost ever day in rehearsal.
A director’s dream come true.
The show concluded with multiple sold-out performances - both an audience and critic darling.
Check out the PRESS page of my website for the reviews!
