Three Chickens Confront Existence
Written & Directed by Bill Schaumberg
UNDER St. Marks 94 St Marks Place, NYC
May 23 - 26
Audrey Rappaport, Matthew DiLoreto , and Eric Kirchberger (Production still by Lexi Graboski; Studio shot by Danielle Glovin)
Three Chickens Confront Existence is not the play you would expect. At least, it wasn’t the play I was expecting at all.
Three chickens - Reginald, Helen and Bronseman - sit onstage in their respective cages, awaiting their inevitable death. You might think that their eventual conversation would revolve around the meaning of life, their purpose on this Earth, and even a plea to get the (human) audience members to swear off eating meat forever. Somehow, it’s all of these things - and none of them.
The characters are cleverly written, and the structure of the play itself is extremely effective. Throughout the hour-long runtime, the three actors remained onstage, more or less in their cages - despite the lack of movement, the flow and pace of the performance remained buoyant and engaging throughout. The moments where each chicken spoke to the audience were timed wonderfully and the actors were brilliant in each of their roles. Not only did they carry the humor of the piece with ease, they managed to drive home the sentimental, existential moments throughout. The play ran smoothly, with lighting and sound used extremely effectively to create a certain level of suspense, as well as portray the stark, sparse environment these characters were in.
There’s something extremely morbid, yet beautiful (and dare I say, necessary?) about applying a ‘human’ voice to animals that are forced to sit in cages, day in and day out, simply for human consumption. An extremely striking moment in the piece was a portion where Helen decides to accept her fate, by understanding that perhaps their death is part of a bigger scheme of things; one in which their death only fuels another’s life and energy. This kind of ‘circle-of-life’ thinking is relatively brief, when yet another cell block of chickens is called up for slaughter. The abrupt end of this peaceful moment was not only humorous, but extremely accurate to the reality of human nature; as much as we try to grapple with our mortality, no matter how hard we try to justify gross and widespread injustice, when it is us in the position of immediate danger, none of that matters. We can not - and maybe should not - be expected to understand the ‘bigger picture’ when it is our own right to live that is in question.
Whether this line of thinking is what inspired the piece or not, I found the entirety of the themes presented extremely thought-provoking in a way that allowed me to not only sympathize with these actors in (fabulous) chicken costumes, but also apply it to my own experiences as a human being. And that, in my opinion, is nothing short of incredible.
Click HERE for tickets.
Review by Niranjani Reddi.
Published by Theatre Beyond Broadway on May 25th, 2024. All rights reserved.