Adam Szymkowicz and I have been long-time collaborators. When Red Fern Theatre wanted to produce Rare Birds, Adam asked if I was interested. After reading the play I knew immediately I had to direct it.

The play follows sixteen-year-old Evan Wills — an avid birdwatcher who wears colorful songbird shirts to school despite the constant antagonism it brings him. His mother wants him to be normal. A troubled bully named Dylan has something darker in mind. Adam writes in a mode that is simultaneously dark comedy and raw drama — naturalistic, unsentimental, and refusing the comfort of a simple resolution. At its heart Rare Birds is about what happens when you dare to love something — and what the world sometimes does to people who love too openly.

I found the character of Evan deeply personal. That experience of being misunderstood — at school, at home, in the world — is something I know. And I wanted the design to put the audience inside that experience rather than observe it from a distance.

The image that unlocked the production came to me at Christmas, visiting my parents. I looked out their back window at tall leafless trees reaching up against a grey winter sky — oppressive, bare, closing in. I knew immediately that was Evan's world. I wanted to see him in his carefully curated room, the one space that was entirely his own, surrounded by those dark trees pressing in from outside.

Working with scenic designer Andrew Mannion and lighting and projection designer Derek Van Heel we built that world on stage. Evan's room sat centre — intimate, personal, his. Beyond it, projected onto a scrim, the trees. As the action darkened the trees darkened with it — becoming more ominous, more enclosing, more threatening.

And then there were the texts. The bullies didn't just exist in the physical world of the play — they reached Evan through his phone, the way bullies do now. Those texts appeared projected onto the same scrim as the trees. The cruelty and the oppressive natural world occupied the same space — pressing in on Evan from the same direction, through the same surface. It was one of the design choices I'm most proud of.

What the critics said

"Director Scott Ebersold elicits excellent performances from the cast." — Talkin' Broadway

"A ticking time bomb... Rare Birds is a story the world needs to hear." — nataliewritesthings.com

"The realistic 'box' of Evan's room, abundantly decorated with birds, is both a safe haven and a prison." — OnStage Blog