Dude That's Like So Meta Analysis

Dude, that’s like, So Meta

By Meryl Juergens, Dramaturg/Assistant Director

Adaptation can take us anywhere along the creative spectrum, from Brecht’s The Threepenny Opera to the quintessential early 2000’s film Ten Things I Hate About You. In the best instances, adaptation not only changes a story, but also builds it up for the better, bringing in new light to unexplored parts of the journey. This is exactly what Aaron Posner has done in writing his play, Stupid F*cking Bird- referred to as a “sort of” adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull. You’ve probably heard of Chekhov, no matter where you stand in terms of theatre appreciation. Born in Tanarog, Russia, in 1860, the man was a practicing medical doctor most of his life, a prolific writer of short stories, and one of the playwrights that helped bring true, compelling realism to the stage in an age where the melodrama was flourishing. Within the canon of theatrical literature, he’s seen by many as a revolutionary of his time. As with most adaptations, fundamental differences exist between The Seagull and Stupid Fucking Bird- or SFB for short. Posner moves the action from 1890’s Russia to contemporary USA (SFB was first produced in 2013), cuts down on length, erases unnecessary

The Seagull does this, but only to a short extent- there is a small play performed within the play, and there is talk about the relevance of theatre and art to modern life. In contrast, SFB is a veritable motherload of meta. The characters know that they’re characters, and that they happen to be performing for you. They even know that they’re specifically in an adaptation- in our specific production vision, we like to see it as our characters taking the story into their own hands to retell it. The audience see two overlapping worlds: the reality the characters face in the plot of the play, and the constructed reality of a theatrical