Director Gretchen Wirges knew she had the stars for the season-opening production when — right after meeting — they started talking about going bird watching to get to know each other better.
While that may seem like an odd choice, birding is the heart of Anna Ouyang Moench’s two-person drama “Birds of North America.” The 2017 play, which runs Sept. 1 to Sept. 15, begins the 53rd season at Tucson’s Invisible Theatre.
The production stars Dennis O’Dell and Hannah Turner as a father and his adult daughter. Their strained relationship is explored in a series of 10 scenes spread over more than a decade, set in the father’s backyard while bird watching.
Betsy Kruse Craig, who took over this summer as Invisible’s managing director after more than 50 years under Susan Claassen, said the two of them worked together to select this season’s shows. They liked “Birds of North America” as a starter because of its strong characters and its subject matter.
“You see fathers and sons and mothers with daughters, but the examination of a father-daughter relationship on stage is something that you haven’t seen much, and that was really appealing to us,” Craig said. “The other reason for choosing this play in Tucson is that we have a very avid birding culture. It’s like a superhighway for birders and birds.”
To build on that culture, the company added the Tucson Audubon Society as a community partner for the production, with a portion of proceeds from one performance going toward the society’s work.
When Wirges looked for the actor to play the avid bird watcher, she thought of O’Dell, who she had directed in a previous production.
“Dennis is the kind of actor who tries a million different things to figure out what feels right,” she said. “It’s such a gift for a director to kind of see somebody who’s not just a blank slate, but who comes in with all these different creative ideas. And once you set him in the right direction, he does it 100%. It’s just an amazing thing to watch.”
Wirges brought O’Dell and Turner together and saw an immediate connection.
“I knew at the first table read as we were waiting for everybody to get there, and the two of them were talking to each other about going bird watching together and going on these little adventures,” she said. “I was like, this is it, because they were just open to each other.”
O’Dell agreed, adding that he felt the bond immediately. He also said Wirges is adept at finding the honesty in their on-stage relationship.
“She has a really nice sense of pulling into the moment on stage with what’s going on emotionally,” he said. “And she also is very free in terms of letting you try stuff. She blocks the show and then goes, ‘If you don’t like it, throw it away, and we’ll find something else.’”
The honesty of Moench’s writing of the character excited O’Dell to portray the emotionally distant and challenging father.
“She does great dialogue,” he said. “She captures the relationship between the father and daughter, the (concept of) really wanting your offspring to do better than you did. There are points where he definitely feels like he’s a failure, like he has not been able to achieve what he wanted to achieve, and so he pushes that on her. And it’s so well written in terms of how they push each other’s buttons. You get this undercurrent, you really feel that they love each other, but man, they know how to tick each other off.”
As the new managing director, Craig hopes this will kick off a strong season for Invisible. She said that even though the company has been around since the 1970s, there are many in the community who still don’t know about it, or they haven’t seen one of the company’s shows.
And Wirges thinks this is a special production for people to take a chance on their first visit.
“I think that at its essence, it’s about wanting to be seen by the people who know us best and longest,” she said. “We’ve all had that experience in some way. We all crave to see people connect to each other. And that’s what this is about. It’s simple, honest storytelling.”
“Birds of North America”
WHEN: Various times and dates through Sept. 15
WHERE: The Invisible Theatre, 1400 N. First Avenue, Tucson
COST: Tickets start at $42
INFO: 520-882-9721,
invisibletheatre.com
