Jacqueline Crain’s one woman show The Care and Feeding of Baby Birds delicately balances mental health, self-harm

Courtesy Jacqueline Crain

Content warning: This piece features the subject matter of depression and suicide. 

Recently, The Culture House put on The Care and Feeding of Baby Birds, a one-act, one-woman play starring London-based, American actress, Jacqueline Crain.

The plot of the piece centers around Connie, a down-on-her-luck poet who is quite literally taking care of baby birds. Connie is contemplating suicide, and the birds serve as one of her final tethers to life. The entire script is presented in the form of a final plea to a god she hopes is there, establishing that Connie has truly lost any other hopes of pulling herself away from her thoughts. While her dark, sometimes comedic line deliveries and recollections of her life often surface throughout the play, they quickly begin to dwindle as each bird passes, and Connie decays emotionally on stage with them.

“The tone was definitely the hardest bit of the piece. I chose it because I loved Connie’s voice, but I was also determined to lean into the comedy as much as possible. The audience is told from the first few sentences that it’s going to be some heavy subject matter. And obviously, the ending is dark, to say the least. So you don’t have to push the darkness because it’s already there in the writing. But it’s not very fun for an audience to watch a dark piece that never lets up. I always saw Connie as someone who covers her pain with comedy, so Kay Brattan (director) and I chose to bring that out. Thankfully, Kay got it from the beginning. During rehearsals, we’d throw out ideas like “What if this is Connie meets Alexis from Schitt’s Creek?” or “What if this is Connie meets Weird Barbie?”

“It’s a tough balance and we were certainly aware of the sensitivity of the material. We were never making light of Connie’s situation, but I also felt I had a responsibility to play her truthfully. And to me, Connie was joking until she couldn’t anymore. That felt truthful to me. And it’s really a testament to the writer, Ann Wuehler, that the piece can be interpreted in such varying tones. That said, I was still quite nervous about the reception. Thankfully a couple of people came up to me after and said that the piece was actually very cathartic for them because they felt like Connie had voiced their own struggles or the struggles of their loved ones. That was when I felt like I could breathe again, and that maybe we had done a useful thing with this piece,” says Crain.

The Care and Feeding of Baby Birds is simple in nature, with the only props being a chair, table, coffee mug, and the box of birds. Connie as a character is dressed quite plainly, wearing a simple flannel, jeans, and boots with a slicked-back ponytail. 

The simplicity of the set, along with the stripped-down appearance of Connie allows audiences to completely focus on the story unfolding in front of them, which Crain executed flawlessly. With the audience merely feet away from the actress, she pulled everyone in with her performance, showing complete mastery of her character. Not a single line was stumbled upon, and Crain’s performance made the show feel less like a play, and more like you were watching a real person crying out, helpless in a glass box. 

“Each time I re-read the script, I discovered new details about who Connie might be. Even up to the morning of the show, I was still making new discoveries, which is great fun for an actor because it helps to keep the character feeling fresh and alive. So, you do the basic analysis that you do for any script, but then it’s about playing with your director. It’s about incorporating movement, voice, imagination and allowing those to inform the character as well,” says Crain.

Crain has since returned to London, where she continues her work both on the stage and behind the camera, but will always look back on The Care and Feeding of Baby Birds fondly. 

“This was my first time producing a play, as well as my first time acting in a one-person play. I wasn’t sure if I could do it, but I found I really enjoyed both aspects–largely thanks to the incredible people I worked with. Now that I’ve done it, I’ve unfortunately lost all my excuses…so I’m afraid I just might have to do it again. I’ve had another idea bouncing in my head for a while, which I think would make a fantastic one-woman play, so who knows? Maybe next time I’ll venture into writing as well. I’m really not sure what the future holds, but as long as I’m continuing to challenge myself and fully lean into my creative passions, wherever they might lead next, I’ll consider that a success,” says Crain.