←Recommendations of Out, Out Damned Bird!

This is a heartbreaking depiction of human stupidity. Or is it genuine cruelty? In either case, a woman's effort to save a struggling pigeon is undone by her heedless male companion. Surprisingly moving for so short a play.

Oh no! This one minute play reminds me of the HELP song from "Free to be You and Me." The man thinks he's "helping" but instead he's just "crushing it" so to speak. Not in a good way. Funny and sad in the same moment.

This is such a unique twist on the play! It’s poetic, deceptively simple, yet wonderful.

Some plays are poems, and this is one of them. This piece is an active visual metaphor, ripe with opportunities for the theatrical, but the length of the play makes it feel impossible to realize...which is part of the beauty of it! It's such a specific, fascinating observation and translation of the concept of "mansplaining" (and possibly more than that) in the most elegant and efficient package. Unique, heartbreaking, and relatable.

A tale of a bird, a lesson in sensitivity, and an opening for a grand discussion all wrapped up in one minute. The silence at the end is so telling. Well done.

Wow! A powerful few minutes that will leave audiences talking.

Wow! A lot about humanity packed into one minute. Fun to think about how to stage.

I wondered, for a moment, if the titular bird would be a prop operated by a stagehand or a puppet. I've determined that either way, the visual is quite funny. In an incredibly short space of time, Nora Louise Syran left me thinking about the ways in which the casually powerful swoop in and harm those aiming to give help and aid. "I daren't touch it, for it is filthy," they say, until the object of their ire is nearly dealt with in compassion, and then they come, touch, and break, and say, "Ah, that's done." All with a smile.

This one-minute observation of the human condition and the dynamics between people is achingly and maddeningly accurate. Having been in a similar situation (except with a bat), Nora Louise Syran knows what lurks in the id of the "helpful" person and shares it with all of us.

When I first read the title it put me in mind of Lady Macbeth's "Out, Out Damn Spot" speach and I find there are similarities. The male and the female character both have different ways of approaching and acknowledging the problem at hand. The fact that once the bird is gone the female feels something that the male did not makes this a brilliant commentary on gender. I have never managed to master a 1 min play but I feel the writer has definitely mastered it here.