A new play opening this weekend got its start at Men's Central Jail in downtown Los Angeles. Strindberg Laboratory's adaptation of Aristophanes' satire "The Birds" features a cast of nonprofessional actors, most of whom come from the shelters and recovery programs in downtown's Skid Row area.
The play opens, like the Greek original, with a couple castaways following a crow to the outskirts of the city, as they contemplate how to escape the confines of their society and the burdensome laws of the gods and man. They land on the idea of petitioning the bird king to work with them to create an aerial utopia immune to the worlds above and below them.
Strindberg's version follows its own trajectory, tracing the outline of the original but picking up pop culture references as well as personal experiences and additions from the cast, who spent five months of workshopping the piece.
[For more of this story, written by Eric Zassenhaus, go to http://www.scpr.org/programs/t...nes-take-on/?slide=1]
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