You're Doing
it Wrong

You're Doing it Wrong! follows a bird who can’t seem to figure out how to build a proper nest, but is fiercely determined to protect her egg anyway. It’s a story about trying, failing, and finding your own way.

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Bitty is a bird who will protect her egg at all costs. There’s one problem, though: She sees all of these other birds with nests they’ve built to protect their eggs, but she doesn’t understand how to build one herself. How did they all do it, she wonders, as she’s thrown out of one nest, falls headlong into another, and struggles to understand how all of the other birds make nest-building look so easy when she has no idea how it’s done. On her quest to try to learn how to function like the other birds, she is taught to dig by a prairie dog named Bub, is chased by a snake, and is frequently interrupted by a foolish gardener. Finally, with the help of the audience, a bit of good luck, some creative problem-solving, and her determination, she creates the home she has been looking for. 

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The show is a visual delight,featuring vivid characters with huge personalities, whimsical sets that seem to have lives of their own, and even a shadow sequence that goes underground. The show is rooted in  physical comedy, using moments of slapstick humor, silly sound effects, and absurdist arguments between living characters and inanimate objects.

 

At the heart of all of this is the message that being human is a daily exercise in accepting that we will not get things right. Bitty, a bird mother who cannot work out where to put her egg, has to improvise a home out of nothing while ferociously protecting the only thing she has. She fails almost continuously. She is also the most resilient character on stage.

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Original score by conductor and composer Raúl Gómez-Rojas, Music Director of Portland’s Metropolitan Youth Symphony.

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Geared towards ages 4 and up, fun for all!

40 minutes

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