Your Chicago Guide’s tickets for two to the press performance courtesy of A Red Orchid Theatre.
Triple extended by popular demand, Anna Ouyang Moench’s father-daughter drama Birds of North America continues 33rd Season at Chicago’s A Red Orchid Theatre. Directed by Artistic Director Kirsten Fitzgerald, the show is currently on stage through March 15th, 2026. Birds of North America features ensemble member John Judd and Cassidy Slaughter-Mason.
John and his daughter Caitlyn are birders. As they scan the skies over their backyard in suburban Maryland looking for elusive birds, years go by. Relationships begin and end. Children grow up and parents age. The climate and the world change in small and vast ways. Birds of North America takes a close look at the relationship of a father and daughter over the course of a decade as they struggle to understand the parts of one another that defy understanding.
A medical researcher who was trained as a physician, aging liberal John is not someone you would look to for solace in a crisis. Bluntly factual, he lacks not so much the willingness but the building blocks of empathy. Bedside manner is beyond him. Empirically exact and oblivious to feelings, John approaches the world as though it were his lab. Changes are notated with an air of neutrality.
A progressive who is passionate about the environment and the increasingly evident reality of climate change, he can get worked up over politics. But there’s no such passion when dealing with family matters. He treats his daughter like a lowly associate, questioning her choices and criticizing her imprecision.
A struggling novelist when the play begins, Caitlyn earns a living as a copy editor at a right-wing website, which her father holds in contempt. Her personal life is of little interest to him. What concerns him is her professional standing, a priority she doesn’t share. Her accidental career makes her feel like one of those brown sparrows her father dismisses as LBJs (little brown jobs) on their regular bird-watching outings.
Why, Caitlyn wonders, does happiness — hers or his own — matter so little to him? She partakes of birding to be near him and attract his sympathetic interest. But she’d have better luck gaining his notice by growing a pair of wings and building a nest in a nearby tree.
Emotional and raw at times, the drama unfolds between father and daughter, spanning a decade of rapidly changing world around them. Jobs, lovers, politics come and go. Caitlyn’s mother fades away behind the scenes after battling cancer. John himself passes on, leaving Caitlyn alone in the backyard, raking leaves, spotting birds, and continuing their conversation. Raw and poignant, Birds of North America takes the audience on a rollercoaster of emotions. A ride, we think, that is infinitely worth taking.
Birds of North America is currently on stage at A Red Orchid Theatre, 1531 North Wells Street, in Chicago’s Old Town neighborhood. Tickets are on sale by calling the box office or by clicking here.