New Off-Central play examines life, love on a lonely island

A 2018 story in the Washington Post told the story of a large white seabird named Nigel, the solitary member of his species living on a remote island off the coast of New Zealand.

In an effort to establish a breeding colony of gannets, wildlife officials placed 80 painted concrete doppelgangers on cliffsides, and continually broadcast the birds’ mating calls.

Nigel was the only gannet that responded, the first such bird on Mana Island in 40 years, and he soon devoted himself to one of the stone-cold phonies. Year after year, he groomed its feathers, staying close by and “talking” to it.

Eventually, another gannet arrived. But it, too, was male – he was dubbed Norman – and so, no breeding colony.

Nigel’s story affected playwright K.T. Peterson, who turned it into Love Bird, a two-actor treatise on love, loneliness and “the meaning of devotion in a single-use society.”

In Peterson’s fable, Nigel has surrounded himself with trash found washed up on the beach, even creating other “birds” to talk and interact with. He has a “girlfriend.”

Enter bay area actress Roxanne Fay, who fell hard for Love Bird and all the things it implies about society, and sexuality, and the things we tell ourselves in order to survive. Nigel, she noticed, “creates everything in his world from this detritus – all these plastics and debris and all this garbage jettisoned by people, washing up on this island that is his life.”

Fay also thought back to another play she’d fancied, Birds of a Feather. She’d seen it onstage in St. Petersburg and in Tampa. “It was about these two penguins in a zoo,” she said. “They were both male, but they’d bonded, a bonded pair, and they gave them an egg that had been abandoned by its mother. They took turns sitting on it, and it hatched, and they had this family unit with this little baby penguin. I can’t say enough sweet things about that play either.”

It also occurred to her, Fay explained, that “every species of the animal kingdom on the planet – insects, fish, birds, mammals – their sexuality is fluid. It can change.

“This idea of the bird, just living on this island by himself, and creating this world – why would you do that? Why would you go away from your life and try to create a world from nothing? Because you think it’s going to be better?”

The playwright’s notes describe Nigel as “a grand, particular and romantic bird who knows no chill.”

Love Bird opens Thursday at the Off-Central in St. Petersburg, and will run through April 19. Ami Sallee is the director.

Fay, whose lengthy professional resume includes dramas, comedies and even the occasional musical, plays Nigel. “It is very experimental, and I knew it was going to be hard,” she said. “Because it is not like other things that I have done. It’s very physical, which is not unusual for me. But the physicality and the inner life of this person, this bird, I haven’t played a being like this before.”

Still, “There’s not a huge attempt in the design of the show, or the playwright’s intentions, that we play at being birds. It so happens that we are birds.”

The other “bird” in this equation is Norman (“a bird from another island with a distinct affection for trash”), who has a much more substantial role than his gannet inspiration did back on Mana Island.

Once Norman arrives, Love Bird becomes many things, including Cast Away and Waiting For Godot.

And Aesop. “When we learn fables as a kid, like The Fox and the Grapes, they’re animals,” Fay said. “They’re given to us as animals rather than other people. And I think that has a wonderful callback to the innocence of who we were. And how we learn.”

Katherine Yacko, who appeared with Fay in Jobsite’s Hamlet and Rosencranz and Guildenstern Are Dead, plays Norman. She also directed Fay in 2024, in that company’s production of the actress’ one-woman show Thrice to Mine (Fay also wrote that one).

“I knew I wanted it to be Katherine, because she is a really, honestly good person,” Fay explained. “And her goodness and her honesty and her kindness are exactly what Norman needs to be.

“For an actor, we read a play and go “oh … this. I gotta do this.” I didn’t really care which role I would have played. But the personality of the two birds, and the personality of the two of us in real life … she’s Norman.

“She’s the better person of the two of us, so it fell into place.”

The Off-Central is an intimate “black box” theater space, with just 42 seats per performance. The playwright will participate in an after-show talkback Saturday, April 12. For all tickets, visit the website.

Nigel the gannet on Mana Island with two concrete decoys. Photo: New Zealand Department of Conservation.