‘These Birds’ lets Juneau stories about death fly into conversation

In a play aiming to connect community members to local hospice and mental health resources, the audience is the main character

Andrew AJ Roa, a visiting actor to Juneau, plays "Bukkah" in "These Birds," written by local playwright Merry Ellefson. (Photo courtesy of Flordelino Lagundino)

By Jasz Garrett

Juneau Independent

Juneau playwright Merry Ellefson knows death is a topic most people shy away from. 

But she also knows death is a part of life.

“It’s messy, and it’s powerful, and it’s passionate, and there’s a lot of laughter, and there’s tears,” Ellefson said. 

Her new play featuring stories gathered from Juneauites “of every age and walk of life” opened on Thursday night at the Juneau Makerspace in Douglas. Theater Alaska is presenting “These Birds” until Feb. 15 at various venues around Juneau, with ticketed, pay-as-you-want and free community performances. The next show is on Friday at the Makerspace at 7:30 p.m. The production uses movement, puppetry and an original score.

The play was co-created by Ellefson with Claire Richardson, and developed in collaboration with director Ryan Conarro and Theater Alaska Artistic Director Flordelino Lagundino. Richardson, a spiritual care provider with Bartlett Regional Hospital, approached Lagundino about the idea in 2024. After bringing the story idea to Lagundino, she and Ellefson interviewed 21 community members.

But after artist and actor workshops, Ellefson interviewed about half a dozen more people, as she found some stories were still missing. Her last play, “Home Not Less,” drew from more than 100 interviews to tell stories of people experiencing homelessness in Alaska.

Ellefson and Richardson noted it was important for them to include diverse perspectives in “These Birds,” such as ages, backgrounds, jobs, experiences, and cultures. 

“All those people that we originally reached out to responded because my initial thought was, ‘Whoa, people probably won’t really want to talk about death.’ That’s sort of the impetus for this play,” Ellefson said. “If we can start conversations and we know that we all have connections to death, we also all know that none of us are going to make it out here alive, but if we can start conversations, that creates stories, and stories create community.”

She expressed gratitude for how willing, brave and vulnerable the interviewees, eight cast members, and audience members have been throughout the process. Ellefson said some people she interviewed attending the play may recognize themselves directly in characters and some may not. 

“I tried to listen to each one and see what those people were saying, and what they were saying differently about the same subject, which brought us to — in the design process — this idea of whether you’re looking at a terminal moraine or a heart, whether it’s the braided river or the veins in the heart, there’s individual stories, individual lines, but they’re kind of blurred, and how they all connect,” she said. 

She said one of her favorite lines from the play is, “Maybe that’s what death is, just a blurring of boundaries.”

On Wednesday, the last dress rehearsal before the play’s opening, Ellefson remembered her father. It was the anniversary of his death. He died at age 90 six years ago. 

“It was an amazing, awesome death,” she said. “We were all with him. He was done. We were holding his hands, we were laughing, we were crying.” 

Her playwright’s notes share that she has lost two brothers, her dad, and many friends and relatives to many kinds of deaths.

“But I’m not special,” she said. “We all have. So those stories help us connect and become a community. But in being a human, part of it is just complete despair and sadness.”

Richardson, a spiritual care provider at Bartlett Regional Hospital, recalled when she lost her husband, Lisle Hebert, a Juneau filmmaker and founder of Gold Town Nickelodeon Theatre, in 2017. Friday is the ninth anniversary of his death. Richardson said she dedicates her work in the play to the memory of Hebert, who died at 71.

“When my husband was diagnosed with ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis) in 2014, I then got to experience from the caretaker’s point of view what it means to have a community like Juneau that steps up to the plate and holds so many families when they’re going through really challenging end-of-life scenarios,” Richardson said. “He got to die at home on Starr Hill, surrounded by his children with a hospice nurse. Two nurses were there actually at the time, and that’s exactly what he wanted.” 

Richardson said the “profound experience” made her wonder how she could give back to the community. In 2019, she took care of her mother on the East Coast, who was experiencing dementia and passed away during the play’s process. 

“It was a tremendous learning experience and also an honor to walk with her on that,” she said.

Richardson began working in hospice at the hospital in 2023, after Catholic Community Services closed its doors. 

“As a former journalist, for me, every room you walk into, every home, there is an amazing story,” she said. “There’s a wealth of interesting information. Every family is different. The patients have interesting lives; the workers, the nurses, the people who come to help, have interesting lives. And I just am struck by the stories that come out of our town.”

Richardson said she witnessed a similar community storytelling experience to “These Birds” while studying at St. Christopher’s Hospice in London. Reflecting on that experience, along with her urge to connect the community to resources, inspired her to bring the play idea to Theater Alaska. She said in London, schoolchildren interviewed hospice patients about their roles and lives in World War II, and then prepared a play for the staff, hospice patients and community members for the anniversary of D-Day.

“What a great way to intersect the end of life, instead of hiding it away and not talking about it, but celebrating and nurturing the end of life care for so many people, and making it meaningful for the rest of the community,” she said.

She said while there is information on the internet and at the hospice where she works, she thought Theater Alaska could start conversations between people, all while making plays accessible to attend.

Richardson is also a certified grief coach who will moderate post-show conversations scheduled after six of the performances. The first is on Saturday at the University of Alaska Southeast Egan Library with a hospice volunteer and Foundation for End of Life Care board member.

Richardson highlighted a post-show conversation titled “Good Grief, Alaska” on Feb. 7 at Ḵunéix̱ Hídi Northern Light United Church, with Jenna O’Fontanella, a nutritionist and healer, and cancer survivor Nancy Peel, who will discuss how grief continues, even among survivors.

“What I’m being very sensitive to is we've lived with these stories now for 22 months. People coming for the first time, it’s their first time. And so we just want people to understand this is a safe place,” Richardson said.

Also scheduled to be at a post-show conversation is Bob Urata, a doctor who helped start local hospice care years ago. Richardson said information will also be offered by legal services about wills, and social workers will broach the topic of suicide and children losing their parents. 

By engaging the community in a conversation about death, Richardson said she hopes more people in Juneau can become connected to resources with hospice, mental health, and end-of-life planning. Throughout the play’s process, she has also offered grief counseling for the actors, who have their own experiences around loss.

“My whole goal is to engage our community in conversation about death and dying, so that they can be prepared with their family, to understand what's possible here in Juneau, how to maybe speak to those that they care about, to hear these stories and recognize they’re not alone,” she said.

Ellefson echoed that, saying death expresses a commonality, yet the stories can be tender. She said the experience challenged her role as an artist in Juneau. Ellefson has developed numerous interview-inspired plays since first moving to Juneau to work at Perseverance Theatre in 1991, but she said this play changed her.

“We’re in it together,” she said. “It’s a pretty fun and special way to do it because of the choices Ryan made with things that were inspired by text. I wanted to say that there are things I could never see until Ryan got the designers together.”

Ryan Connaro, the director, who also served as the dramaturg, provided feedback about themes and monologues as Ellefson crafted the play. Lagundino then began producing readings with actors to hear the words off the page. Connaro continued facilitating designers so they could share a vision for sound, costumes and design elements.  

He said the play includes elements of humor and joy to balance the heavy themes, through shifts in pacing, staging and design. 

“There are so many moments in the play where there’s a sudden shift of tempo, energy, mood. I think some of those places it’s a character talking about death and doing the shifting, having a wild swing of emotional energy, and some of the places are more the structure of the play shifts,” he said. “But it feels like a metaphor to me of how we all as humans do when we ever get the opportunity to have a vulnerable conversation — usually it ends because somebody says something like, ‘Well, anyway, let me put on some tea.’ Or makes a joke to crack the sensitive energy.”

“Dr. Norboro is the best character to display that or to show that. He’s really conflicted,” said Andrew AJ Roa, the actor who plays the doctor. “I really get the sense that he’s a good doctor, but he also is frustrated by his inability to help people who need more intense help. Then he has to make the decision to tell them what the best plan is and where they might need to go for further treatment.”

Roa noted his character, based on a family doctor, faces Juneau’s limited medical resources. He also plays Marcurio, a widower in his 80s, and Bukkah, a grandfather who he described as a mystery character. It is Roa’s first time acting in Juneau and he is visiting from Los Angeles.

“We’re meeting this community of characters who are based on the community of Juneau, and they’re all equally important,” Connaro said. “There’s not a main character in that way, and the main character of this experience is the audience. If you’re an audience member in the show it’s your journey.”

• Contact Jasz Garrett at jasz@juneauindependent.com or (907) 723-9356.