One night, one reading, and a Thanksgiving dinner that goes sideways: The Bird Is Done, the first play by Michael Fishman, gets a free developmental reading at Theater for the New City on Monday, November 9 at 7 p.m.
Jim Semmelman directs the reading, with Marilyn Chris as Anna, Mitch Poulos as Frank and Liz Keifer as Martha. Sean Hodges plays Max, Jaz Astwood plays Simone and Julian Shatkin plays Adam.
The play is set in the cluttered Upper West Side apartment of Anna Morino, 80, who is hosting her family's first Thanksgiving together in two years and wants it to mend things. It does not go to plan. Frank, her son-in-law, has never forgiven his daughter Stephanie for walking out after a bitter fight. His youngest son, Adam, has been arrested over a fraternity prank gone wrong. And another son, Max, arrives with his girlfriend Simone, whose plain speaking drags Frank's prejudices into the open.
Fishman calls it a dramedy. The arguing at the table gives way, over the evening, to regret, forgiveness and the question of whether a family can start listening before it runs out of time. The play draws on the playwright's own experience of loss in the family.
The company brings long résumés to a 75-minute reading. Chris's Broadway credits include Brighton Beach Memoirs, Lenny and The Birthday Party; Chris won several awards for Allen Ginsberg's Kaddish and spent eighteen years as Wanda Webb Wolek on One Life to Live. Poulos was in the first national tour of Billy Elliot and has screen credits including FBI: Most Wanted, Chicago Fire, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Blue Bloods and Arrested Development. Keifer played Christina "Blake" Marler on Guiding Light from 1992 until the series ended in 2009; Keifer's stage work includes Follies, Company, A Little Night Music and The Music Man.
Semmelman and Chris have worked together at Theater for the New City before, on The Giggling Granny, Marsha Lee Sheiness's play about the serial killer Nannie Doss. It ran there in January 2025 and came back for a return engagement the same season.
Fishman comes to playwriting from film: an M.A. in Film from American University, jobs at the Tribeca Film Festival, the Hamptons International Film Festival and Columbia University's Film Division, and a documentary, Stamp Show, nominated for Best Documentary at the 2018 Kew Gardens Festival of Cinema. A short documentary, Seth Fishman: The Real Thing, about the playwright's older brother, a visual artist who died young, is screening at festivals this November.
"I am honored to have the first New York City reading of my play take place at Crystal Field's Theater for the New City," Fishman said. "To be entering into this sacred theatrical space with my first play is literally a dream come true."
The reading is on Monday, November 9 at 7 p.m. at Theater for the New City, 155 First Avenue at East 10th Street. Admission is free and donations are welcome. Reservations are recommended, through the theater's website or at 212-254-1109, and a talkback follows the reading.
