If there’s a reason that Jiehae Park’s play “the aves” is presented with a lower-case title, it’s probably not because all the birds in the world are contained in its two-word classification. Rather, “the aves,” now receiving its world premiere at Berkeley Repertory Theatre, is a low-key experience for musing on life, death, youth, age, love, loss and, yes, birds. Pigeons and doves, mostly.
The short, one-act play (it’s only 80 minutes) is a minor work about major themes, an unusual bit of lyrical science fiction that doesn’t feel like most things we see in a theater. For one thing, the intimate thrust stage of Berkeley Rep’s Peet’s Theatre has been transformed by set designer Marsha Ginsberg into a tranquil, moss-covered pond bisected by a wooden walkway. There’s a marble bench, where most of the play’s action occurs, and the gorgeous lighting design by Masha Tsimring, along with elements like rain, snow, mist and fog, offer a sense of time passing.
The play begins simply, with an older couple (Bill Buell and Mia Katigbak) having the kind of shorthand conversation people have after 50 years of marriage – equal parts affection and annoyance. There’s something bubbling under the surface, though, and what it is sends a mildly interesting chat about weather and birds into “The Twilight Zone” by way of “Black Mirror” but with less horror and more poetic dialogue.
Playwright Park and director Knud Adams invite us into this meditative park, where the green-flecked water in the pond sometimes swirls and sometimes stands still. It’s a place where people have important conversations and where mysteries seem like they’re going to become something massive, but really they’re just human-scale grapplings with choices, regrets, failings and futility.
To say more about how Buell and Katigbak share the stage with Laakan McHardy and Daniel Croix would be divulging too much about the gentle way the plot unfolds and then sways this way and that, with some delightfully odd surprises along the way. If you’ve ever wondered how children and pigeons might react to death on a very special episode of “Severance” set in a Zen garden floating in a non-specific space, this could be just the play for you.
Knud’s direction of the actors has to allow space for mystery and tension among relatable, recognizable people to exist alongside humor, desperation and some fairly palpable sadness. It’s kind of like a battle of high art (the obtuse drama) and low art (the sitcom), the self-conscious enigma vs. people who are just getting on with their lives.
The beautiful setting helps contain all of that, but it’s the excellent actors who really keep it grounded and poignant. The standout is Katigbak, who fully embodies the breadth of the play’s ambition by playing two very different women at opposite stages of their lives who share a unique, almost unfathomable bond. Her key scene requires us to understand who she was and who she is, how she is the same and how she’s different, and Katigbak’s ability to do that with clarity, warmth and humor is extremely satisfying.
For a small play, “the aves” makes a big ask for its audience to accept the cartoonish alongside the philosophical in a brainy theatrical way, with relationship drama and the inevitable trauma of growing older giving everything a very real-world weight. Not all of it flows together, and some of it feels like it needs more weight both in terms of narrative clarity and emotional heft.
But for most of its short running time, “the aves” is a stunningly designed, uniquely theatrical experience that commands — and rewards — attention. There are lots of currents running under its gently moving waters.
Chad Jones has been writing about Bay Area theater since 1992; theaterdogs.net
‘the aves’
World premiere by Jiehae Park, presented by Berkeley Repertory Theatre
Through: June 8
Where: Peet’s Theatre, 2025 Addison St., Berkeley
Running Time: 80 minutes, no intermission
Tickets: $25-$134 (subject to change); 510-647-2949; www.berkeleyrep.org