A 12-minute play, first performed as part of a Monday night Open Theatre presentation at the Sheridan Square Playhouse in NYC, 1964, directed by Joseph Chaikin, with Sharon Gans and Ron Faber. Later productions include Danish TV, the Theatre Company of Boston, and the Chicago City Players.

HUNTER: I hunt.

BIRD: But I am the bird.

   (She flutters and flitters around the hunter. He doesn’t see her.)

HUNTER: I hunt for birds.

BIRD: Oh, lovely hunter. I am a bird. See my wings, oh see me fly. Oh, I am flying. I am a merely bird. I am flying. I fly. Flying. Fly.

HUNTER: Ha, ha, I see her. I see a bird.

   (His gun in shooting position, he wheels around and around.)

Bang. Bang. Oh, bang. Bang. Bang.

BIRD: He, hee! He shoots! He shoots! Oh, warpled day, he shoots!

HUNTER: I shoot, oh bang—bang, bang. Boom. Boom. Bang. A hit.

BIRD: I’m hit. I fall. Falling. Fall. Down. Ground. Here.

HUNTER (facing the Bird for the first time in a "real" way): So?

BIRD: Hello...

"Jean-Claude van Itallie… has a fanciful, extravagant imagination and sure satiric talent; his plays are expansive and lend themselves to choreography." Robert Pasolli, Village Voice.

Published in Seven Short and Very Short Plays by Jean-Claude van Itallie, Dramatists Play Service, (acting edition), and in 1978 (out of print) America Hurrah and Other Plays (Grove Press).