About the Play:

The Birds and the Bees is a full-length comedy by Mark Crawford. Sarah's marriage is over, and she's just moved back home to the farm with her beekeeper mother, Gail. As the women try to adjust to the many changes in their world, their lives are complicated by the community's last-ever Turkey Days celebration, beehive troubles, an eccentric neighbour, and a handsome young researcher.

The Birds and the Bees is a sex comedy in which the avian/insect reference in the title is literal. What do love, lust, bee keeping, and the artificial insemination of turkeys have in common? It's nearly time for the last-ever annual Turkey Days Festival. The excitement in town is palpable, and Gail is on the committee. A retired empty-nester, Gail has been quietly raising bees in solitude, all alone, completely unaccompanied. Unexpectedly, her grown daughter Sarah returns home; it seems twenty years of artificially inseminating turkeys has taken a toll on Sarah's love life, and she and her husband are through. As both women set about putting their lives back in order, and reacquaint themselves with living under the same roof, they are visited by an eager, athletic, strapping, young grad student named Ben who has come to study the declining bee population... but things get... well... a little extra-curricular. Throw in a meddlesome neighbour, a little internet dating, and the last pair of tickets to the final Turkey Days Dance of all time, and you have a racy recipe for relentless laughter.

The Birds and the Bees premiered in 2016 at the Blyth Festival in Huron County, Ontario. Since then the play has been produced widely at professional theatres across Canada and has been mounted by community theatres.

Cast: 2 female, 2 male

What people say:

"Belly laugh after belly laugh in this outstanding, warm-hearted comedy that confirms Crawford as one of this country's finest up-and-coming playwrights… [The play] has an emotional depth few other comedies can claim." — London Free Press

About the Playwright:

Mark Crawford is a Canadian actor who has performed at theatres across Canada. A graduate of the University of Toronto and Sheridan College, he grew up on his family's beef farm near Glencoe, a small town in south-western Ontario, and now lives in Stratford.