ALLEN PARK, Mich.–Playgoers were filing out at the end of Outvisible Theatre’s production of Cagebirds, when the youngest member of the audience—he must have been 9 or 10—asked, loudly, “What just happened?” Some of the adults nodded in agreement.

I often find myself asking that same question at the end of a play, because it’s my job. So let me try to provide some answers. First you need to know that there isn’t just one, so let’s split your question into two parts: what just happened, and what does it mean?

What just happened?

First, you saw six young women (older than you, but still in high school or middle school) dressed in black, each sitting on a white cube. They were pretending to be birds: a couple of them whistled very convincingly like birds, but they were also people: they spoke in seemingly random phrases and fragments.

You may have noticed that each one seems to be in her own little world; no-one responds to, or even acknowledges, each other. Hold that thought.

A little later two other characters arrive. One is The Mistress, the only adult in the cast, who is clearly in charge of everyone: when she snaps her fingers, they snap to. Then there’s The Wild One, a new bird recently captured and thrown in with the others. “This is my prison?” she asks. “Your home,” says the Mistress. “My cage,” the Wild One fires back.

Almost immediately (once the Mistress leaves), the Wild One tries to persuade the others to escape. She has a hard time getting them to even respond to her. Eventually, they do but not in such a good way. Let’s keep the details to ourselves so as not to spoil any surprises for anyone going to see the play.

What does it mean?

As I said, there’s more than one answer, and the answers I’ve come up with may not be the ones the author intended. I’m pretty good at this stuff, but other answers could be better than mine.

The play, although it’s short, is packed with ideas.

Think about birds in cages. The writer could have chosen dogs, or tigers, or zebras, but birds seem like the freest creatures possible. They can fly, but these birds don’t. How come? Here’s a clue: the Mistress tells her charges that it’s not safe out in the world, that they’d be killed out there. They’re locked up but they get food and shelter. They don’t seem very happy, though, and they don’t connect with each other.

The Mistress seems like a dictator, but is she a bad guy, or a good guy? What do you think? In society, we often give up freedom for more security—or vice versa. This is not a new idea, but the play expresses it in a distinctive way. Long before you were born, people used to just get on airplanes to travel—no going through metal detectors or baggage screening. Then things got more dangerous and we gave up the freedom of boarding an airplane – no questions asked – in order to feel safer.

Incidentally, the play was written at a time when people could still get on planes without much hassle. Plays, like other works of art, have a way of being relevant to times other than the ones in which they are created. Consider this: The short phrases and sentences that the actors were speaking when the play began were probably each shorter than 140 characters apiece, which may have reminded you of something whose name is a word for the sounds that birds make: Twitter. But the play was first performed in 1971, long before Twitter, or the internet as we know it, was invented. Pretty cool, huh?

A couple more thoughts. Within the cage, each character appears to be isolated, alone. Each one is in a kind of cage of her own making. Might not each of us at times be in a cage of our making? What is holding them (and us) back? The playwright offers some suggestions: fear, self-centeredness, prejudice, obsession with silly things like gossip.

And here’s an idea the director brings to the script. Except for the Mistress, all the actors are between the ages of 12 and 17. Who has more experience than teenagers in dealing with authority figures? Parents, teachers, coaches, scout leaders, even bosses if they have jobs after school. Usually, authority figures are benevolent but not always.

All right. That’s a lot to think about. I hope someday you’ll run across a play (also a book and a movie) called “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” and another called “No Exit,” which deal with similar themes.

And I hope you come away with an appreciation for the time you spent in a theater. If you do, these are the some of the people you should thank: playwright David Campton (you can’t really thank him; he died in 2006), director Adriane Galea (who also designed the costumes and hair), and the cast: Isabelle Torres, Scout Greimel, Madison Ganzak, Kendall Manthei, Jean Pilon, Liliana Greimel, Anna Bruce and Alana Reinert.

And that, I think, is what just happened.

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