A Chicken Passes,
The Universe Realigns Itself


CORAM, NY / Nelly “Starshine” Millbrook, psychic chicken has passed into the after life peacefully after an Earthly existence that included salvation from a butcher shop, multiple stage performances in New York City, the divining of spirit messages and a successful career laying of delicious organic eggs.

   In The summer of 2006, Dr. Schuler, a theatrical producer in New York City was producing a “metaphysical” game show called “Are You ALIVE?!”, the premise of which was to ask contestants questions that did not necessarily have right or wrong answers and to provide prizes that had a meta-physical value. For example, the first production asked contestants about Judaic history and provided the winner a tattoo (in challenge of Leviticus 19:28, which many believe disallows tattooed persons of the Jewish faith to be buried in Jewish Cemeteries) Another production at a performance event titled “Raise the Dead“ had winning contestants hypnotized to believe that they were zombies.

    To top those prizes, Dr. Schuler decided to provide the grand prizewinner of a third production at Performance Space 122 with a choice between a prize envelope or a large box. The prize box contained a live hen. After goading by the audience, the contestant inevitably chose the box before the hen was revealed. The winner was subsequently given the envelope, which contained the name of a kosher butcher. The winner was then forced to choose whether to keep the hen as a pet or have it dressed for Sunday dinner. Luckily for the hen, the contestant was a vegetarian.

   The earliest known origin of Nelly the hen came one month earlier in August 2006, when Dr. Schuler visited a poultry butcher in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, where he reportedly convinced the young man working in the shop to allow him, against policy, to purchase the live chicken for four dollars, smuggling her into the trunk of a waiting car, saving her life, forever removing her from the shop’s squalid conditions.

   The chicken was taken home, bathed, blow-dried and preened; fed gourmet meals of cracked corn, chopped edamame, oyster shell and fresh greens; and given a home that was palatial, compared to her former cage which contained 12-16 other hens inside of two square feet.

   Although the winner of “Are You ALIVE?!” was presented a prize hen, he chose, instead to accept a gift certificate. “I provided this option, because, in the end, I didn’t think it would be fair for a live creature to be left in the possession of someone who couldn’t properly care for her.”

   Nelly “Starshine” Millbrook (stage-named after a local egg producer, a David Bowie alter-ego, and Timothy Leary’s Millbrook, New York retreat) was soon cast by Dr. Schuler in another production, presented at the Cherry Lane Theater.

   She was billed as “Nelly Starshine, Psychic Chicken” a pet of Van Driver, the title character in “The Van Driver Experience.” Nelly appeared each night with an unsuspecting spectator chosen from the audience to have his or her fortune read by the ‘special guest’ star. Nelly was presented a Ouija board and would peck out a message channeling forces from the beyond (with the help of a pinch of randomly scattered, rolled oats). Van and his common-law wife, Ann Ryder, interpreted the messages for the fowl.

  After the production, Nelly spent the remainder of her days in Coram, New York, with Mr. Edward Joyce, where she lived for another year, among eleven other hens in a large backyard. She was well fed and laid dozens of delicious eggs.

  In November 2007, a year after her New York Stage premiere as a psychic, Nelly wandered into the Joyce’s garden, climbing to the top of a large pyramidal pile of top soil, scratched herself a comfortable nest and quietly iterated the spiritual transmigration that all souls make to the next dimension.

    Although her precise age is unknown, it is believed that she lived a fuller, more experientially rich, and generally more contented life than would have been possible without the interventions of the Doctor and Mr. Joyce. “I am glad to have known her and to have had her be a part of my experience in this world. She provided humor and significance to my otherwise mundane existence,” states Dr. Schuler of his prize bird.