NOT NORMAL
by Margaret O’Donnell
The monster of climate crisis is staring eleven year-old Savannah right in the face, and she’s petrified. She is convinced she’s too young, too ignorant, and too powerless to help stop the destruction, and she despairs in her attempts to write poetry and make videos calling for change. When the non-human beings of the Earth – animal, plant, and mineral — call a council to inspire humans to take action, though, it’s Savannah they invite to sit in the seat reserved for humans. The trees, forest deities, and the council of all beings shower their pledges of help on Savannah, but it may not be enough to convince her of her own abilities. That’s where a little forest magic may come in handy… A play for young audiences.
- Cast Size: 1G (Flexible Additional Cast)
- Running Time: Under an Hour
- Royalty Rate: $40 per performance
Order digital Download (Will NOT download to phones, cannot be printed)
About the Playwright
I’m a Pacific Northwest playwright. I’m from here, even though I first began to dwell in this land between mountain ranges, the lake and the inland sea at age forty, thirty years ago. Being from this place means I’m only one of the beings – forests, water, air, creatures — who inhabit the land, water, and sky. This land shapes my thought and spirit and of course my work to creatively engage young people as activists in the climate crisis and to explore mainstream US culture’s collisions with marginalized peoples.
Out of sheer befuddlement and rage at the way our country’s immigration enforcement worked against our own best interests by increasingly squeezing, terrorizing, and deporting immigrants, I began writing plays about our deportation machine in 2014. As a long-time immigration defense attorney, I know that the weight of public opinion was our only hope of reforming our system.
I also just wanna have fun, so I write what delights me, intrigues me, amazes me, deepens me– the always absorbing interplay of humanity in action. What would this character do in this new situation? What happens when I mash up historical times – someone in the 1950s face-to-face with one in the 1860s and the 2020s? What sparks may fly when a vegan-anarchist and an anarcho-pacifist meet on a train platform? What are animals observing about us? Twenty years from now, how will we behave in new situations? I adore it when my characters take the reins, and I get out of the way to see where they take themselves. They are so much more interesting when I don’t plot-plot-plot and force them this way and that.
I write plays that give audiences room to let their own imaginations roam. I don’t have answers to life’s perennial questions (surprise!), but it’s my joy to see what my characters think. I write to engage audiences by using humor, direct appeal, actor-audience interaction, and unexpected divergences.
Review Not Normal.