The Acorn Trilogy

A drama, Dirty Little Secret is about Kate, 14 years old, raised in a housing project who is violently abused by her mother. She is supported through her personal traumas by Charles, her history teacher. The relationship between Charles and Kate has been growing for two years.

As the play begins, Kate’s mother has been committed to a mental hospital, Kate has been in the hospital because her mother forced her to take a bottle of sleeping pills; her eight brothers and sisters have been taken away by Children’s Aid. Charles has Kate released from the hospital for the weekend and takes her to his family’s cottage in Muskoka where she will be with his wife and his parents. His parents are not pleased about the intrusion of this uncivilized girl. And they feel it is too soon for Charles to be involving himself in other people’s problems because Caroline is still recovering from killing her infant son six months previously.

Charles, suffering from Pygmalion phenomenon, is attempting to shape Kate in his own image but at what cost? His intimate relationship with Kate is discovered by his wife and then his parents. As a civilized family of high society, they have a surprising and deadly solution to the situation.

The second play in the Acorn Trilogy is My Brother’s Keeper, telling the story of the Castle family – ‘down-east’ simple folk– shaken to the core when a secret drops out of the closet. Kate, now 45 years old, a lawyer and black sheep of the family, discovers her family has kept the truth from her about why her brother Kenneth, 35 years old, mentally retarded and epileptic, was sentenced to Penatanguishene facility for the criminally insane. Upon discovering he raped and sodomized a woman, she comes unravelled, forcing her family, who never talk about these things, to explain why they do not feel socially accountable for their brother’s crimes. Finally, Kate assumes the ultimate responsibility for Kenneth, baking him cupcakes – the icing contains a bottle of sleeping pills – putting him and the rest of the world of their misery.

Inspiration Stump

Four weeks later, Kate resolves to end her life. She cannot reconcile her moral decision to kill her brother. She visits Merry Dale, New York, the country's oldest and largest psychic community to scatter her brother's ashes to the fairies within its ancient forest. Meanwhile, her Spirit Guide, her Destiny and her Higher Self are also all drawn to this place of in-between on this dark night of her soul. Ralph, her Destiny, will fight her for her life, for his right to force her to fulfill her destiny, to keep living, to endure, to abide by what the Fates have always had in store for her. Kate’s life comes full circle tonight as she faces the horrors of God, madness and New Age Spiritualism in deciding if she should live or die.