Ellen McLaughlin

Tongue of a Bird Ellen McLaughlin

Full Length, Drama

Characters: 5 female

Unit set.

Maxine, a search and rescue pilot, returns in midwinter to her childhood home in the Adirondacks. There she conducts a search for a girl who, while on a field trip in the mountains, was abducted by a stranger in a black pick up truck. The search lasts for three days. Each night Maxine must face the girl's distraught mother, Dessa, and her own grandmother, Zofia, a reclusive Polish refugee. In sleep, Maxine is prey to nightmares and fragmented memories of a mother who abandoned her in childhood and was lost to insanity. Cherry Jones starred Off Broadway in this powerful consideration of the notions of loss, motherhood and the vexed yearning for release.

"Emotionally powerful ... and intensely satisfying." Seattle Times.