Hurricane Mona - by Pippa MacKie (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Winner of the 2024 Sydney J. Risk Foundation Award, and the 2023 David King Prize

It's not easy being green, especially for Mona, a diehard environmental activist sentenced to a year of house arrest for her topless vandalism at the Global Climate March. Exiled from her commune co-op, Mona is forced to serve her sentence back home with her well-meaning parents and annoyed younger sibling who just want to enjoy their coffee pods and Amazon packages in peace. But when Mona's tyrannical green crusade engulfs the entire household, her family spirals into a hilarious and chaotic maelstrom of hypocrisy, guilt, and generational finger-pointing, ultimately asking themselves what's more unbearable: an ecological collapse or each other?

Hurricane Mona is an outrageous and arresting comedy about the collisions of Boomer complacency, Millennial disillusionment, and Gen Z apathy in the face of climate catastrophe. Complete with a giant talking frog, a psychedelic mushroom trip, and some hairy activism, Pippa Mackie's riotous rallying cry delivers big laughs and even bigger questions about the mess we're leaving behind and who's left to clean it up.

Review Quotes

"Pippa Mackie has balanced a deeply personal and contemporary story with a dash of political commentary and absurd comedy...Eco-anxiety, a sense of doom and utter outrage at the lack of systemic redress towards climate justice are tackled with dark humor and magical realism."

-Annapoorna Shruthi, The Vancouver Arts Review

"A comedy about the climate crisis? You've got to be kidding. But playwright Pippa Mackie isn't kidding and yet Hurricane Mona is very funny."

-Jo Ledingham

About the Author

Pippa Mackie is an award-winning playwright, actor, and producer. Her play Juliet: A Revenge Comedy (co-written with Ryan Gladstone) has been touring since 2019, including an Off-Broadway run at the Soho Playhouse in New York, and has earned multiple Jessie Richardson Award nominations. Her fictional podcast Starman, produced by Sound the Alarm, was nominated for three Berlin Film Haus Awards, including Best Scriptwriting. The Progressive Polygamists (co-written with Emmelia Gordon) toured Canada for many years and earned three Audience Pick of the Fringe awards. Her most recent play, Hurricane Mona, received Touchstone Theatre's inaugural David King Prize for Comedy in 2023 and the Sydney J. Risk Foundation Award in 2024, and was originally produced by Touchstone Theatre and Ruby Slippers Theatre at the Cultch. Pippa is a graduate of the National Theatre School of Canada.