The Magic Potion Play

This is from the very distant past of my writing career, the end of an alcohol and other drug abuse prevention play. I cannot even write it without thinking of the teenagers who played the various parts. It was presented in schools statewide and even a few conventions, local and one national. A community organization made very creative costumes and the actors added some of their own creations. Of course, it helps to be in third grade to really get the message.

Scarecrow: The vegetables who had been playing hide and seek heard Carrot might be leaving to go to Mushroom's garden and went to tell the others. (All the vegetables come on stage.)

Mushroom: In my garden you can be anything you want to be.

Cabbage: In our garden you can be yourself.

Mushroom: In my garden you can escape from the world.

Corn: In our garden you can enjoy living in it.

Mushroom: Don't listen to him Carrot. His garden didn't even choose you to be the one to go to the fair.

Egg Plant: Just because we didn't choose you to go to the fair doesn't mean we don't like you, Carrot. We do.

Mushroom: Come leave with me Carrot.

Cabbage: (Slowly) We'd like you to stay, Carrot, but it is your decision. Only you can choose.

Scarecrow: (Slowly with emphasis.) I'd like to say that Carrot stayed and lived happily ever after, but it's never that easy, it's never that easy to live happily ever after.

The End

How clever! You have certainly been involved in some interesting endeavors.

I had help from the kids in our school who gave me ideas for writing as well as production, although we're talking a half-hour play here, not a Broadway production. Some ideas also came from a book, The Hole in the Fence, whose author and publisher gave me permission to write and produce the play. Mushroom brought a magic potion to the other vegetables and for the high school kids and third graders was just another plant character. It wasn't just about drugs and alcohol but also about being oneself. The whole program included the high school kids sitting down and talking to the third graders, for which they were trained.

I think the first performance was in about 1980, so Marie, you could have been in third grade then.

The actors and actresses are all grown up and some have high school kids of their own. They would come up with all sorts of great ideas. Like one time Onion pulled out a big handkerchief and cried during the whole play. (She is now a co-author of an American Girl book on friendship, so her creativity continued.)

A few years ago, over 20 years after this first production, I got a phone call from someone in a school who was going to produce The Magic Potion Play, but was missing pages 13, 14, and 15.

Somehow what I do has some longevity, if not widespread popularity.

Carol

Unusual, and a great idea. You did well.

Carol,
The things you have accomplished are remembered. You have made your mark.