Pippa Mackie Brings the Climate Fight Home in HURRICANE MONA

A climate protester is forced to take the fight back to her childhood home in Hurricane Mona, a comedy that builds its tension in close quarters. In this captivating work, Mona, newly sentenced to house arrest after a headline-grabbing stunt, returns to live with her family, bringing her uncompromising views with her.

What follows is anything but quiet. Her parents lean into comfort and routine, her sibling would rather stay out of it, and Mona pushes hard against both. Everyday choices turn into battles, and the household becomes filled with into a mix of guilt, defensiveness, and escalating arguments.

With a streak of the absurd running through it, Pippa Mackie keeps things funny without letting anyone off the hook. Hurricane Mona zeroes in on the gap between belief and behaviour, asking what responsibility actually looks like when it hits this close to home.

Check out our On Stage Interview with the author!

Open Book:

Do you remember an early experience that you believe contributed to your becoming a playwright?

Pippa Mackie:

I was in high school and basically snuck into a creative writing retreat hosted by a couple of incredible teachers. They challenged us to go out into the forest and write anything we wanted, and that evening there was a formal reading. I didn’t know it at the time, but I had written my first monologue. One teacher in particular, Mr. Gellard, really championed my work and encouraged me to keep going. Funny enough, the piece was almost banned by the principal because it used the C word—but the teachers fought for it.

OB:

What is the first play you remember being affected by, and how did you happen to see or read it?

PM:

I remember seeing Rockaby by Beckett at the Vancouver Fringe Festival and thinking, wow—this is so strange, I love it. I also saw Wajdi Mouawad’s solo show in 2007 when I was in theatre school in Montreal, and it completely rocked my world. There was paint all over the stage—it felt visceral and limitless.

OB:

Is your writing process totally page-based, or do you sometimes speak dialogue aloud or physically work through scenes?

PM:

I’m also an actor, so I often read dialogue aloud to hear how it flows. I tend to embody each character and speak their lines to see if they land emotionally. When I was writing Hurricane Mona at the Banff Centre, there were definitely moments where I was alone in the studio yelling lines just to feel them out.

OB:

Are there themes, objects, or ideas that keep appearing in your work?

PM:

A feminist perspective informs all of my writing. That’s not surprising to me—it comes from a place of wanting fairness and equity, and that lens naturally shapes the stories I tell.

OB:

If you've written for other mediums, what changes when you're writing for the stage?

PM:

I’ve written for screen and podcasts, and those forms tend to require a much more rigid outline—you almost need to know everything before you begin. With theatre, I still outline, but the process feels much more fluid and open as I go.

OB:

What do you do with a play in progress or a scene that just isn't working?

PM:

I’ll try to tweak and adjust it, but I’m not precious about it—if something isn’t working, I’m willing to scrap it entirely.

OB:

What is the worst thing about being a playwright, and what is the best?

PM:

I hesitate to call anything the worst because it’s all part of the process, but grant writing and chasing funding is definitely tough. The best part is hearing laughter during a read-through—it’s exhilarating when the work connects with people.

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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.