The Emerald Turtle

A blindfolded CONNIE LIVINGSTON, 70, feisty, long curly white hair, clutches onto the arm of MAX, 40, her bi-racial daughter who leads her out the front door to a big green bus with Emerald Turtle in colorful letters on the side. Her shock and surprise throws her into a flood of childhood memories that culminate in the road trip that changed the course of her life. The real story begins with Connie, 24, looking like the cover of a Talbots catalog, having a very bad day. Her boss and idol, Richard Nixon, has just resigned the Presidency and she’s out of a job. She finds her fiancé, BRYCE and her brother, CORKY, in bed, wrapped in their new window treatments, and her psychopharmacologist won’t up her dosage. That’s when she spots a random flier: “Need to get away? Get a new perspective? Emerald Turtle Tours.” In a desperate attempt to escape her picture-perfect life, she rashly joins the cross-country tour aboard The Emerald Turtle. To her horror, Connie finds herself on a bus full of hippies and people of color: ANDREA GOOD, the Asian American earth mother who openly breast feeds her baby; FLOWER, a large grizzly man with a garden of flower tattoos up to his chin; ALOKA, an intensely serious black woman dressed in red from her Rajneesh days; an ex-nun, SISTER P, 48, a no-nonsense Boston native, sensible shoes, cropped hair; BRAD, 24, charming, Native American, "semper fi" and "Nam '66" tattoos; and COWBOY DIRK, 28, a flirty, pill-pushing, muscular hunk. Meanwhile, thinking her daughter has been kidnapped by a sex cult, FLORENCE LIVINGSTON, 56, the perfectly coiffed domineering matriarch, sets up a “War Room” in her D.C. home and sends Bryce and Corky on a mission to rescue Connie. A one-time radio star, Florence calls upon her “voice” skills to pry information and solicit help from the authorities to track Connie’s trail across the country. Connie’s carefully crafted facade crumbles through a series of encounters with her fellow travelers. A drunken frolic through the Big Easy followed by a mushroom fueled fantasy in Six Flags Over Texas and a hot spring fling at the Mexican Border all lead Connie to a Grand Canyon epiphany. She is exposed to a world she had been taught to fear and judge. As a result, she trades; the numbing effect of her meds for a cache of new-found courage; her resentment toward Corky and Bryce for acceptance of their true love; her predictable conservative life for a life of adventure and passion. Ultimately, she discovers her own true love where she least expects to find it - Aloka. The Emerald Turtle is a ‘coming of age no matter the age’ story where the protagonist finds her authentic self despite a life of rules, training and inhibition. The Emerald Turtle is firmly rooted in the 70’s but its message is needed now. We live in a country and a world where there is a huge divide without a bridge to connect the two seemingly incompatible perspectives. The only way to rebuild the bridge is through empathy and compassion. Connie begins her journey surrounded by privilege and insulated from difference. When she finds herself on the Emerald Turtle she is forced to bump up against the very people she has learned to fear and avoid. She discovers their shared humanity and her perspective transforms from fear based to approaching the world with openness and a spirit of adventure. Through comedy and a lot of heart, The Emerald Turtle gives us hope, and a path that can bridge the divide.