In Voices In The Trees, Marina suffers from a mental illness causing friction in her family. When her brother calls her stupid, she let’s out her emotions.

(to her mother)

MARINA: I’m so sick of how all you people view me. Your point of view is repulsive. Look how you worry. (mocking) “Oh, no! Oh, no!” “Where were you?” “Why were you outside for so long?”

One day you will cause a heart-attack inside yourself. What will you do, dead? What good will all that ignorant worrying have done for you? You are one of those people that think if they don’t worry, something bad will happen, so you constantly worry, worry, worry like a neurotic. Is that normal? Meanwhile, you all look at me, like I’m the lunatic.

I’m the only sane one in this crazy a** family! You’re all the lunatics!

Did you see the way my sh***-bag of a brother was eating those buffalo wings? Disgusting.

He is way too old not to be using napkins. (points to door handle) You notice that? I did. All sticky from his filthy fingers. Who does that? Who walks through life like that at his age?

Completely unaware, completely oblivious to the entire world, cause he’s stuck in his little baby bubble. Off to his room, to sulk because he thinks he’s right to call me stupid, when I’m not. I’m intelligent. You’re all the ones that are ignorant. Ignorant fools!

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In this one-act ePlay, Betsy grows concerned when her son Cliff tells her that her daughter Marina has been outside in the cold all morning, because she hears voices in the trees calling her name.

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