Stunning new play contains hard-hitting insights into the private world of teenage challenges and friendship during the COVID-19 pandemic
Amani Makuto is a storyteller. She is a sixteen-year-old Nigerian girl, beginning her first day of school in Toronto, Canada, in the middle of a global pandemic. As her story unfolds on screen, in zoom calls, and across oceans, we hear her inner mind through the poems she writes.
So begins the synopsis for “Unwritten”, a stunning new play created and performed by senior drama students at The Linden School. “Unwritten” follows the stories of 16-year-old Amani and her new classmates in Canada as they live through a tumultuous year shaped by the COVID-19 pandemic as well as the intersecting forces of youth, identity, race, culture, geography, and privilege.
This multidisciplinary play, entirely conceived and produced by students under the guidance of Linden senior drama teacher Coco Lee, chronicles, examines and celebrates Amani’s journey through friendships and “fitting in” all while fighting to celebrate that which makes her stand out. When her most honest and vulnerable poem is accidentally shared with her classmates, who then grapple with their responsibility and complicity, Amani will decide if she can continue to hide her feelings or if she will “just let it out.”
