“She doesn’t care about me; she doesn’t even want to see me; she just pretends she does.”

Shy, fourteen-year-old Maddie wasn’t expecting to have to worry about taking care of herself just yet. Her sixteen-year-old party-girl sister Bea has scandalously moved in with their mom’s ex-boyfriend, and in turn their brassy mother Sheila has run straight to the comfort of another lover. Maddie is finding that an empty apartment is quiet and lonely, even though her time is normally spent reading comics in her closet. Feeling abandoned and vulnerable, she turns to her favourite superhero, Arrowette. Armed with a backpack filled with a bow and arrows, she embarks on a radical plan to join the army, where she thinks she will find a new family she can count on.

Meanwhile, Bea is second-guessing the whole dating an older man thing, and Sheila defends her unorthodox sexual candour, entertaining the ideals of freedom. When Bea and Sheila decide to come home for Maddie’s birthday, they’re faced with the pointed arrow of Maddie’s newfound power and the startling reality of the kind of family they’ve become.

Anna Chatterton is a librettist, playwright and performer. She has been nominated three times for the K.M. Hunter Award for Theatre and has her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph. As a librettist, her work includes Swoon (Canadian Opera Company), Rocking Horse Winner (Tapestry Opera) and Crush (COC and The Banff Centre). Anna works frequently with composer Juliet Palmer's company Urbanvessel, whose work includes Voice-Box (World Stage/Harbourfront Centre), Stitch (Theatre Centre) and Sweat (Center for Contemporary Opera) in Brooklyn, NY. Stitch was nominated for Dora Mavor Moore Award for Best New Opera.

Anna's plays include Quiver (Nightwood Theatre) and Within the Glass (Tarragon Theatre) and she has been a Playwright in Residence at Tarragon Theatre since 2011. She also writes and performs with Evalyn Parry and Karin Randoja in the acclaimed feminist theatre collective Independent Aunties. The Aunties have created six shows together, including Clean Irene and Dirty Maxine (Theatre Passe Muraille, SummerWorks Award for Best New Play), Frances, Mathilda and Tea (Theatre Passe Muraille), Breakfast (Buddies in Bad Times Theatre and the Theatre Centre) and Gertrude and Alice (Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, Dora Mavor Moore nominations for Outstanding New Play and Outstanding Ensemble). Anna was also honoured with a Toronto Critics Award for her role as Alice.

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• Nominated, Hamilton Literary Award for Fiction

“I loved this play’s depiction of the sweetness, confusion, and anguish of adolescence and adulthood alike.”

Chris Klippenstein, Mooney on Theatre