Script Spotlight: Mentor Wonders by Catherine Lee

What’s it like being an adult mentor to an elementary student at a bilingual school in San Antonio, Texas? That’s the question seasoned playwright Catherine Lee explores in “Mentor Wonders.” Written and performed in 2022 with the help of players from the San Antonio theater community, the one-act play captures some of Lee’s own experiences as a mentor, along with featuring some of her original poems about mentoring bilingual kids in San Antonio.

Catherine describes herself as both a playwright and a neo-Beat poet. After graduating from college in New Jersey, Catherine spent time developing her craft together with others in the poetry and music space in New York and Boston before making her way to San Antonio in 2006. In addition to working on her writing, Catherine began mentoring students in 2009 and writing poems about her interactions with the kids. A few of those poems are presented in the play itself, and several others are included as a resource in the PDF download of the script available on Scriptmore.

The play’s unique structure includes roles for as many as ten adults, with at least one role best suited to an actor who can speak both Spanish and English. The scenes featuring dialog between the characters at an introductory meeting for new mentors are occasionally interrupted or accompanied by images or video projected onto one or more scrims that sit behind the action on the stage. In addition, a character called the Poet Dreamer recites poetry in a series of “Dreamscapes” that illustrate and enhance the unfolding events of the play.

“Mentor Wonders” is available now for purchase and download on Scriptmore.