A Sense of Wonder

Written and Performed by Kaiulani Lee
The play is the story of one woman's love for the natural world and her fight to defend it. It is the story of the extremely private Rachel Carson thrust into the role of controversial public figure.

​A Sense of Wonder has been created with the help and guidance of many of Miss Carson's friends and colleagues and with permission from the Rachel Carson estate.
For the past twenty-six years Kaiulani has been performing her one-woman play, A Sense of Wonder, based on the life and works of Rachel Carson. The play has been the centerpiece of conferences on conservation, education, journalism, and the environment. She has performed it at over one hundred universities, dozens of high schools, the Smithsonian Institute, the Albert Schweitzer Conference at the United Nations, and at the Department of Interior’s 150th anniversary. In 2005 the play opened The World Expo in Japan and in 2007 was performed on Capitol Hill, bringing Miss Carson’s voice once again to the halls of Congress. A Sense of Wonder has played in every Provence of Canada, in England, Ireland Italy, India, Bangladesh, Cambodia, and Japan.

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Act One takes place in Miss Carson's summer home as she is preparing to leave. Fighting cancer, she fears this may well be her last visit to her beloved Maine coast. Act Two begins two months later in the wake of the furor over her book Silent Spring. Carson is simultaneously battling the chemical industry, the government, and the press to get her message to Congress and the American people.

About Rachel Carson

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Rachel Carson has been called the "Patron Saint of the Environmental Movement." She was a marine biologist and zoologist best known for her book Silent Spring. which alerted the world to the dangers of chemical pesticides and launched our modern environmental movement. 
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Less known is that Miss Carson was one of America's great poets of natural world. In her earlier works she brought alive the beauty and mystery of the seas and its creatures to millions of readers.
In their purest form the poet and the scientist are one and the same. They are the seekers after truth. Through the power of her knowledge and the beauty of her language, Rachel Carson became one of the great champions of the living world.