Jon Stojan
Image credit: Bridget Palmer
Since childhood, Bridget Palmer has been incredibly passionate about theater. She loved the camaraderie and the thrill of staging a production. She began performing in grade school, continuing into middle and high school, where an influential drama teacher further inspired and trained her. Though Palmer later attended Stanford University, she did not enjoy college life. When she heard about the chance to train at the former Polish Laboratory Theater with her high school drama teacher, she jumped at the opportunity. She ended up spending almost two years performing in Poland, and when she moved back to the US, she went on to study Theater Directing at Berkeley.
In the mid-90s, when Palmer became a mother, she realized that she loved helping children grow and develop. “One day, I saw an ad in the local paper. The Parks and Recreation department was looking for after-school theater teachers. I knew a lot about theater, and I’m a mom, so I thought that maybe they would hire me. They did, and it was a natural fit!”
Over the next 20 years, Palmer taught and ran various children’s theater organizations and produced hundreds of plays. From 2007 to 2021, she directed the Santa Rosa Children’s Theater and, in 2016, co-founded A Theater For Children, a community theater company specializing in shows for young audiences. In 2018, she wrote her first children’s play, Alex & The Magic Staff, which has a powerful anti-bullying message.
When the COVID-19 pandemic put her career on hold, Palmer took the time to reflect on what she wanted to do for the future. Empowering children through theater and acting is her true passion. But, with maybe 15 to 20 years left before retirement, she decided to dedicate her time and energy to something even more important, which was to help save nature. She then came up with two ways to pursue these admirable missions.
Palmer co-founded a non-profit organization, We Save The World, of which she is the president. The organization channels children’s interest in nature and admiration of superheroes into becoming eco-heroes themselves, raising funds for environmental non-profits. On the Eco-Hero Launchpad platform, children and youths (aged 8-18) can choose an eco-hero avatar and unleash their fundraising superpowers to protect animal species or ecosystems they love. The platform provides templates and prompts to help them write a short story about the animal or ecosystem and share it with family and friends, inspiring them to donate to the chosen cause. For each fundraising campaign completed, the young eco-hero will collect badges as proof of their work in saving the environment.
Image credit: Bridget Palmer
Aside from her work at the non-profit, Palmer is in pre-production of a feature film based on her screenplay, titled Amazing Grace. The film’s protagonist is an African-American girl named Grace, orphaned in a hurricane that struck her hometown on the Gulf Coast of Texas. Her community is a hotbed of oil drilling and suffers from extensive plastic pollution. Grace gets placed in a foster home where she is treated poorly. She eventually finds an ally in an impoverished Vietnam War veteran who survives by collecting plastic waste on the coast. Their friendship inspires Grace to fight for the environment and create a better life for herself.
Palmer is also working on a production of the musical The Unsinkable Molly Brown, where she plays the titular character. A longtime fan of the Broadway play and its soundtrack, Palmer says that playing the character, based on real-life socialite and philanthropist Margaret “Molly” Brown, has always been on her bucket list. Proceeds from the production will be used to fund We Save The World and refurbish a historic school theater where Palmer stages many productions.
“As a mother of three, I want young people to have a world where they feel safe to become parents themselves,” Palmer says. “I don’t want them to decide not to have children because the world is falling apart. I have a really big place in my heart for all children, having worked with thousands of them over the past 20 years. I feel like adults are wrapped up in things such as politics and wars, and they are not thinking about the world the next generations will inherit. Pollution and rampant consumerism are destroying so many people’s lives and causing animals to go extinct. With We Save The World and Amazing Grace, I hope to inspire children to take action for nature and encourage the adults who love them to join us.”