"The Velveteen Rabbit" is a spun-out adaptation of the children's story of the same name, for adults. It follows four generations of a Toronto family, who, in two-hander scenes, each pass down a love for the story, as well as a deep vein of emotional neglect. This “family curse” is represented by a stuffed toy bunny that each generation, when a child, leans on as a best friend to try to process their trauma. When we see the child in each scene grown, Bunny becomes that unprocessed trauma personified, which they then unconsciously “gift” to their own offspring. Bunny is also (in the action of the actual play) a puppet: in between “real-world” scenes where we trace the traumatic inheritance of the family, each child enters the world of the Velveteen Rabbit storybook and puppeteers Bunny as the Rabbit of the title there. We see each child immerse themselves in a world of fairy tale when asked by their world to “grow up too soon,” and try — and sometimes fail — to grow up on their own terms, using the lessons gleaned from their favourite storybook.