Act I

The primary action of Children of a Lesser God takes place inside the mind of James Leeds. Time is not linear during the play, and characters "step from his memory for anything from a full scene to several lines," and place changes rapidly on a bare stage that holds "only a few benches and a blackboard." James is a speech teacher at a State School for the Deaf. He meets Sarah Norman, a cleaning woman who has been deaf from birth and has resided at the school since the age of five.

Two other students meet with James for speech therapy on a regular basis: Orin, a contemporary of Sarah who has become an apprentice teacher at the school, and Lydia, a girl in her late teens who develops a crush on James. As the relationship between Sarah and James grows, Orin distances himself from James...