The Institute


Book Description

In the middle of the night, in a house on a quiet street in suburban Minneapolis, intruders silently murder Luke Ellis' parents and load him into a black SUV. The operation takes less than two minutes. Luke will wake up at The Institute, in a room that looks just like his own, except there's no window. And outside his door are other doors, behind which are other kids with special talents--telekinesis and telepathy--who got to this place the same way Luke did: Kalisha, Nick, George, Iris, and 10-year-old Avery Dixon. They are all in Front Half. Others, Luke learns, graduated to Back Half, "like the roach motel," Kalisha says. "You check in, but you don't check out." In this most sinister of institutions, the director, Mrs. Sigsby, and her staff are ruthlessly dedicated to extracting from these children the force of their extranormal gifts. There are no scruples here. If you go along, you get tokens for the vending machines. If you don't, punishment is brutal. As each new victim disappears to Back Half, Luke becomes more and more desperate to get out and get help. But no one has ever escaped from The Institute.




Sketchbook: 2049


Book Description

A Collection of the plays featured in the 14th Annual Sketchbook Festival, hosted by Collaboraction Theatre in Chicago.




The dramatic works


Book Description




Rap to Mars


Book Description

Rap to Mars, a book of poetry, satire, and prose, attempts by words and art to dissect and sift through diverse aspects of the life of man in his quest to assert himself as the king or queen of the universe. This is even in spite of mans obvious lapses, frailties, and entrapment. During the course of various attempts, sometimes, success smiles on man. But when failures present themselves, arrogant and deceitful man refuses to accept his obvious limitations. Often, in his ever-willing efforts to deceive the more gullible, man in his cowardice plays the monkey that uses the cats paws to extract nuts from the fi re. From a safe distance, the minion, man, details his more gullible fellow men to sacrifi ce themselves and others in silly and assumed defense of the Almighty Maker. The martyr and suicide bomber along with their victims become the willing and unwilling by-products But even in spite of his sometimes comical shenanigans, man, who unsuccessfully plays the angel on Earth, remains man and suffers or causes others to suffer the pains arising from a perpetual struggle between the good and the bad as represented in Rap to Mars by Earths angels, suicide bombers, and whores. At the end of the day, man, mere mortal man, still fi nds himself trapped in his self-imposed cocoon of a shanty or a mansion. In the latter, man again plays the elitist parent of a lone child while the downtrodden fi nd their pleasure by doggedly obeying the injunction of increase and multiply. Rap to Mars is a mixed grill of fun, challenges, and what the evolving society was, what it is, and what it should fi ght hard not to be.




The Dramatic Works


Book Description