Black Settlement Photo: Circa 1867
Twelve ancestor souls have been preserved In sepia tones one hundred forty years deep. Still uncomfortable in their two-year-old freedom. It’s a pseudo-freedom, the kind that pinches Expressions tight… More
Roxana Robinson Reads from Life and Death in Shanghai by Nien Cheng
As I followed the female guard, I breathed deeply the sweet night air. We walked around the main building, passed through a peeling and faded red gate with a… More
Roxana Robinson Reads from The Little School Tales of Disappearance and Survival
Last time I heard my full name it was at Army headquarters, the evening of the day I was kidnapped. The military man repeated it in a calm and… More
Sarah Schulman Reads from an Unpublished Memoir
Bored as I was, I began, along with a few other inmates, to make worry beads. The dough of the bread was the material we used to form the… More
Vera B. Williams Reads from It Only Happens To Other People
When morning comes and they escort you to the maximum security prison, your last hope of release evaporates, and you are resigned to the completion of the process: sudden… More
A Chair Full of Ashes
Of all the ways to lose a person, death is the kindest. —Emerson When I was six, my father inherited some money. With it, he bought some property and built… More
The Secret of the Sky
The Secret of the Sky CHARACTERS The PRISONER: The JAILER: The MONK: a man in his early 30s—bearded, disheveled, dressed in a long-sleeved T-shirt, gray sweat pants, and (when standing) sandals. a man of… More
Escape Risk
CAST SKULL LESTER TOOTY BUZZARD ERSKINE GRANGER BETTY JEETER A madman A fool A blimp An old pervert A runaround A guard A nurse An off-stage voice SCENE: A four-man CELL, open toward the audience, back of the cell are vertical steel bars, with a center… More