"Professor House": A World Premiere Play by Jacob Juntunen

PROFESSOR HOUSE opens in the year 2046 in the home office/attic of an embittered poet and professor. His dead graduate student—made ghastly by garish white makeup—perches on the professor’s desk. The restless apparition dares the professor to commit suicide. The graduate student died in the pandemic of 2041, but their contribution to a patent made the professor and his university wealthy. This blood money is hard to reconcile. The dead grad student forces the professor to relive key moments of their relationship. So what’s that going to do? Is this journey through memory going to make the professor want to live? Or will he succumb to the ghost’s taunts to kill himself?

PROFESSOR HOUSE metaphorically addresses the COVID-19 pandemic, setting the plot in 2046, five years after a pandemic in 2041. The script delves into labor rights, public health, corporate greed, and the grief and survivor’s guilt experienced by many post-2020. As a piece of speculative fiction, Professor House explores these themes through a family drama featuring a mysterious apparition that might be a ghost or a manifestation of the protagonist’s guilt. The production will also feature panel discussions with experts on these topics.