Heroes with Heart
It’s a bird. It’s a plane. No. It’s St. Ann Center’s Righteous League!
An enthusiastic group of Stein Campus clients have found their inner superheroes as participants in TimeSlips, a program that uses creative storytelling to enhance people’s lives. Meeting weekly with facilitator Elaine Maly, “They’ve come up with names for their characters, unique super powers, costumes, archenemies…and the most amazing adventures,” Elaine explained.
There’s Super Jake (Jacob Lukowski), a brilliant billionaire with lightning speed who can predict the future, Energy Man (Marcus Semenske), who uses his supercharged personality to help others get work done and Party Animal (Christine Biersack), who instantly turns a boring day into a fun one. Super Jesus (John Krall) uses his power of prayer to lead people to make good choices, Super Reader (Diane Gundlach) reads from large-print books to keep people calm and G-Man (Gabriel Rodriguez) protects the city from evil using his powers of invisibility and healing.
“From the start, they decided they needed to be a team,” Elaine said. “They figured they would be stronger as the Righteous League.” In the past few months, they’ve saved the world from Lazy Man (Energy Man’s nemesis), who saps people’s strength and opened a training school that teaches children how to become superheroes.
Milwaukee artist Emma Daisy Gertel has joined Elaine and the League in several TimeSlips sessions and hopes to create an art installation or comic book based on St. Ann Center’s superhero stories. According to Elaine, “We’re thinking about all the possible ways we can share this awesome project with the public.” Now, that’s super exciting!