Placed in the position of choosing her own first project as a graduate student in theatre directing, Holly Pollard opts to not tackle a play at all, but a book - namely, a cult young adult novel entitled The Reaper's Children, a book she claims meant the world to her in her adolescence. A couple of months later, as rehearsals begin, Holly faces growing skepticism amongst her ensemble of fresh-faced young undergraduates, none of whom are quite sure how to tackle such an outrageous story. Little do they know, however, that in going through the process of creating this play - about spirits and children, oppression and repression, and, finally, liberation - that an awakening will occur in themselves, the arrival of the author, a meek and awkward man named William Peters, embodying loneliness itself, further provoking them into more real and intimate territory, and into the discovery that even the lowest and crudest forms of art come from the deepest and intimate chambers of our psyche. Parallels abound in this movie about the scars of childhood and how we live with them, and the cathartic power of art.