It started in 2020 when she had a few lyrics in her head. The lyrics wouldn’t leave her be but she didn’t know how to write them down. Swegler had sung in choirs in her youth but didn’t play an instrument or have training in music theory or notation.

A friend, Kelly Bonello (soon to be featured on this Substack), sat on Swegler’s living floor for an afternoon and helped get her music down on the page. At Bonello’s urging, Swegler went out the next day and bought a guitar, a tuner, a guitar stand, and some music theory books.

The timing couldn’t have been better. The Covid-19 shutdowns started the very next day. “The whole thing about guitar and the shutdown was completely a God thing,” Swegler smiles. “I spent two and a half years teaching myself basic guitar. It couldn’t have been more perfect. It was a tremendous blessing. I fell in love with it and fell in love with music theory.”

The enforced confinement of the pandemic had its advantages. Swegler had plenty of time to practice and few distractions. But after a couple of years, she was eager to get more formal training. Swallow Hill Music, a nearly 50-year-old music school and performance venue in Denver, became a great resource.

Swegler studied guitar finger picking, voice, and music theory. She has performed in two ensembles, at Swallow Hill graduations, and a Swallow Hill open house.

Swegler has found that formal training has supported her creative efforts. “The better I became at guitar, the better I became as a songwriter. When I was doing chord drills, practicing fingers, I would hear songs. I would hear melody and just tunes coming out of the chord drills. The more I did that, the more material I had to develop the musical side of songwriting.”

Since that 2020 afternoon, Swegler has completed 36 songs in a variety of styles: country folks, jazz, children’s songs, show tunes, and Christian-Catholic songs. One jazz song, “Fur Coat,” is about a cat. Another song, “Bread of Life,” is a Catholic worship song.

“I want to look at all of life,” Swegler says in explaining the range of subjects and styles. “It’s the poetry that leads my writing,” she continues. “If the poetry is fun, that’s where I’ll take my thoughts and writing.”

Though songwriting is a later in life undertaking, it isn’t Swegler’s first foray into creativity. She spent years as a fiber artist, even competing in the spinning arena. She comes from a family of writers and grew up with a love of poetry. Her developing musicianship has become an outlet for her poetry and a broader canvas for creativity.

It’s one step at a time for Swegler as she continues her artistic exploration. She hopes for opportunities to write songs for local and regional bands and is currently producing an album to introduce her work to a wider musical community. She’s also drawn to performing in hospices or nursing facilities.

At an age when many people retire or settle into comfortable routines, Tanya Swegler has launched an entirely new creative adventure. “I really think music and songwriting has been a gift from God at a time in my life that I desperately needed guitar and to focus on learning something new,” she reflects. “I’m approaching this as God is leading me on this journey. I’m open to the Holy Spirit and what I can write. It’s a prayerful journey, ‘God, where do you want me to go with this music?’

Swegler takes a practical approach, doing what she can, but trusting that she will be led in further development of her creative gifts. “I’m walking this journey in prayer and thanksgiving,” she says. “‘God, You’ve given this to me. Where do you want it to go? I’m along for the ride.’”

Curtain Call Q & A

What are your thoughts about this post?

• How can periods of silence or isolation serve as opportunities to hear God’s voice?

• How can structured learning, e.g., guitar lessons, enhance creativity?

• How does Swegler’s story speak to someone who feels it’s “too late” to start something new?

While still in elementary school, Lefort was cast as Jonah in a local church play. It was the beginning of a love affair with theatre that carried him through adolescence. Throughout his youth, he starred in plays and musicals and won awards.

He was set to pursue theatre as a career when, the summer before entering college, he had what he describes as a powerful conversion experience. A new love entered his life: Jesus and His Church.

In the immediate aftermath of this experience, Lefort believed he needed to choose between two loves: faith or art. He chose faith. Retrospectively, this looks like an initial effort to reckon with an adolescent sensibility that had characterized his theatrical pursuits. “I wanted to be seen, loved, and appreciated,” he says. Hardly an unusual motivation for those who find their way to the spotlight.

As Lefort matured in life and in his faith, however, his longing for creativity resurfaced. A performance of Bright Star, the musical by Steve Martin and Edie Brickell, was a turning point. Lefort was struck by the pro-life and family-oriented themes of the show. It was, Lefort recognized, natural theology dramatized on stage. “The theme is how people are gifts from God.”

He saw the enormous impact the show had on the audience. “It’s safe to assume that many in the audience don’t share the same views as I have on some moral issues, but they were all impacted by the human person and what we’re made for,” Lefort reflects.

That was all it took to reconnect Lefort with the possibilities of theatre. He began reading St. Pope John Paul II’s play, The Jeweler’s Shop and his artist’s retreat, God is Beauty. He moved beyond thinking of drama in terms of the spotlight and realized that storytelling is letting God shine through us.

Lefort’s hesitation about theatrical involvement evaporated and he jumped back into theatre. He found actors, support, funding and a location and put up his own production of Bright Star, which raised money for a pro-life organization. “I was fully alive,” he says. “Doing art in this beautiful way and I knew it was something I wanted to continue to do.”

Since relocating to Denver to join Focus, Lefort has joined forces with other Denver talent (such as Ryan Noll) to form the company, Backyard Musical. Backyard Musical has a purpose of highlighting truth, beauty and goodness wherever it can be found. “We don’t want to just produce shows that talk about God or saints but shows that are relevant to culture but that we can highlight truth, goodness, and beauty,” he says.

Lefort has found great rewards in connecting with a community of artists that are united in a desire to give glory to God. “We all of us want to tell a good story for the sake of glorifying God, not ourselves,” he says. “We’ve been able to create a great culture of forgiveness, supporting each other whole-heartedly.”

Recently, Backyard Musical presented 12 Angry Jurors (originally 12 Angry Men) at Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Westminster, Colorado. The well-attended show demonstrated convincingly that there’s an audience for this approach to theatre.

Next up is the musical Big Fish, by Andrew Lippa and John August, based on the Daniel Wallace novel. Big Fish is scheduled for May 8 – 10 in Ballard Hall at Christ the King parish, in south central Denver. Onstage Catholic will give updates as the performance approaches.

From a binary choice – faith or theatre – Lefort has moved to a synthesis of the two. “Being an artist stems from my relationship with God,” he says.

Curtain Call Q & A

What are your thoughts about this post?

• Have you ever experienced a tension between your faith and another part of your life or identity? How are you resolving it?

• LeFort was struck by how audiences who might not share all of his moral views were still moved by the themes of Bright Star. What does this suggest about the role of art in engaging culture?

• What are examples of books, films, plays, or music that have helped you see a deeper truth about life or faith?

Backyard Musical, a theatre company with its roots in a Centennial, CO, neighborhood during Covid, is presenting 12 Angry Jurors, a variation of the classic courtroom drama, 12 Angry Men, (you might have seen the movie version starring Henry Fonda.)

Here’s the deets:

Performance Dates & Times

• February 13 & 14 at 7:00 PM

• February 15 at 2:00 PM

Location

Holy Trinity Catholic Church

7595 N Federal Blvd, Westminster, CO 80030

Tickets are $12 and can be reserved via

• Eventbrite (+taxes and fees, but can reserve a specific night)

• Partiful

• or you’re welcome to pay at the door.

Here’s a little more description of the play:

What would you do in the room if everyone disagreed with you?

Backyard Musical is thrilled to invite you to our next production: 12 Angry Jurors, a gripping courtroom drama that asks one powerful question—what does justice really require of us?

Set entirely in a jury room, 12 Angry Jurors follows twelve strangers tasked with deciding the fate of a young defendant. As tempers flare and biases are challenged, the play becomes an intense, thought-provoking exploration of justice, moral responsibility, and the fragility of human testimony.

Perfect for a night out with a bible study that generates good discussion, a parent/child outing, or a date night (*cough*).

Director Ryan Noll writes, “Whether you love theatre, meaningful conversation, or stories that linger long after the curtain falls, this is a show you won’t want to miss. We’d love to see you there—and maybe argue it out in the jury room afterward!”

That’s Brother Christian’s story, neé Christian Cole Matson, who became a diocesan hermit in the diocese of Lexington, Kentucky, in 2021. In a lengthy and productive career, Brother Christian has earned multiple degrees in theatre and theology, has acted on stage and in films, and run theatre companies.

Brother Christian’s passion and calling is for theatre that lives at the intersection of questions of faith and excellent drama. His vocation underwent an early trial by fire. In his first year acting class at NYU a professor stated that the Church is responsible for all evil in the world (!). That’s a lot of responsibility, but on the plus side, it makes evil a very simple problem to solve.

Another NYU teacher stated that a person can’t be both religious and an artist because religion is about imposing rules and art is about breaking rules.

Brother Christian persevered in the face of such cartoonishly reductive views and maintains that most or at least many secular theatre professionals can be open to dramatic works that deal seriously with questions of faith. He thinks the secular world primarily expects drama to acknowledge that religious questions are difficult, that wrestling with them is hard, and that people have been wounded by being pressed to soon into “pat” answers.

Brother Christian urges Catholic artists to respect honest questions. “Leave room for the people that are really wrestling. I’m not saying no answer to the Church is wrong. But people are trying to explore their own experience.”

This isn’t an argument for either moral relativism or nihilism. “If the end result is saying, ‘There is no truth, there is no ‘there’ there,’ that’s not helpful either,” Brother Christian reflects. “Even if you’re not there yet or can’t gasp all of the mystery, the mystery is a thing which exists, not a nothingness. We want to find God, not an empty space.”

The Catholic faith, Brother Christian finds, is well-suited to such a mission. “It’s a richly complex form of Christianity. We can say, ‘here’s the wisdom of two millennia. I can help you find the right questions to ask God or help you ask those questions of God directly through a story.’”

Brother Christian especially admires the “wrestling” of Stephen Adly Guirgis, a contemporary, Pulitzer-prize playwright. Guirgis, raised in the Catholic faith and educated in Jesuit schools, does not define himself as a “Christian playwright” but often writes plays that deal with religious questions.

For example, Guirgis’ play, The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, imagines Judas going on trial in hell. Jesus appears in hell to wash Judas’ feet. Christ offers forgiveness but Judas refuses it and stays damned. Judas can’t accept a reality where he fell but could be forgiven. He wants a world where he had been created “good enough” for God’s love.

“It’s a very profound play, richly theological,” Brother Christian says. “Guirgis is working out deep questions within the Catholic tradition.”

Supporting other Catholic and Christian artists is a cornerstone of Brother Christian’s vocation. He served as founding Executive Director of Catholic Artist Connection, whose mission is to connect and support Catholic artists of all disciplines.

He periodically publishes The Flannery List, a list of plays that deal with religious questions or themes. He solicits suggestions for plays from 75+ theatre professionals. Any suggested play is included in a “long list.” Plays that receive three or more nominations comprise a short list.

Brother Christian continues active stage involvement through his theatre company, Earendel Theatricals. As of this writing, Brother Christian is directing The Courtroom, a play created from verbatim transcripts about the deportation trial of a Filipina immigrant. The play will be performed at the Cathedral of Christ the King in Lexington, Kentucky. As of this writing, winter storm Fern has put performance dates in limbo, but if you’re in the area, check here for updates.

Brother Christian also regularly tours the one-man play, Every Brilliant Thing, for suicide prevention programs at local schools and universities.

Fundamentally, Brother Christian believes there’s room for plays which are more didactic or evangelizing as well as theatre which engages with difficult questions of faith.

“The artist needs to see themselves as on the same level as the audience, not ‘I’m the all-seeing artist telling you bourgeois sheeple how you’re wrong and what you need to do,’” he laughs. “We’re all fallen, striving to find the truth. Offer your work with humility,” he concludes. “Here’s the vision that’s been given to me of what I believe to be good, true and beautiful.”

Curtain Call Q & A

What are your thoughts about this post?

• What is a religious approach to life about besides “imposing rules”?

• Is the statement “art is about breaking rules” a sufficient aesthetics?

• What does it mean to say that mystery is “a thing which exists, not a nothingness”?

As opposed to a parish-based theatre group, Meo wanted to start a “secular” community group, albeit one that would provide enriching productions. “I just felt called to do it in the community. I felt the community needed this.”

CAST began on a shoestring. A friend’s husband drew up the initial incorporation documents pro bono. The first production, The Miracle Worker, was mounted for $1500, including $700 for script rights.

The cast rehearsed in each other’s homes. For tech rehearsals, Meo arranged for discounted space in the local fire department. The eventual production used community space that was, at that time, free. The cast scrambled to create their own costumes.

Meo was strategic in selecting material that would build an audience. She programmed choral singing between scenes of The Miracle Worker. “You get that many people involved, they tell their friends,” she explains.

In its second year CAST mounted, Annie Get Your Gun! with a cast of upwards of 50. Over 800 people attended two performances.

“We took anybody that wanted to be in, and they all told their friends, and we filled the theatre twice,” Meo laughs.

In fact, for the first twelve years of CAST’s existence, the theatre turned a small profit each year. Covid-related closures in the early 2020’s were a speed bump. To keep at least some momentum going, Meo bought scripts and actors read them aloud through Zoom calls.

CAST returned to regular programming in 2022 and in 2024, the production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice was a big hit. “People flocked to the shows. We had so much fun, and we filled our bank account,” Meo says.

Meo has a clear sense of the arts, specifically theatre, as a vocation. “It’s absolutely a calling. My artsy side was pushing me to do it most. I like to be doing community theatre and involved in artistic endeavor.”

A critical piece of this vocation is supporting creative people in the exercise of their talents. “Quietly or inconspicuously, we’re giving artists work that is free from temptation and full of inspiration and we’re evangelizing in that way. To go out in the community and work with artists in the community and help them bring positive messages, real messages about charity, humility, selflessness, generosity, doing the Lord’s work in a place where you might not necessarily see it.”

Meo’s success in getting the company off the group reflects her savvy, perseverance, and the local network she had built over the years as a teacher. Her perseverance has shown that there’s lots of talent in local communities and there are also audiences ready to appreciate that talent.

A commitment to excellence must be part of any theatrical company’s ethos. “You have to put on a quality production,” Meo cautions. “You have to rehearse often to put on a really good show.”

Now that she’s retired from public school teaching Meo is looking for ways to expand, such as putting on more shows. She anticipates sticking to CAST’s original mission statement of uplifting and inspiring quality theatrical productions.

“Whatever I do, it would have to be pleasing to the Lord,” Meo summarizes. “He’s the One I have to please, the One it comes from. Put God in the center of that because we’re in the image of God.”

Curtain Call Q & A

What are your thoughts about this post?

• What changes when creative work is treated as a true vocation?

• How can community theatre serve as outreach beyond traditional parish settings?

• Other thoughts?

One purpose of Onstage Catholic has been to understand how faith informs the work of those engaged in the performing arts. The arts shape our understanding, but what is shaping those who make the arts?

As 2025 closes, I’ve been re-reading the artists covered in the first few months of this Substack. I was struck by Ruth Pe Palileo’s claim that “Theatre is a sacred space.” Her contention is that people of all kinds of faiths or no faith experience sacredness in theatre.

I think that’s true, and I think that’s because theatre (and live performance in general) has two main ingredients: 1) presence and 2) the moment.

Screens, which have many benefits, inevitably reduce live presence. You see a face, hear a voice, and that’s wonderful but it’s at a remove. Screen presence is more like a half-life. It’s better than nothing, but not real presence.

Screens also cheat the moment. You can rewind. You can tune in later. You can re-watch. This is wonderfully convenient.

Convenience instrumentalizes our experience, e.g., what did this do for me? That’s a dead end. We want not just to be users of life, we want to be witnesses. Witnesses to wonder and beauty.

Live performance summons us to witness. In live performance, fleeting moments can hold and enact enduring meaning. This demands and rewards our attention.

That non-instrumental encounter is the bedrock experience common to both believers and non-believers.

One of my favorite descriptions of the theatrical project was Christopher Rziha’s “contemplatives in action.” That conjures up the combination of reflective and dramatic activity that the performing arts serve. The art compresses moments and meaning and delivers those to the audience.

In this way, live performance feeds the souls of performers and audience. As actor-director Ryan Noll says, “The arts are a form of small-s sacrament where God imparts meaning to us via materials and symbols.”

These small-s sacraments acknowledge a Source beyond us. “The act of creation is a beautiful way that we are called to live out our identity as people made in the image of God, the ultimate Creator, the perfect Artist,” as composer Mina Piraseau observed.

So, in 2026, lower the house lights, turn on the spotlight. We’ll settle into our limited senses, our limited presence, and our few moments, and, paradoxically, we’ll see how these open us to the universal and the eternal.

Happy New Year!

ADDENDUM: In the coming year, I’ll continue featuring artists engaged with live performance. So, if you know any actors, directors, playwrights, singers, musicians, dancers, choreographers, drop me a note.

Roseanne T. Sullivan wrote the lyrics, which she wrote about here:

This carol was commissioned by the Benedict XVI Institute as part of their annual Very Marian Advent and Christmas Carols initiative.

Merry Christmas!

Pe Palileo, who has a PhD in Performance, Theatre History from Trinity College Dublin, has written plays such as Sons of Columbus, about the ministry of Blessed Father Michael McGivney (founder of the Knights of Columbus) to a young man on death row, and directed secular productions such as Eugene Ionesco’s The Chairs and an all-female version of David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross. The latter was praised by Vegas Seven magazine for Palileo’s “playful visual enhancements.”

When she directed The Chairs in Las Vegas in 2009, she emphasized bold colors, lighting and physicality. One reviewer characterized the production as achieving “a Chaplin-like balance of crazed, superhuman farce and introspective poignancy.”

“God is the best director,” Pe Palileo reflects. “He set my eyes for this kind of lighting and the playfulness of light and shadow.”

For Pe Palileo, the embodied nature of theatre is a reflection and extension of the Mass. “The closer I got to Our Lord and falling in love with the Mass, I see there’s the world, a person, a body who speaks the Word and all of the movement of the Mass. In theatre you have a script, performers, what’s spoken and the actions.”

This makes theatre a bridge between worship and ordinary life. Pe Palileo looks for a core truth that drives choices in a way that reflects Catholic truth. This might involve saints or Bible stories, but it could just as well be an informing metaphor in the work.

Pe Palileo’s own play, Paerie Tale, illustrates her approach. The work grew out of Pe Palileo’s Filipino heritage and a conversation she had with an Irish woman in which they discovered the contrasting behaviors that the Irish and Filipino cultures attribute to fairies.

In Paerie Tale, a family must battle fairies from both Irish and Filipino cultures, to get a stolen baby returned. The play culminates in one of the fairies choosing to become human. This transformation is accomplished when the grandmother baptizes the fairy.

“He becomes mortal. It’s like salvation history,” Pe Palileo explains. “Calvary happens and then everything unfolds from it. A Catholic moment happens in a play and that radiates out. I like Catholic takes where it is so embedded that you can’t take it apart from the story,” she concludes.

Live theatre in general is currently at a disadvantage as Pe Palileo recognizes. Contemporary technology has shaped audience’s expectations, one might even say misshaped them. We have all kinds of entertainment at our fingertips, and we don’t have to set foot outside our doors to be distracted. “It used to be a traveling theatre company rolled into town, would ring the bell, and the whole town would come out,” Pe Palileo says.

While it can be an enhancement, technology tends to emphasize spectacle over a more well-rounded human experience. Cirque de Soleil, for example, is impressive and captivating, for sure. But it isn’t focused on the dilemmas and motivations of the human experience.

All of this runs counter to what Pe Palileo values in live theatre. She appreciates stage tricks and the trappings of technical design. “But the play is the play is the play,” she says. “In the beginning was the Word and when it comes to a play, it should feel magical with no tricks because the script is so good.”

Pe Palileo’s faith and philosophy of theatre made for a natural alignment with the Benedict XVI Institute’s project of a new Renaissance of Catholics in the arts. In addition to Sons of Columbus, which the Benedict XVI Institute commissioned, she has collaborated with Greta Gwyzana, featured on Onstage Catholic, in producing With Love to Orvieto, St. Thomas Aquinas and the Feast of Corpus Christi. The two are pursuing additional venues for presenting the work.

Despite challenges, Pe Palileo is more convinced than ever of the value of theatre. “Theatre has a sacredness to it. That’s why I keep going back to it. People who are completely atheist, agnostic, or Muslim, or Buddhist all have a sense of theatre as a sacred space,” she concludes.

Curtain Call Q & A

What are your thoughts about this post?

• What qualities of live theatre might create the sense of sacred space?

• Pe Palileo compares the structure of the Mass to theatre. How does this deepen our understanding of performance as an embodied art form?

• What are the advantages and risks of Catholic truth being “so embedded that you can’t take it apart from the story” as compared to more overtly religious storytelling?

• Other thoughts?

Eucharistic dramas are a type of one-act play that flourished in Spain in the 1500-1600s, where they were known as auto sacramanetals. As a genre, the plays give the Eucharist centrality in the resolution of the dramatic action.

Christopher Rziha, a doctoral candidate of Spanish at the University of Notre Dame, has translated several Eucharistic dramas. According to Rziha, the dramatization prods the audience to contemplate the experience of God’s love. For example, the relationship between Christ and the Church is traditionally characterized in nuptial terms. A Eucharistic drama, by personifying the soul and Christ, shows the intensity of Christ’s love for us.

The point of the plays is to make accessible to a wide audience the joining of heaven and earth, the fusion of the divine and the human.

One of Rziha’s translations, The Phoenix of Love, by Spanish priest and playwright Jose de Valdivielso, was performed at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas, in March, 2025. Directed by Zachary Lulloff, the event was SRO.

“Valdivielso saw theatre as a way of putting all of the different elements of human experience into the service of the celebration of the Eucharist,” Rziha explains.

Rziha has identified over 200 biblical allusions the play makes. “It’s important to realize the depth of formation required to write these sorts of plays,” he says. Rziha gave a version of the text with the biblical allusions to director Lulloff to provide guidance in bringing the text to life.

Lulloff and the cast worked to move the text from abstraction and relate the action to biblical and liturgical practices.

Rziha emphasizes how important prayer was to the cast as they rehearsed. “One of your cast members is playing Lucifer and, although it’s play-acting, it’s weird to go on stage and blast Jesus Christ for 200 verses in a row,” he observes. “There was a lot of prayer involved.”

Eucharistic dramas draw from medieval morality plays and so the characters tend to be personified qualities, e.g., “Inspiration,” “Soul,” “World,” etc. Despite the seriousness of the content, the works do not shy away from humor. Eucharistic dramas celebrate how the eucharist affects every aspect of our lives, from the simplest or even grotesque to the highest. “That’s the awareness that you have to approach these dramas with,” Rziha contends. “It’s a reverence that impels you to celebration.”

Rziha emphasizes that directors and actors should feel free to adapt the plays to their circumstances. That could mean dramatic readings vs fully staged and costumed performances or somewhere in between. It could also mean incorporating music and inviting audience participation. The plays were written at a time when there was no such thing as a published script and adapting scripts to local circumstances was expected.

What I think is exciting about this is that it’s a theological underwriting for drama as a “contemplative in action” (Rziha’s phrase) approach to the arts. “You have to approach this sort of work reverently with respect for the truths that it holds and recognize that part and parcel of those truths is to turn around and share them in as vibrant a manner as possible,” Rziha concludes.

Take an hour and enjoy the Benedictine College performance here.

Then drop a comment with your thoughts – and possibly your plans to stage a Eucharistic drama in your parish!

Visit Christopher’s site where you can access more of his play translations as well as his award-winning fantasy fiction.

“As David Mamet says, ‘my phone can entertain me,’” Miller points out. “If you’re asking people to pay, put on something good.”

Miller, a 2021 regional finalist in the Kennedy Center’s American College Theater Festival, poses the Protestant concept of “common grace,” that God’s undeserved goodness is shown to all people, as a basis for connecting the Christian faith with the wider culture.

Miller has exemplified this cultural outreach more than once. He adapted Jean Anouilh’s Antigone, itself a retelling of the Sophocles original, for performance at Restoration Life Church in Sacramento, California in 2017. Miller found a Christian resonance in the play’s critique of moral relativism. “Some things are objectively wrong, some things are worth dying for,” he summarizes.

His adaptation of the play put the church’s space to creative use. Scenes of approximately 10 minutes in length were staged in different rooms of the church with the audience and cast moving from room to room.

Miller believes that Christians can also play an important role in the current cultural moment by fostering honest, constructive dialogue. His play, All Packed, dramatizes one current division. Hodge, the male lead, is on the verge of proposing marriage to Sierra, the female lead, in March 2020. At the pivotal moment, they receive a text that the city is locking down for Covid. It turns out the two almost-affianced have very different views of the pandemic, its dangers, and the appropriate response. The play takes a humorous look at how the two attempt to bridge their differences.

Miller is developing All Packed with the New Threads Theatre Company in Chattanooga, Tennessee. The company’s founder, Frank Mihelich, plans a “talk back” after the play to foster constructive discussion about the cultural experience of the pandemic. All Packed will be produced at Stage Right Theatrics in Dublin, Ohio, in January 2026.

Live theatre is currently in something of a crisis. Theatre closures during the COVID pandemic put audiences out of the habit of attending live theatre. In addition, many in the theatre world have espoused an almost exclusively one-sided and activist view of current cultural and political issues. “Theatre has become boutique and expensive. It’s full of causes that are elite,” Miller says.

As a culture, we’re missing out on the unique impact and meaning of shared, in-person artistic experience. “Theatre is very concrete and has a real payoff,” Miller observes. “People will sit and give you their attention. There’s something very personal in that.”

Miller believes Christians should recognize there may be audiences hungry for in-person entertainment that isn’t overloaded with “messages” and do the work to earn their attention.

In late March 2026, Miller will teach an introductory playwriting course at the upcoming Vision Christian Writers Conference. Miller believes that playwriting skills and practice can benefit writers in all disciplines. “Playwriting is heavily restricted,” he observes. “It makes you drill down and see what makes a story engaging, what makes for conflict. Anybody can find that valuable.”

Christians with the ambition to “seize the day” in the current cultural turmoil can and should learn from secular counterparts, Miller believes. To this end, he has written Stealing from Pirates, a nonfiction manuscript on dramatic structure and the craft of playwriting. Miller shows playwrights how to learn from the best including David Mamet, Harold Pinter, Anton Chekhov, Annie Baker, August Wilson, and others.

The result of honing artistic skills can result in a thriving theatrical culture informed by a Christian worldview. Miller quotes Proverbs, “A man good at his craft will stand before kings.”

P.S. Check out Miller’s Substack, Shelf of Crocodiles.

How refreshing, then, is the work of young composer, Mina Pariseau (née Esary), who draws on both ancient and modern techniques for a musical aesthetic that is both authentically modern and informed by artistic heritage.

“Sea and Stars,” for solo cello and electronics, exemplifies this approach. The 2021 work combines elements of the Medieval hymn, “Ave Maris Stella,” with an electronic sound environment. The result is a contemplative, unified experience.

Pariseau, who says she has Gregorian chant “in her blood,” comes by her affinity for both ancient and modern periods honestly. Her father sang in the Schola for the Mass at the parish her family attended, which formed her immediate musical environment. Later in high school, Pariseau was initiated into composition by studying 20^thcentury techniques.

Like some other modern composers, Pariseau has found that ancient modes offer alternatives to the “major-minor” binary that has dominated Western music for the last several hundred years (and still is the language of pop music). “It opens up more colors from a harmonic standpoint,” she says.

In 2021, Pariseau participated in the Benedict XVI Institute’s Catholic Sacred Music project. Various composers were assigned texts from the office of the Feast of Corpus Christi. Pariseau’s “Verbum Supernum” splendidly displays her mastery of Renaissance polyphony and fluency with modal scales.

In 2024, Seattle Opera’s Creation Lab, for young composers and librettists, paired Pariseau with librettist Mateo Acuña. The two collaborated on a chamber opera, Blood Dawn of the Inti Sun, for bass-baritone, tenor, flutes, cello, double bass and percussion.

Blood Dawn recounts the Andean myth, “Legend of the Ayar Brothers,” about the founding of the city of Cusco. “I enjoyed exploring the old in a new context,” Pariseau reflects. “It was a wonderful experience and very enriching. Mateo and I were two artists with different philosophical backgrounds talking about big questions of redemption and forgiveness, what happens to families when there’s betrayal and how do you navigate that, is there injustice that comes from a bigger power?”

In 2023, as part of the Benedict XVI Institute’s “A Very Marian Advent Prayer Service,” Pariseau set a poem by Roseann Sullivan to music under the title, “Our Lady Expectant.” (See Sullivan’s description of this at her substack). Californians in San Francisco and the LA region can find live performances of the work in 2025 in November and December.

Luckily for the rest of us, EWTN will broadcast and stream “Our Lady Expectant” on Saturday, December 20, 2025, 4 – 6 p.m. PST.

For Pariseau, faith and creativity are inextricably linked. “Creation for me is a calling – my faith teaches me that I as a person was intentionally created and gifted for a reason, and I believe I have a responsibility to develop and use my talents to the best of my ability, for the glory of God. I believe the act of creation is a beautiful way that we are called to live out our identity as people made in the image of God, the ultimate creator, the perfect artist.”

Connell, who enjoyed theatre and performed as a youngster, got involved again as an adult when a co-worker told him about auditions forThe White Sheep of the Family, produced by South Suburban Theatre Company. Connell won the part of Peter Winter, the “white sheep” of the title and was off on a thirty-year love affair.

Over time, Connell discovered he had an affinity for comedies, farces and “cozy” mysteries. “It changes your perspective,” he says. “If things are weighing you down, you can go to the theatre and laugh. Problems become more manageable.”

One of his favorite roles was as Sheridan Whiteside, the lead role inThe Man Who Came to Dinner.

In 2008, Connell co-founded the Spotlight theatre company. Like many community theatre companies, Spotlight was perennially in search of affordable space.

Spotlight managed to share space with other theatre companies in the area, such as the Edge project, each alternating schedules for mounting productions, making it more financially feasible for both companies.

Spotlight’s last location was in the Lowry neighborhood of Denver, where they became the Lowry Spotlight Theatre and shared space with the Firehouse theatre company. Connell is proud of the company’s financial performance. “We actually made a profit,” he enthuses. “The proceeds from one show helped mount the next. We were able to pay actors for their work.”

The Lowry Spotlight Theatre dissolved in 2018, closing out with a production of You Can’t Take It With You. Connell played “Grandpa,” another favorite role. The City of Denver proclaimed “Lowry Spotlight Theatre Day” and honored Connell with a certificate for his contributions to local theatre.

“It was bittersweet,” Connell recalls. “We had a big party, which was nice, but it was sad to see it come to an end.”

In September, 2025, Connell led the cast assembled at St. Thomas More parish in Charles (Cathal) Gallagher’s play, When Malcolm Muggeridge Met Mother Teresa. His portrayal of the famous 20^thcentury convert skillfully blended Muggeridge’s deep respect for Mother Teresa with his independent streak as a journalist.

Connell has a passion for theatre as an expression of faith and looks forward to continued performances in faith-based venues. “The Church is renowned for its beautiful paintings, sculpture, architecture and writings/teachings, but the dramatic arts seem like they have been left out,” he observes. “So, I’m grateful to play a part in addressing this.”

Once in college, however, Ryan was persuaded to pursue a more practical path and graduated from Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana, with a BFA in Visual Communications. He joined FOCUS Catholic, a nonprofit that supports university students in living a life in Christ, where he currently serves as Senior Manager of Digital Operations, and moved to Denver, Colorado.

Theatre stayed backstage in Noll’s life for the next several years. Then in 2022, a friend told him about an upcoming production by Village Arts, a theatre run by Village Seven Presbyterian church in Colorado Springs. Noll won a leading role in the musical, Newsies, and leaped back into theatre with gusto.

Subsequently, Noll joined the Ogden Players, a local group of theatre enthusiasts who perform Shakespeare in Denver backyards. While set pieces are minimal, the plays are fully staged with costumes and props

.Noll took dual roles in Love’s Labor’s Lost one summer and directed Twelfth Night the next year. He also played Count Claudio in Much Ado About Nothing. He describes backyard Shakespeare as an “applied Shakespeare experience.” “It’s Shakespeare made accessible,” he explains. “You don’t have to pay $75 to see a play. For people that don’t patronize the arts very often, perhaps they’re intimidated by the language of Shakespeare, they won’t spend the money to go to Denver Center for the Performing Arts.”

This past summer, Noll, who is also a vocalist, and some of the Ogden players celebrated the Church’s Jubilee of Hope with a cabaret-style show, singing Broadway tunes about hope. The performance attracted about 80 people.

St. Thomas More parish, in Centennial, Colorado, was excited to have Noll participate in the recent staged reading of excerpts of the play When Malcolm Muggeridge Met Mother Teresa, by Catholic playwright Charles (Cathal) Gallagher. Noll gave an animated performance as Terry Shaler, BBC producer for journalist Malcolm Muggeridge, and showed off a very creditable British accent

.Luckily for Denver, Noll plans to stay active in the arts. “The arts are a form of small-s sacrament where God imparts meaning to us via materials and symbols,” he says. “It’s my belief that not only is it the Catholic’s duty to utilize the arts for this reason, but given the definition above, it’s almost a birthright. Rightly considered, the arts are the sand in a sandbox that belongs to us and that we already know how to play in.”

The nucleus of a talented theatrical company is taking shape at St. Thomas More parish in Centennial, Colorado.

On Saturday, Sept. 6, St. Thomas More parish hosted a staged reading of excerpts of the play, When Malcolm Muggeridge Met Mother Teresa,* by Catholic playwright Charles (Cathal) Gallagher.

The play dramatizes true events in the life of Malcolm Muggeridge, noted 20^th century British journalist, and St. Mother Teresa. In 1967, Muggeridge a lifelong searcher who was increasingly drawn to Christianity, interviewed St. Mother Teresa for the BBC.

The result was pivotal for both parties. It raised St. Mother Teresa’s public profile significantly and in 1979 she won the Nobel Peace Prize. For his part, Muggeridge was deeply impressed by St. Mother Teresa’s “faith in action” and it was a major factor in his eventual conversion to the Catholic church in 1982.

The reading featured a dedicated cast, several of whom are seasoned community theatre actors. It was followed by a Q & A session as well as refreshments.

The Benedict XVI Institute, founded by Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone and headquartered in San Diego, California, sponsored the event, providing refreshments and promotional support. Monsignor Thomas Fryar, former pastor of St. Thomas More, offered an invocation.

The reading was very well-received by the sizable audience. Afterwards many expressed an interest in attending or participating in more such events in the future. Watch this space for more signs of a revived Catholic presence in the arts.

*Gallagher’s original title is Malcolm and Teresa but we expanded it to make the subject more explicit.

**Special Thanks to: Fr. Randy Dollins and the St. Thomas More team for hosting this event; Maggie Gallagher and the Benedict XVI Institute for support and hospitality.

The major historical figures include St. Juliana of Liège, whose visions sparked the establishment of the commemorative feast, Pope Urban IV, who instituted the Solemnity of Corpus Christi in 1264, and Thomas Aquinas, commissioned by Pope Urban to compose the texts for the Liturgical Office. St. Augustine and Aristotle, as advisors to Aquinas, make appearances as well.

The work also references the Eucharistic miracle which occurred in 1263 in Bolsena, near Orvieto, when a priest who doubted the Real Presence, witnessed drops of blood oozing from the consecrated Host. Pope Urban pointedly celebrated the feast of Corpus Christi in Orvieto, where he was residing, and ordered the Corporal from that miracle kept at Orvieto Cathedral.

Dance is the primary medium of With Love, but the work skillfully makes use of music and visual arts. For example, Villa-Lobos’ Ode to the Moon is sung during St. Juliana’s vision and a choir performs Vivaldi’s Gloria in Excelsus at the work’s culmination. Grwyzwana’s photographs of Orvieto’s cathedral provide a backdrop for some of the action.

The Epiphany Dance Company (epiphanydancecompany.org), founded by Gryzwana in 1994, debuted With Love on March 1^st and 2^nd, 2025 at Holy Family Catholic Church in South Pasadena, California. Members of Epiphany Dance Company performed excerpts of With Love, at the 2025 Retreat for Artists and Art Lovers, hosted by the Benedict XVI Institute (benedictinstitute.org). Gryzwana is currently pursuing opportunities to present With Love at parishes in Las Vegas, Nevada, and California.

With Love to Orvieto, St. Thomas Aquinas and the Feast of Corpus Christi is a work that feeds both faith and the senses. It deserves to be widely known and performed.

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About Grete Gryzwana

Grete Gryzwana is founder, artistic director and principal choreographer of Epiphany Dance Company (epiphanydancecompany.org). Grete’s love of all the arts has been present in her life from her early years. In high school, she played the piano and sang, designed clothes, and developed photography skills. But when she discovered modern dance, she knew she had found her principle medium. She founded the Epiphany Dance Company in 1994 specifically to combine dance with other great works of art, including music, poetry, prose scriptures and the visual arts. She has taught at the School of Nashville Ballet, and Vanderbilt University, and has presented workshops and master classes throughout the U.S.

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