100 Saints You Should Know

“Prayer is a surge of the heart, a cry of recognition and love.”

It’s a Wednesday-evening rehearsal in Jewel Theatre, and St. Therese of Lisieux’s words come to life through five actors and director, Professor of Theatre Bob Larson, for Luther’s upcoming play “100 Saints You Should Know” by Kate Fodor.

According to Larson, the play not only focuses on family dynamics, but people struggling to find their identity in their lives and their faiths as well.

“It’s a question of feeling a sense of disconnect from where [the characters] are,” Larson said. “One is a young mother who doesn’t quite have an anchor for her life anymore, and the other is a priest who feels drawn toward his definition toward love, which moves away from the church.”

Actress Calli Micale (‘13), who plays Theresa, a young mother, thinks that students will be able to connect with the play, despite the fact that none of the characters are college-aged.

“College-aged people have a hard time with faith ideas or beliefs,” Micale said. “You come [to Luther], learn so much, and get away from faith.”

Though the play does not offer specific solutions to the characters’ faith-related issues, it deals with struggles through other characters and situations.

Actors Anna Murray (‘14) and Noah Lange (‘14) play the youngest characters, Abby and Garrett, who seek their own identities in the midst of a constantly changing environment.

“[Abby] is confused about why her mom is changing, which is making her change,” Murray said. “She’s this bad-ass sixteen-year-old who hates her mother … and is trying to figure out who she is.”

Character identity involves both new friendships and destructive behavior in the play.

One scene involves Abby drinking and soul-searching with fellow teenager Garrett. Noah Lange and Murray agree that the characters they portray are different from themselves, but Lange feels that actors can learn from who they become on stage.

“There are bits of any character in you in any play,” Noah Lange said. “It’s about trying to apply your life experience with this character. It’s definitely an exploration.”

This exploration came from two-to three-hour rehearsals, where actors were asked to talk about their characters and improvise in order to, as Larson says, “catch the rhythm of the piece.”

Luther’s theatre department, known for its movement-centered pieces, will catch the piece’s rhythm through its words and thematic material.

“A lot of the time, much of what we do is movement-centered,” Larson said. “This [piece] is very verbal, very text-centered and generates a lot of different perspectives on the question of faith. It’s a much more realistic play.”

Nowhere is this more apparent than in a scene where the priest, Matthew, played by Alex Lange (‘11), and his mother, played by Libby Dahms (‘11), discuss changes in Matthew’s beliefs over a game of Scrabble. Though neither actor moves much beyond their hands as they reach for more tiles, the scene strongly conveys the conflict between tradition, vocation and doubt.

As Noah Lange sees it, sometimes the relationship dynamic is all a scene needs.

“There’s a universal truth in the relationships between characters,” Lange said. “I think that’s the mark of true theater.”

“100 Saints You Should Know” promises to be an engrossing play brimming with questions, answers, and questions beyond answers.

Showtimes will be: March 10 at 7:30 p.m., March 11 at 9:30 p.m., and March 12 at 1:30 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. Tickets are free with a Luther student ID.