For Actor, Drama is a Vocation
By Amanda Hudson, News editor

ST. LOUIS—Kevin O’Brien laughs as he describes his drama-filled life.

"It really is a calling, a vocation," he says. "I could never be happy with a real job. I’m kind of blessed and cursed at the same time — this is the only thing I can do, (and) I have to do it."

O’Brien has for many years run a company called Upstage Productions, which presents fun, murder-mystery performances in Missouri and Illinois, mostly in small towns to what have become loyal audiences.

‘Those who perceive in themselves this kind of divine spark which is the artistic vocation — as poet, writer, sculptor, architect, musician, actor and so on — feel at the same time the obligation not to waste this talent but to develop it, in order to put it at the service of their neighbor and of humanity as a whole.’ — Pope John Paul II’s ‘Letter to Artists’

"People really like them (and) keep coming back and back," he says.

But O’Brien’s newest venture really plays to his Catholic faith.

On Aug. 25 this year, on the feast of St. Genesius, the patron of actors, Theater of the Word, Inc. (TWI), was officially begun. Its hope is to bring the Word of God onstage, sharing the Good News of Christ with others in a variety of dramatic ventures.

One part of this new company, the Morning Star Players, will perform a Christmas Dinner Theater of two one-act plays at Bishop Lane Retreat Center in Rockford on Dec. 8 and 9 (see box).

O’Brien describes Theater of the Word as something he had "sitting on the back burner" for a time. "I had been wondering if there was a way to share my faith through drama," he says.

Then Archbishop Raymond L. Burke of St. Louis wrote a letter in the St. Louis Review archdiocesan newspaper, encouraging people to produce the series of plays written by Mother Mary Francis — a St. Louis native who became a Poor Clare sister at a monastery in New Mexico.

"I thought, our 150th anniversary (as an archdiocese) is coming up in 2008, (and) I guess we ought to do this," O’Brien says. So he wrote a note to that effect to the archbishop.

Three months later, a check for $1,000 — a personal donation from Archbishop Burke — arrived. The archbishop told O’Brien that he’d help him all he could in promoting his efforts. "You have to do this," the archbishop told him.

"I realized this is serious," O’Brien says. "It’s (no more) just playing around. And at the same time, an opportunity opened up with Ignatius Press. They wanted to commit" to expanding their ministry in new ways, including drama.

"It all kind of came together," O’Brien says. "It is scary when you have a ("someday") idea, and then you realize ‘Oh, I guess it’s going to be today!’

"You reach a kind of critical mass … a couple of dominoes fall, and then they all start falling (into place)."

O’Brien and TWI are now working on three series, including a Theater of the Word show for Eternal Word Television Network, to be taped next year and probably aired in 2009, O’Brien says.

The Christian/Catholic dramas and comedies performed by TWI are "not preachy, and they’re not necessarily overtly Catholic," he says. But they are focused on bringing God’s Word to audiences of all ages.

O’Brien has firsthand experience on how God can use drama to evangelize.

"At age 9, I decided I was an atheist," O’Brien says.

Raised in a "nominally-Christian" home where he did not go to church or Sunday school, O’Brien remained an atheist until he was 18, when he began seriously focusing on drama.

"I realized that there was an inspiration that would come to any good actor (while) on stage that the actor couldn’t control," he says, explaining that all the preparation for a role still needed that inspiration.

"To me, that was tangible evidence that there was something beyond the (everyday) realm," he says.

For years O’Brien was what he calls a "spiritualist," a believer in something, unfocused on anything considered religious. Then, in 1997, he began reading C.S. Lewis, which led him to Catholic author G.K. Chesterton.

"With all this reading, I realized that maybe this stuff is for real. Not like the televangelists" who he believed were just in it for money, he says. His conversion experience included coincidences and mini-miracles along the way, O’Brien says, but "it really was drama" that brought him to Christianity and then to the Catholic Church.

His wife and children also have embraced the faith. "We were blessed to come (into the Catholic Church) together," though their journeys differed.

With this new company, O’Brien hopes to reach out to audiences and to other actors. "I had always been really devoted to perform on stage," he says. "Most actors don’t know that devotion is misplaced" until it is put to the service of God.

O’Brien has read Pope John Paul II’s 1999 Letter to Artists. "One of my friends uses that as the cornerstone (when he teaches) children’s theater," he says. "He begins each lesson by reading a quote from the letter to the kids, and explains that we can live our faith in our art."

That’s what Theater of the Word is all about, O’Brien says. The quote that sums it all up for him comes from the Bible: "And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us."

"I think art, especially drama, is incarnational," he says. "What we do is take words on paper and flesh them out on stage. In real life, we take the words of the Gospel and, in our imperfect way, we try to incarnate it in our lives.

"I really enjoy working with people who are serious about their faith," O’Brien says of TWI. "Even with all our flaws, we all try our best and are serious about our faith.

"That, to me, is amazing."

Editor’s note: Pope John Paul II’s Letter to Artists can be found in its entirety at: http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/letters/documents/hf_jp-ii_let_23041999_artists_en.html.