M
Maranatha
Guest
Wojtyla’s gospel meets the New York theater
f all the places to seek the legacy of Pope John Paul II, West 46th Street in midtown Manhattan, just off Broadway and Times Square, is not the most obvious spot to begin. Yet here, on the same block where aspiring actors queue up for auditions in the Actor’s Equity building, and in the shadow of splashy billboards touting productions of “Legally Blonde” and Monty Python’s “Spamalot,” passers-by are met with a grainy black-and-white picture of an intense young Polish cleric, on a poster proclaiming “The Karol Wojtyla Theatre Festival.”
ohn Paul always was a pope of firsts, and even in death, he continues to break new ground. On May 16, John Paul II became the first pope to have his dramatic work staged in the heart of New York’s Theatre District – admittedly, off-off-Broadway, but geographically and culturally right in the middle of the Great White Way.
Between now and June 17, New York’s Storm Theatre is presenting three works by Wojtyla: “The Jeweler’s Shop,” a three-act meditation on love and marriage; “Our God’s Brother,” the story of freedom-fighter-turned artist Adam Chmielowski, later known as Brother Albert, whose struggle between art and a religious vocation parallels Wojtyla’s own biography; and “Jeremiah,” an allegory about the Nazi occupation of Poland that mixes Old Testament and Polish history.
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f all the places to seek the legacy of Pope John Paul II, West 46th Street in midtown Manhattan, just off Broadway and Times Square, is not the most obvious spot to begin. Yet here, on the same block where aspiring actors queue up for auditions in the Actor’s Equity building, and in the shadow of splashy billboards touting productions of “Legally Blonde” and Monty Python’s “Spamalot,” passers-by are met with a grainy black-and-white picture of an intense young Polish cleric, on a poster proclaiming “The Karol Wojtyla Theatre Festival.”
ohn Paul always was a pope of firsts, and even in death, he continues to break new ground. On May 16, John Paul II became the first pope to have his dramatic work staged in the heart of New York’s Theatre District – admittedly, off-off-Broadway, but geographically and culturally right in the middle of the Great White Way.
Between now and June 17, New York’s Storm Theatre is presenting three works by Wojtyla: “The Jeweler’s Shop,” a three-act meditation on love and marriage; “Our God’s Brother,” the story of freedom-fighter-turned artist Adam Chmielowski, later known as Brother Albert, whose struggle between art and a religious vocation parallels Wojtyla’s own biography; and “Jeremiah,” an allegory about the Nazi occupation of Poland that mixes Old Testament and Polish history.
more