St. Paul Journeys across St. Louis

... from The St. Louis Review ...


August 8, 2008

‘Journey of St. Paul’ to bring apostle to life on local stage

by Jennifer Brinker, Review Staff Writer
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SAINTLY PRODUCTION - Theater of the Word founder Kevin O'Brien portrays St. Paul in upcoming performances of 'The Journey of St. Paul.'
Want to learn more about St. Paul the Apostle?

Theater of the Word, a local Catholic theater production company, is offering to archdiocesan parishes performances of "The Journey of St. Paul," to coincide with the Year of St. Paul designated by Pope Benedict XVI.

Presentations will be offered to parishes for free, with donations accepted, said Theater of the Word founder Kevin O’Brien.

"Our main focus is to evangelize, to share the word of St. Paul and to let people know who we are," he said.

Theater of the Word launched its inaugural season last year at the Cardinal Rigali Center in Shrewsbury. The company presented five shows, all with a Catholic perspective.

"The Journey of St. Paul" was the company’s final production of the season. It details the story of St. Paul, beginning with a scene from the Acts of the Apostles, Chapter 25, in which St. Paul is a prisoner at Caesarea under the Roman governor Festus.

St. Paul is then brought before King Agrippa and Queen Bernice, where he tells the story of his conversion to Christianity. From the recounting of his miraculous conversion on his journey to Damascus, the cast performs dramatic scenes of healings, shipwrecks, stonings and miracles.

"It shows how real the Church still is and how real it was and the kind of effort and sacrifice that went along in the beginning to establish the Church after the Resurrection," said O’Brien.

The Church is currently celebrating the Year of St. Paul to

mark the approximate 2,000th anniversary of the saint’s birth. The year began June 28, the eve of Sts. Peter and Paul, and will continue through June 29, 2009.

Theater of the Word also has performed "The Journey of St. Paul" in various places around the country this summer, including the Archdiocese of Hartford, Conn., and Archdiocese of Cincinnati. It also has been performed for EWTN and will be featured in a series O’Brien is producing for the Catholic television network in 2009.

Response to the show has been overwhelming, he said.

"People tell us how much it moves them and it makes St. Paul seem more real to them." Others have said how they have enjoyed hearing "the words of Scripture performed. Most of the dialogue is taken from the Book of Acts and Paul’s epistles."

O’Brien said about a dozen archdiocesan parishes already have booked performances later this year.

"Parishes seem very interested in doing something to commemorate the Year of St. Paul," he noted. "I think the Holy Spirit is at work, and the Holy Father was inspired to make this the Pauline Year. People in general are wanting to know more about the great apostle."

Performances will be offered to parishes throughout the year, but O’Brien said that the company’s schedule will become tighter once its second season kicks off in late October at the Cardinal Rigali Center.

For more information on Theater of the Word or to Book a performance of "The Journey of St. Paul," call (314) 849-WORD (9673).

Several archdiocesan parishes to host 'Journey of St. Paul' The following parishes have scheduled 'The Journey of St. Paul.' They are:

St. Cletus, 2705 Zumbehl Road in St. Charles, 2 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 24;

St. Elizabeth of Hungary, 1420 S. Sappington Road in Crestwood, 7 p.m. Friday, Sept. 5;

Immaculate Conception, 2300 Church Road in Arnold, 7 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 6;

St. Catherine Laboure, 9740 Sappington Road in Sappington, 7 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 10;

St. Joseph, 106 N. Meramec Ave. in Clayton, noon, Sunday, Sept. 14;

St. Clement of Rome, 1510 Bopp Road in Des Peres, 7 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 17;

St. Anthony, 3009 High Ridge Blvd. in High Ridge, 7 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 20;

Sts. Teresa and Bridget, 3636 North Market St. in North St. Louis, noon Sunday, Sept. 21;

Our Lady of the Rosary, 11725 Bellefontaine Road in Spanish Lake, 7 p.m., Monday, Sept. 22;

St. Martin of Tours, 610 W. Ripa Ave. in Lemay, 7 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 24;

St. Ann, 7851 Highway YY in Clover Bottom, 6 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 12;

St. Patrick, 405 S. Church St. in Wentzville, 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 18;

Holy Trinity, 3500 St. Luke Lane in St. Ann, 7 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 1;

Holy Name of Jesus, 10235 Ashbrook Drive in Bissell Hills, 2 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 2;

Sacred Heart, 17 Ann Ave. in Valley Park, 7 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 16;

St. Paul, 1223 Church Road in St. Paul, 7 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 25, 2009;

Immaculate Conception, 7701 Highway N in Dardenne Prairie, 7 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 29, 2009.


Show dates and times are subject to change. There is no admission charge. A freewill offering will be accepted after each show to support the ministry of Theater of the Word. For more information, call (314) 849-WORD (9673).

HBO from A to F

By popular demand, here is an article I wrote for my Upstage Productions Murder Mystery Newsletter in May of 2000. I am not making it up.



As I’ve boasted in previous newsletters, we were invited to perform for what I was told were a group of “top HBO producers” at the Belhurst Castle in Geneva, New York in April. The HBO folks wanted me to do a parody of “The Sopranos”, their fascinating, violent, vulgar, and addictive hit drama series, which features what we kindly call the “F word” as a mainstay adjective. And so I set to work writing a parody of the show and faxed it off to HBO.

They called me in March. “We really are happy to be working with you on this project,” they told me, “but we feel your script is a little … vulgar.” This is because in the first act, Tony introduces Uncle Junior, his 87 year old uncle, and Uncle Junior uses the “F word” literally 17 times in his first speech. To which Tony replies, “Uncle Junior, ever since you got cable, you been a real pain in the ass!”

So when the HBO chick told me my script was “vulgar”, I predictably replied, “Well, so is your show. And this performance is for your top producers, who put together shows like this, right?”

“Well,” she explained, “these are our top TELEMARKETING producers. These are the top salesmen of HBO subscriptions across the country.” – a different kind of “top producer” entirely. And so the “top producers” were really the “top losers”, as it were.

So I rewrote my brilliantly vulgar script, cleaning it up in the process, and we hit the road last month to make these telemarketers happy (by interrupting their dinners, in a sense – how fitting!)



The show was, I am proud to say, well received by the audience, but not by HBO, who, I’m afraid, were not the easiest people to work with. Nevertheless, we got an “A” , not an “F”, and not even an “F word”. Funny how they dish it out, and the subscribers are expected to "dish" it in, but they can't always take it.

How I Invented THE SIMPSONS

Last week my actors and I had a great time in Evansville, Indiana with Bill Baer, creative writing professor at the University of Evansville and founder of The Southwell Institute (Bill is third from left in the photo below.)



I told Bill about my latest post re. HBO and The Sopranos and he told me the story of how his brother helped create and develop The Sopranos, but was never paid for it, and eventually sued the producer of the series.

This made me tell the story of how I'm pretty sure I helped create The Simpsons, TV's longest running cartoon situation comedy.



This is all true and I am not making any of it up.

The story begins in the late 1970's, when I began writing and drawing a comic strip about a real-life St. Louis family that I knew as acquaintances. I turned them, in my strip, into a horrifically dysfunctional group of people, giving them bizarre and vulgar adventures in the rich St. Louis suburbs. The family consisted of a father named Homer, whom I made bald and stupid, a mother with a tall bee-hive hairdo, a spoiled brat son, an unahppy daughter, and later a baby girl.



I only showed these cartoons to my closest friends, as I knew that, since the characters were all called by the same names as their real-life counterparts, it would not be fair to the actual family to parody them publicly.

Then, in the mid-1980's, The Riverfront Times, St. Louis' atlernative weekly newspaper, ran a feature article by Matt Groening, who at the time was drawing a syndicated cartoon called Life in Hell about a rabbit with one ear.



Groening's article said, "If you're a cartoonist and you think you have no talent, don't despair! Look at me. I'm drawing a comic about a stupid rabbit with one ear and I'm syndicated all over the country!" He encouraged folks to keep drawing, and the Riverfront Times followed up by announcing a Comic Strip Contest, the winner of which would have his work published in the paper.

I therefore wrote an introduction to my comic strip about Homer's dysfunctional family. In the introduction I claimed that I had begun drawing this strip in the 1930's, and that the real-life St. Louis family of the same name had been an attempt by some buffoon to copy my work by living it out in real life! Copyright infringement, you see. Life imitating art.

I submitted the typed intro and a copy of my cartoons under the pseudonym "Freeman Ring" and waited to find out if I would win the contest - of which Matt Groening himself might very well have been a judge (I honestly don't recall, as it's been so long ago).



You see here my drawing (from the mid-1980's) of my character Homer and his wife in bed. Their baby has just been abducted, and the mother sits awake in fear, while Homer sleeps soundly.

At any rate, a few weeks went by and the phone rang.

"Is Freeman Ring there?"

"Speaking."

"This is so-and-so from the Riverfront Times. I just wanted to tell you that there's no way your strip can win the contest. It's way too vulgar and the characters are a real-life prominent family in St. Louis. But everyone at the office has read it and we think it's the funniest thing we've ever seen in our lives."



I did not celebrate, as Homer's wife is doing in this drawing of mine from c. 1985. I simply thanked him for the call and went on with my life.

Within a few years, guess what? The Simpsons began appearing on TV. Now although Matt Groening claims his characters are named after his own family members, including his father, whose name is actually Homer, it did seem odd that a cartoonist who was doing a strip about a one-eared rabbit suddenly began drawing a cartoon about a dysfunctional family whose father was a bald stupid guy named Homer, whose mother had a bee-hive hairdo, whose son was a trouble-maker, and which was rounded out by an unappreciated daughter and a baby girl. Oh, and a crabby cat - like the one in my cartoon family.



It's also rather odd how the early sketches of The Simpsons bear a true resemblance to my own drawings.

Now of course it's possible that Groening came up with The Simpsons entirely on his own, that he never saw my comics, and that the Homer and bee-hive issues are just coincidences. Perhaps he was not in fact a judge for the contest and the staff at the Riverfront Times never passed my drawings on to him.



It's also possible that I invented the Simpsons.

Our friend Bill Baer said, "It's almost certain that you did." Perhaps this is what Homer would be thinking in my portrait of him (left), had I not drawn it c. 1981.

The problem is, my characters are based on real people, a rich St. Louis family that's probably even more disturbed than I made them out to be in my stories. Thus, if I sued Groening, the money could very well end up going to the real-life "Simpsons", and probably not to me.



In the meantime, I continue to work in relative obscurity - the unsung host of The Theater of the Word on EWTN, unrecognized as the only man to play every part in a Shakespeare play (on an Ignatius Press audio book), and ignored as the true creator of The Simpsons.

By the way, I'm taking donations to make my next mortgage payment.

And that, my friends, is show-biz!