Wondering how God is calling you? Are you curious about how your job or set of relationships is really a vocation? Do you want some awesome discussions around faith in real-life and more? Think hanging out with Catholic sisters and a fun thoughtful, faith community is cool? Then you are in the right place! Welcome! Explore and be sure to visit with us every weekday at 6 pm CT in our chat room.
Actor describes learning the role of Sister Helen Prejean
Sister Helen Prejean, CSJ, is a Sister of Saint Joseph and has worked tirelessly against the death penalty. She wrote Dead Man Walking
Robbins and starring Susan Sarandon. Because the book and film provoked much discussion and debate about the death penalty, Tim Robbins and Sister Helen began offering the stage play for college and university students as a way “to further widen the circle of public discourse on the death penalty”. Their project is called The Dead Man Walking School Theatre Project.
Here are some selections from a blog post by Rose Mohan, a BFA student at Naropa University, who is learning the role of Sister Helen Prejean:
I thought I was going to have to tone down my feistiness in order to be able to play a nun. Turns out, I have to find new heights of grit in order to be able to do justice to the character of Sister Prejean in Dead Man Walking. In almost every scene, Prejean manages to slice through what she perceives to be someone else’s delusions. She really holds her own with those hard-shelled prison men. I’m still working on getting there; sanely. One day after rehearsal I was so fired up that I had to walk out of the building jumping and punching the air.
…I have learned so much in this process already. I grew up mildly Christian and when I go to church it still leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth. I don’t want some old white guy telling me what to do, as if he understands faith better than I do. A lot of the messages are beautiful but there is no way anyone can convince me that the church provides the only way to God.
Sister Prejean is so refreshing to me because she is not afraid to openly question her faith, to form her own relationship to God outside of the church, to trust her own sense of what is right. It takes a lot of strength to hold one’s faith and be able to question at the same time. But if we are not willing to question, how can we learn?
I also really appreciate her humanness. My acting teacher expressed that she is a gritty, tenacious woman first and a nun second. Throughout the play we see that Prejean makes mistakes, feels afraid, experiences loneliness, questions the authority of the church and her own involvement in prison work and expresses dislike for someone she is trying to help. She is just an ordinary person who has made a commitment that has changed the orientation of her life. I am taking some cues from Prejean — how to not back down, how to be curious, how to continue when you don’t know.
(Do I have to be a nun? post from the Naropa BFA Performance News blog)
It is very cool to see how learning about Sister Helen and playing her can be such a transformative experience. I also like how Rose describes what I would call a “vocation” to performance. It strikes me as being very similar to the calling of wanting to give one’s life to something more, something that is bigger than us like “truth” and “goodness” and “beauty” … and God.
I am beginning to understand why people devote their lives to performance. It is like following an elusive and beckoning beast to try to convey something that means something, something that makes sense of all the somethings that happen to a person. We keep trying to hit something that is the ultimate truth, but of course, that is impossible, and yet it also doesn’t feel far away. It is like truth is already there just watching you try to make a model of it and you can always feel how close you come. I hope that we will capture some part of truth in what we are making.
For more information about Naropa University’s performance of Dead Man Walking as well as other actors’ thoughts, check out Tim Robbins play coming to Naropa in the Boulder Reporter (March 26, 2010).
* * *
Join A Nun’s Life Community for prayer today via a live podcast at http://aNunsLife.org/LIVE at 6 p.m. Central Time (check your time zone)
Get your nun schwag! -- We've got cool nunly items including this awesome mug at 
{ 5 comments }
I had the great honor of playing Matthew Poncelet in a production of the show, meeting Tim Robbins, and finally meeting Sr. Helen herself. She is a beautiful, strong woman and a tireless advocate for the dignity of human life (with a fantastic sense of humor), and it is so important to have people like her working with those whom many of us would just as soon forget. What a tremendous witness to the Gospel. Thanks for sharing this.
What a great opportunity, Michael. I didn’t know you had some acting blood in you! I met Sister Helen once at a book signing. I didn’t have my copy of her book with me, but I stood in line just to shake her hand. She has such good energy, kindness, and warmth, but make no mistake, she will defend human life with all her strength!
Helen came to UDM to speak a couple of years ago and was dynamic and awe-inspiring!
Sister Helen spoke at the LA Religious Congress, one year that I was there and I got to hear her speak and I agree with you all, that she is a dynamic woman. Because of her I began a long pen pal communication with a man on death row in San Quentin. At the time I was also picketing the LA courthouse with the Catholic Worker folks once a week with huge signs that said ” Abolish the Death Penalty”. I won’t tell you what some of the drivers passing by yelled at us, but it was scary. I’ll bet Sister Helen has to put up with a lot of that type of abuse and worse. She is indeed a dedicated and brave sister.
I had heard her speak once before at an SOA protest in Georgia, and fell in love with her then. Meeting her in person and so intimately was just awesome.