In 1995, Cathal Gallagher had completed a play about Cardinal
Mindszenty, a Hungarian churchman imprisoned in the 1940s for
opposing Communism. An Irish-born San Jose Catholic playwright,
Gallagher assumed he could find a Catholic community theater to send his
play. He was wrong: "I looked around for a Catholic community
theater, not just a Catholic theater, but a Catholic community theater
in San Francisco and Los Angeles and couldn't find one, then looked in
the telephone book in Boston and New York and still couldn't find
one...I was amazed because there are Jewish theater companies and
various Christian theater companies. But no Catholic theater companies?
I just couldn't figure that out."
Today, Gallagher knows of at least one Catholic community theater in
America -- his own. Gallagher, along with several other local Catholics
dismayed by the poverty of Catholic culture in America, has founded the
Quo Vadis Theatre company in San Jose "to bring to the stage new
plays about the saints and martyrs of Church history."
"
I think these are the kind of plays that inspire and ennoble the human
spirit," says Gallagher, explaining the philosophy of his fledgling
theater company. "I personally would like to think that when a
young person goes to see a play or a movie that when they come out of
there they would want to become a better person. I don't think that is
happening in mainstream theater or Hollywood today. I think we have lost
that battle.
"I am convinced young people emulate what they see on
stage and screen. But what they see is Robocop 2 and Terminator
3 and there is nothing inspiring or ennobling about that kind of
entertainment. As a Catholic theater company, that is a void we have to
fill."
In the last two
weeks of May, Quo Vadis made its first attempt to fill that void,
performing The Pearl of York, the story of Margaret Clitherow's
martyrdom for hiding Jesuits in Elizabethan England. "What you see in
her life is faith in operation," says Gallagher. "She did hide
priests in her house, had masses, vespers and so on. And when the new law
was passed which meant the death penalty if she continued doing this, she
continued doing it... This woman gave up her life in order to save her
soul."
The play, held at the Sunnyvale Community theater in San
Jose, attracted considerable youth interest, says Gallagher: "The
turnout was fabulous. There was a tremendous response. The theater held
200 and despite the fact that it was graduation time and Memorial weekend,
we averaged about 115 per night on two nights...We had elementary schools.
We had high school kids and junior college kids...And the manager was
amazed that afterwards everybody wanted to talk about it.
"These kinds of plays are wonderful tools to inspire
young people and encourage vocations....For those who are saying, 'Gee,
what is happening to vocations,' I think this is one avenue to approach
vocations, since kids actually came out on a holiday weekend to see a
historical play."
Now Gallagher is considering plays about Thomas More, Thomas
Becket, Oliver Plunkett, Father Damien and Joan of Arc. His hope is that
Quo Vadis can solicit enough donations to perform these plays in a theater
of its own.
"Our long range plan is actually to have a Quo Vadis
theater in every community in America. That is a dream, but I think it is
realizable. We think we have a great product and that no one else is doing
this," says Gallagher. "Let us not waste our time protesting
others. Broadway is not going our way. Neither is Hollywood. Let us go our
own way."
September 1997
