WINONA LAKE – After giving four performances of “The Jeweler’s Shop” in Winona Lake next week, the MasterWorks Festival students will take the show to New York City to perform the play in an off-Broadway theater.
MasterWorks Theater Director Rich Swingle spoke about the play – written by Pope John Paul II before he was a priest – during an interview Thursday afternoon.
“We’re doing a play called ‘The Jeweler’s Shop’ by a gentleman named Karol Wojtyla. You’ve might not heard that name, but here we are in Kosciusko County, and we’ve got Warsaw right here, so maybe there are people that know that name, but for those of you who don’t, Karol Wojtyla later became Pope John Paul II and he wrote this play when he was a young man,” Swingle said.
Wojtyla would take young people through the mountains of Poland and they discussed the issues of life. Swingle said from those discussions, they would develop some plays to perform in local churches and communities as they would go on their way.
“We’re really replicating what happened there. I, and the other faculty working through the course of the festival, not only to teach them to be great actors, but also to understand better what it is to be loved by God and take that love to people around them,” Swingle said.
“The Jeweler’s Shop,” he said, is focused on love. The theme is marriage. The play tells the stories of three different couples.
“In the context we see three very different kinds of relationships,” he said. “One is a very good relationship, but the husband is taken in war. The other relationship is long lasting, but there’s not a real connection going on there. They’re living as strangers to each other, which brings about issues for their daughter, who is then marrying the son of the other couple, so he’s dealing with growing up without a father. So these two young people come together in the third act and wrestle with these issues.”
Almost anyone that attends one of the play’s performances can relate to the characters in the play one way or another, he said, because everyone is either in a marriage or has parents.
“I think people should come expectant to receive wisdom and it can be applied to their own lives. That’s our hope, that’s our prayer, is that people will come away with renewed marriages, renewed understandings of God’s love for us,” Swingle said.
“The Jeweler’s Shop” will be performed July 5 at 8 p.m. at Church of the Good Shepherd; July 6 at 2 p.m. at Grace Village Retirement Home and at 8 p.m. at Sacred Heart Catholic Church; and July 7 at 8 p.m. at Church of the Good Shepherd. All shows are free to the public.
On July 8, Swingle said they are driving to Pittsburgh, Pa., for two nights of performances. They then go on to New York City.
“Where we are going to, on the first night we arrive, we are going to meet with Euna Lee, who is a woman who was kidnapped and held as a prisoner in North Korea for 4-1/2 months. She is going to share her testimony,” Swingle said.
Leaders from various groups will then introduce themselves to the MasterWorks players for a networking opportunity. That Thursday, the group will do a showcase in NYC for agents and casting directors. Friday and Saturday, they will perform “The Jeweler’s Shop” again, as well as some scenes they are developing for the agents and casting directors.
On the last day July 15, the MasterWorks students will perform the play in Swingle’s own church in White Plains, N.Y.
“The performances in Winona Lake are going to benefit from the long-form improv program,” he stated. “This is the first year we’ve done this. We had so many people apply to the program who wanted to do New York, we just couldn’t accept everyone, so we found ourselves turning away some very qualified people and we didn’t want to do that so we started another program.”
Kaelen Carrier, a former MasterWorks student, is teaching the program. She’s starting a professional theater troupe in St. Louis, Mo. Swingle said, “She’s been a great blessing.”
Wednesday, he said, the short-form improv evening was held, followed by improvised worship and enacted prayer from 8:30 p.m. to midnight. Enacted prayer is when people give prayer requests and the performers act them out on the stage.
“I am so proud of our students because they were just right there and available. Leaping to the stage to take on prayers. We prayed for the fires in Colorado. Half of us were the fire, half of us were the rain, and we put out the fire. And it may sound silly just to describe it but I’m hoping we can put that on YouTube as well so you can actually see what happened there. It was a very powerful moment for everybody,” Swingle said. “And there were people sharing deep hurts from their past. Serious visible ailments. So we as a company met them and acted out their stories to the Lord to invite him to take action.”
For more information, visit www.masterworksfestival.org
To see a free video of this interview, and of a Reader’s Theatre performance related to “The Jeweler’s Shop,” visit the video section at www.timesuniononline.com
