“Haunted by God” is a one-woman play about Dorothy Day, co-founder of the Catholic Worker Movement. The performance will take place on Sunday, March 31, at 5 p.m. at Epiphany of the Lord Catholic Church, 7336 W. Britton Rd. in Oklahoma City. Admission is free.
Hailed in Sojourners Magazine as a “wonderfully uplifting theater experience,” this dramatic portrait tells the story of the woman the New York Times eulogized as a “nonviolent social radical of luminous personality.”
Dorothy Day (1897-1980) was a powerful woman of immense conviction who found herself jailed many times when witnessing her beliefs, including women’s suffrage. In New York in 1933, she and a French-born itinerant philosopher Peter Maurin co-founded the Catholic Worker, a living movement that has been responsible for feeding and housing the homeless while maintaining a monthly, nationally-read newspaper. Today, there are more than 100 Catholic Worker houses in the United States and around the world.
Day spent 47 years living with the poor and challenging the U.S. government to halt acts of war. She is known as the “mother of the peace movement” in the United States and has influenced such American peacemakers as Daniel Berrigan and Michael Harrington. She has been called “the most significant, interesting and influential person in the history of the American Catholic Church.”
In 2000, Saint John Paul II granted the Archdiocese of New York permission to open Dorothy Day’s cause for canonization, allowing her to be called a “Servant of God” in the eyes of the Catholic Church. Pope Benedict XVI in 2013, in the closing days of his papacy, cited Day as an example of conversion. While visiting the United States in 2015, Pope Francis addressed the U.S. Joint Session of Congress and made the following observation: “In these times when social concerns are so important, I cannot fail to mention the Servant of God Dorothy Day, who founded the Catholic Worker Movement. Her social activism, her passion for justice and for the cause of the oppressed, were inspired by the Gospel, her faith and the example of the saints.”
“Haunted by God” was written by Paul Amandes, Lisa Wagner (who also portrays Day) and Robert McClory. Directed by Virginia Smith, with costume and set design by Daniel Ostling, this acclaimed production has been touring the United States since May 1990.
In a review for the Chicago Reader, Maura Troester wrote, “It’s not easy to capture the spirit of a woman nominated for sainthood, but Wagner does it with charm, wit and tremendous faith in the power of her words.”