The Road to Damascus is a new solo performance piece written and performed by Kathy Randels and directed by Odile Del Giudice that uses the story of Saul/Paul’s conversion experience as described in Acts 9 of the New Testament as a call for an awakening to the role the church has played in creating and sanctifying our country’s inequitable criminal legal system.
The Road to Damascus is produced by ArtSpot Productions, a 25-year-old New Orleans-based company equally dedicated to social justice and original theater, and was built, in part, on decades of experience teaching theater and performance at the Louisiana Correctional Institute for Women (LCIW) in St. Gabriel, Louisiana.
In The Road to Damascus (as told by Grandmother to Little Red), Grandmother is an incarcerated woman who tells the story of Saul/Paul’s conversion experience to her granddaughter during prison visits as a way to illuminate the persecutorial nature of the system in which they live. They acknowledge one another’s sexual traumas, and share stories of encounters with the Wolf and the Huntsman that leave questions as to which of these two figures is predator and which is savior. Grandmother casts her prison guard, who happens to be named Saul, as the Huntsman in the tale she weaves for Little Red. Through the telling of the tale, we examine the perpetrator/victim/savior dynamic that is present in both stories, in ourselves, and in our national consciousness.
At a time when Christianity is increasingly polarized by political interests and parties, this performance calls on Christ’s deepest teachings to help us look at the role we have each played in crime and punishment, harm and healing, and invites us to deepen our collective ability to look at and begin to heal the harm that has been done to our nation and its citizens in the name of Christianity.
The Road to Damascus is written and performed by Kathy Randels and directed and co-created with Odile Del Giudice; designers Diane Baas (lighting), Kevin Griffith (set), Steve Gilliland (sound and music) and Shawn Hall (costumes), along with stage manager Tricia Anderson weave their unique art forms into this multidisciplinary performance. The piece draws upon: Randels’ upbringing in the church as the offspring of two generations of Southern Baptist preachers; teaching theater to and learning from the currently and formerly incarcerated women at the Louisiana Correctional Institute for Women for 24 years; a decade of dialogue and action with St. Charles Avenue Baptist Church and its Center for Faith + Action around the ways in which faith communities can participate in long-needed criminal legal system reform in our state; and Del Giudice’s years of deep work identifying and addressing collective trauma.
The Road to Damascus began as a prayer for the release of Gloria “Mama Glo” Williams, a longtime member of the LCIW Drama Club whose 52 years behind bars was the longest sentence served at LCIW. The Union performances will be Mama Glo’s first chance to see the piece in person. She will speak afterwards with her sister, Mary Smith-Moore. From 2019-2022, PDMNOLA led a “Free Mama Glo” campaign with The Graduates, VOTE, Kumbuka African Dance and Drum Collective, The Washitaw Nation, ArtSpot Productions, St. Charles Ave. Baptist Church and its Center for Faith + Action to encourage Louisiana’s Governor John Bel Edwards to grant her pardon, which he finally did on January 25, 2022.
We invite you to come witness this “Damascus experience” – and perhaps share your own – as a way to initiate or deepen the conversation around identifying the harm that has led to our current, dysfunctional legal system; and to collectively find ways to actively repair and end that harm.
The Road to Damascus runs 75 minutes with no intermission and is appropriate for audiences 12-years-old and up. All tickets for the general public are at a suggested price of $25 but you may choose your own pay-what-you-can price during the ticketing process. Both performances are free to active members of the UTS community.
Please send questions to (504) 826-7783 or [email protected]
Photos by Shannon Brinkman
