Christian theater company presenting new play on Dorothy Day this summer

Acacia Theatre Company in Milwaukee will present a two-act play about the life of Dorothy Day, co-founder of the Catholic Worker movement, in July.

The play, titled "This Other Love" and written by Patty McCarty, takes place in August 1927, during a time Day was struggling with her growing spirituality and relationship with her common-law husband, Forster Batterham. The play addresses Day following God's call to work with the poor. Janet Bouman Peterson is the play's production director.

McCarty wrote "This Other Love" as part of a thesis project while a student at University of Missouri – Kansas City in 1994. She submitted the finished product to Acacia Theatre Company, but it was left forgotten until last year, when someone found it while the theater's offices were in the middle of moving to a new location. Acacia is a nonprofit, independent and interdenominational Christian theater company that was founded in 1980.

As a journalist, McCarty co-founded Community Now, the country's first interfaith community newspaper. She has also served as editor of The American Nurse, newspaper of the American Nurses Association, and copyeditor for NCR.

"[Dorothy Day] made a great impression on me," McCarty, who interviewed Day at Marquette University in 1955, said in a press release. "When I was growing up, we were poor, and Dorothy Day was the first person I knew in favor of voluntary poverty, a ministerial vow of renouncing material possessions."

Performances of "This Other Love" will take place July 14-16 and July 20-23 at Concordia University Wisconsin's Todd Wehr Auditorium in Mequon, a northern suburb of Milwaukee. All performance times are 7:30 p.m. CST except July 16 and 23 at 3 p.m. and July 22 at 4 p.m. Tickets cost $16 for adults and $13 for seniors, students and full-time clergy. They can be purchased on Acacia Theatre Company's website.

[Shireen Korkzan is an NCR Bertelsen intern. Her email address is skorkzan@ncronline.org.]​