Lisa Wagner has spent the past 13 years tirelessly performing a 90-minute, one-actor dramatization of the life of Dorothy Day. “Tirelessly” is no exaggeration: She is often moving full-speed on stage, changing costumes, while pacing and talking with the speed and energy for which Day was always known.

The play, which she recently performed at Dominican University and at Mary Seat of Wisdom Parish in Park Ridge, is called “Haunted by God.” Wagner’s performance seems to be haunted by Dorothy Day herself.

“I feel so closely tied to her when I perform ‘Haunted by God,’” Wagner said. “The performance keeps me grounded in my faith. Sometimes I begin to forget what is important to me, and performing as Dorothy reminds me. Her principles are very much like mine.”

Born in 1897, Day lived through the Great Depression and two world wars, spending most of her life in Chicago and New York. Her parents were atheists, and she grew up with little teaching of religion. Nevertheless, she said God haunted her. She wrote about those days as the “long loneliness. I mean a spiritual hunger … a loneliness that was in me, no matter how happy I was and how fulfilled in my personal life.” (from “A Radical Devotion” by Robert Coles).

Similarly, Wagner felt stirrings in her that “would not allow me to have peace,” she said. “I’ve wanted to be an actor for as long as I can remember. When I was 15, I went on a retreat that opened my eyes to my faith. After that, I wanted to be a minister. Then in college, I awoke to the meaning of social justice, which caused me great pain to feel the needs of so many people. I wanted to be with the poor. I just couldn’t figure out how to combine my desires to be an actor, a minister and an activist,” Wagner said.

Day also took seriously the needs of the poor, and the teachings of Jesus about our responsibilities to them, beginning when she read Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle.” And, like Wagner, she too searched for a way to bring together her ministry and her activism. Day became a Catholic, and with her friend, Peter Maurin, started a radical and spiritual newspaper that called on each individual to respond to injustices in society. When The Catholic Worker newspaper wrote about the need for houses of hospitality throughout the country’s parishes, the home of Maurin and Day became the first such home. Today, there are over 130 Catholic Worker hospitality communities in 32 states and nine countries.

Wagner’s first glimpse at how to combine her multiple callings came when she heard the story of Day’s life at a church mission. “I was so affected by the way Dorothy Day lived her faith. I was filled with a longing to tell the honest stories of people who lived what they believed,” Wagner said.

When she heard the call for auditions for a play about Dorothy Day written under the auspices of the group Call to Action, Wagner said she jumped at the chance. “Nine months later, we did our first show. Our first version had a lot of mistakes. It was very rough. But in spite of that, it went over great—we did 60 shows all around the country that year,” Wagner said. The play has continued to be a hit. During these past 13 years, Wagner has performed throughout the United States and around the world, eventually forming Still Point Theater Collective, housed on the near West Side of Chicago, to produce the play.

“I don’t mean to sound arrogant, but the play really does seem to affect many people in deep ways,” Wagner said. “I think I’m doing what God has called me to do. I know now that in some ways I am a minister and an activist, but my medium is theater.” Still Point Theater Collective has written and produced an array of dramas, including “Points of Arrival,” a performance about Jean Donovan, one of the four women martyred in El Salvador in 1980. Still Point is a ministry of St. Paul Lutheran Church in Villa Park.

The activist in Wagner has not been content to only tell people about living their faith. “It feels good to raise the consciousness of others through our plays, but we also need to work ourselves to improve others’ lives. It’s not enough to just talk about it,” she said. So Still Point has developed outreach activities, bringing theater classes to two prisons in inner-city Chicago, helping troubled youth in Kane County’s criminal justice system learn to express themselves through art, and teaching drama to the developmentally disabled at the Esperanza Community Services Center.

Wagner and Day have much in common, but probably the most significant similarity is their dedication to pacifism. “Dorothy saw a nonviolent life as being at the heart of the Gospel, and so do I. When Jesus told Peter, ‘Put away your sword, for whoever lives by the sword shall perish by the sword,’ I believe he meant that,” Wagner said. Day’s beliefs brought her to jail four times for acts of civil disobedience. Wagner said she has been particularly devastated by the United States’ war with Iraq. “I have never seen such arrogance in our government. I just had to do something,” she explained. “I believe many people feel that way, but don’t know how to express their feelings. They may not feel comfortable going to a rally, but they might do something simple.”

With that belief in mind, Wagner and a group of friends came up with a simple idea—to ask everyone who opposed the war on Iraq to light a candle on Wednesday evenings and place it in their front windows. News about the “Candle for Conscience” movement has spread via internet at www.globalchicago.net/candle, e-mail, and news media, and has now reached many states and other countries.

In 2,000, the late Cardinal O’Connor announced that the Vatican had approved the effort of the Archdiocese of New York to open the cause for the beatification and canonization of Dorothy Day. “With this approval comes the title Servant of God. What a gift to the Church in New York and to the church universal this is!” the cardinal said.

Photos by David V. Kamba