Now in its third year, I am delighted to be directing once again, for The Sheen Center Theater Festival which celebrates the voices of emerging and established Catholic playwrights. The Festival operates from the premise that the work of a Catholic writer will provide glimpses of a Catholic vision, no matter what their subject.

This year, The Sheen Center Theater Festival celebrates the voices of emerging and established Catholic playwrights featuring work by established playwrights Caridad Svich (OBIE Award Winner), Nathan Yungerberg (Cherry Lane mentee under Stephen Adley Guirgus), William Baer (Guggenheim Fellowship recipient), and Erik Ehn (Whiting Award winner) as well as an arrangement and performance of The Gospel of John with actor Ken Jennings.

The plays run Thursday through Sunday, and I will be directing “Three Generations of Imbeciles”
Sunday, June 23rd, 2 PM

Three Generations of Imbeciles by William Baer
Directed by Kathy Gail MacGowan

Featuring: Kent Coleman* Gates Leonard, James Jelkin*, Daniel Damiano, Matt Golden* and Daniel Harray* (stage directions).

He won’t be able to prevent 70,000 forced sterilizations, but maybe he can prevent one.

After forced sterilizations are approved by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1927, David Prescott, a young lawyer in Delaware, fights against all odds to prevent the sterilization of a helpless sixteen-year-old girl. At the Delaware Colony for the Feebleminded (1927), Dr. John Campbell is forcibly prevented from sexually mutilating Abigail Smith against her will.  Eventually, David Prescott, a former prosecutor, agrees to try and prevent Abby’s forced sterilization, assisted by Eugenics expert Rebecca Dawson. The historical background of this play is the U.S. government’s involvement in the forced sterilizations of genetic “defectives” – over 70,000 Americans – made possible by the Supreme Court’s Buck v. Bell decision to prevent future “generations of imbeciles.”