Home / News & Publications / Michigan Catholic News / 2007 / Local dates set for play
Local dates set for 'St. Augustine' play
Robert Delaney of The Michigan Catholic
Published September 28, 2007
Detroit — There is a timelessness about the moral struggles St. Augustine went through on his way to conversion that makes the story of this fourth-century saint speak to people today, says actor-playwright Leonardo Defilippis.
"It's the timelessness and the timeliness," he says.
"You have the story of a kid getting into trouble and a person who has wrestled with lust and sexual addition – he is probably the best person ever to write on that subject," Defilippis says.
Defilippis is bringing his one-man play, "The Confessions of Saint Augustine," to the Detroit area for an 11-performance run Sept. 30-Oct. 12. While in Michigan, he'll also do shows in Ann Arbor and Kalamazoo.
Who was St. Augustine?
Aurelius Augustinus (A.D. 354-430) was born in Tagaste in the Roman province of Numidia (modern-day Souk-Ahras, Algeria) to a pagan father, Patricius (who became a Christian late in life), and a Christian mother, Monica (St. Monica). As a student in Carthage, the young Augustine became attracted to Manichaeism, a religion similar to many of today's New Age beliefs. But later, as a teacher in Milan, he heard its bishop, St. Ambrose, preach. Through the influence of St. Ambrose and his own mother, St. Monica, Augustine became a Christian. He eventually became bishop of Hippo Regius in North Africa (modern-day Bone, Algeria). His influence as a Christian theologian and philosopher continues to this day, and his "Confessions" and "City of God" are still widely read. | Using excerpts from St. Augustine's famous "Confessions" — arguably the first work of autobiography in Christian literature — Defilippis first wrote his stage adaptation in 1987 for the 1600th anniversary of St. Augustine's conversion to Christianity.
"I tried to crystallize portions of what he wrote to present the person who he was," says Defilippis of the 80-minute one-act play.
But other than a limited run in the Pacific Northwest at the time, the play has pretty much sat on the shelf during the intervening years as Defilippis has worked on other stage and motion picture projects, including "Therese," his movie about the life of St. Therese of Lisieux.
Now, Defilippis is hoping these Michigan performances will be the first of what will turn into a national roll-out of the play.
St. Augustine's involvement with Manichaeism — much like a modern-day New Age cult — is another connection with our own day, Defilippis points out.
He says he was already thinking about reviving his "Confessions of St. Augustine" when its timeliness got a boost from the election of Pope Benedict XVI. "Augustine's the current pope's favorite saint, and he goes around quoting him a lot," Defilippis says.
When he took up the task of reading and researching St. Augustine in order to devise the play, he found the "Confessions" to be a "complex and multi-layered" work.
"It's not just a confession of sins, but also a confession of praise, a confession of faith. His language is as rich and as beautiful as Shakespeare's, but much, much deeper," Defilippis says.
Another reason he wanted to bring the play to a wider audience, he continues, was the way it seemed to go over so well with the younger members of the audience.
"Teenagers, you'll find, if they're open to it, find this very attractive, because Augustine was brutally honest, sincerely honest," Defilippis adds.
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