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Hey gang,<br>
a little self promo for my new solo show -- this Saturday 6/16 at the
Paulist Center on Park Street in downtown Boston, 7:30pm. <br><br>
I'd be delighted if you could make it! Details
below.....<br>
Warmly,<br>
Michael<br><br>
*****************************************************************************<br>
<br>
<b>Catholic Paulist Center hosts "Conversations"<br>
</b>Tackles tough subject while being "funny, fond-hearted, and even
comforting."<br><br>
On Saturday, June 16th at 7:30pm, the Paulist Center Catholic Church
community, located at 5 Park Street in downtown Boston, hosts
"Conversations with My Molester: a Journey of Faith" written
and performed by MIT alumnus Michael Mack.
<a href="http://www.michaelmacklive.com" eudora="autourl">
www.michaelmacklive.com<br><br>
</a>Called "spellbinding... an amazing story of forgiveness" by
the Cambridge Chronicle, the play premiered at Boston University's Boston
Playwrights Theatre in January directed by Daniel Gidron.<br><br>
The play opens with Mack as an 11-year old Catholic boy dreaming of
becoming a priest. That dream ends when the pastor of his North Carolina
church invites him to the rectory to help with "a project."
<br><br>
Mack and his family leave the Church. But decades later, with Mack now
living in Massachusetts, he learns that his abuser lives just miles away,
and he lands on his former pastor's doorstep. <br><br>
What happens next sparks a remarkable series of events that lead Mack
back to the Catholic Church.<br><br>
"Powerful," says Barbara Thorp, Director of the Office of
Pastoral Support and Child Protection for the Archdiocese of Boston.
"An intimate and deeply personal journey of profound suffering and
redemption. We all should have the courage of a Michael Mack to delve
into the dark corners of one’s life story resolved to seek the face of
mercy and hope."<br><br>
"It pierces one’s heart," says Father James Savage, parochial
vicar at St. Paul Catholic Parish where Mack is a parishioner. "I
think that what he tried to do was on the one hand show the darkness of
what had happened with him, and at the same time show his journey to find
a way to deal with it, which led eventually to his spiritual
healing."<br><br>
The play marks the 10-year anniversary of Boston's clergy sexual abuse
crisis, which broke in 2002 and has subsequently surged worldwide
sparking unprecedented reforms.<br><br>
In his rave review, Daniel Gewertz, onetime theater critic for the
<i>Boston Herald</i>, emphasizes that the play is not what you'd
expect:<br><br>
"From the title of Michael Mack's extraordinary one-man play,
'Conversations With My Molester,' one might think this work is all about
explicit confrontation. But the conversations in Michael Mack's play are
often inward, and the confrontations, while brave, are more concerned
with revelation than anger.<br><br>
"Mack does not shy away from the disturbing elements of his
experiences as an 11 year-old victim of a priest's sexual crimes, yet
this picture of a man rediscovering his past also manages to be funny,
fond-hearted and even comforting. It is about how power corrupts and
destroys in the outward world, but it is also a work that never forgets
the inner self, and the big journey that self it is capable of
undertaking."<br><br>
Mack’s poetry career began at MIT. While a student at the Sloan School of
Management, he took a poetry class that changed his life. Encouraged by
his Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Maxine Kumin who became his mentor, and
also Nobel Prize winning poet Seamus Heaney, Mack switched majors and
graduated from MIT's Writing Program.<br><br>
Since then he has been in demand for his solo play <i>Hearing Voices,
Speaking in Tongues</i>, which he began at MIT, and has since performed
at the US Library of Congress, Off-Off-Broadway at the Times Square Arts
Center, at Harvard and Yale Universities, and for scores of mental health
conferences – even at the FBI's 32nd Annual Hostage Negotiation
Seminar.<br><br>
Tickets for the Paulist Center show are available at the door for a
goodwill offering -- $15 suggested.<br><br>
<b>LOCATION. </b>The Paulist Center is located at 5 Park Street, Boston
MA 02108 -- half a block from the MBTA Park Street Station (Red Line
& Green Line).<br><br>
<b>CAREFUL!</b> If you're using a map search engine, watch out for
another Park Street miles away on the other side of Boston. Be sure to
use the Paulist Center zip code 02108.<br><br>
More news & information at... <br>
<a href="http://www.michaelmacklive.com" eudora="autourl">
www.michaelmacklive.com<br><br>
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