The Road to Damascus (As Told by Grandmother to Little Red) is a solo performance piece with live music that uses the story of Saul/Paul’s conversion experience from Acts 9 of the New Testament as a call for an awakening to the role the church has played in creating and supporting our country’s inequitable criminal legal system.

The Road to Damascus is written and performed by Kathy Randels and directed and co-created with Odile Del Giudice. The piece draws upon: Randels’ upbringing in the church as the offspring of two generations of Southern Baptist preachers; teaching theater to and learning from the currently and formerly incarcerated women at the Louisiana Correctional Institute for Women for 29 years; a decade of dialogue and action with St. Charles Avenue Baptist Church and its Center for Faith + Action around the ways in which faith communities can participate in long-needed criminal legal system reform in our state; and Del Giudice’s years of deep work identifying and addressing collective trauma.

The piece began as a prayer for the release of Gloria “Mama Glo” Williams, a longtime member of the LCIW Drama Club whose 51 years behind bars were the longest sentence served at LCIW.  In 2019, when Gloria was pardoned by the Louisiana Board of Pardons, PDMNOLA led organizations including The Graduates, VOTE, Kumbuka African Dance and Drum Collective, The Washitaw Nation, ArtSpot Productions, and St. Charles Ave. Baptist Church and its Center for Faith + Action in a “Free Mama Glo” campaign to encourage Louisiana’s then-Governor John Bel Edwards to approve her release, which he finally did on January 25, 2022.

In The Road to Damascus (As told by Grandmother to Little Red), Grandmother is an incarcerated woman who tells the story of Saul/Paul’s conversion experience to her granddaughter during prison visits as a way to illuminate the persecutorial nature of the system in which they live.  They share stories of encounters with the Wolf and the Huntsman that leave questions as to which of these two figures is predator and which is savior.  Grandmother casts her prison guard, who happens to be named Saul, as the Huntsman in the tale she weaves for Little Red.  Through the telling of the tale, we examine the perpetrator/victim/savior dynamic that is present in both stories, in ourselves, and in our national consciousness.  

At a time when Christianity is increasingly polarized by political interests and parties, this performance calls on Christ’s deepest teachings to help us look at the role we have each played in crime and punishment, harm and healing, and invites us to deepen our collective ability to look at and begin to heal the harm that has been done to our nation and its citizens in the name of Christianity.  We invite you to come witness this "Damascus experience" – and perhaps share your own.

The Road to Damascus begins around sunset, runs 75 minutes with no intermission, and is appropriate for audiences 12-years-old and up. Post-performance discussions will feature Gloria "Mama Glo" Williams (except in Louisiana, where the conditions of her parole prevent her attendance).

2025 performances are supported by The St Charles Center for Faith + Action's new program, In Deed and Truth (IDAT), which invites predominantly historically white congregations to tell the whole truth about their histories and enter an intentional, guided discernment process to determine how each local church will act upon the full knowledge of their origins.  With support from The Henry Luce Foundation, and in partnership with E Pluribus Unum.