Theater artists/educators Anne and Stephanie had been working together for over 4 years before they realized they had something in common: they're both lapsed Catholics. Join them as they compare notes on their respective Catholic upbringings.
CONTACT the hosts at lapsedpodcast@gmail.com
ANNE McNAMEE-KEELS is a facilitator, a theatre educator, and the former reigning Wrightwood Irish Princess of Chicago’s Southside Irish Parade (5-7 year-old division). She attended the largest all girls’ Catholic high school in the US, where she served detention exactly once for either sitting on the floor or wearing patterned socks, she can’t remember which. She holds a BS in Performance Studies from Northwestern and an MFA in Theatre for Youth and Communities from UT Austin, and she has worked in countless classrooms with teachers and young people in far flung locales like India and Texas. Now she resides in Oak Park, IL with her husband, two fur babies, and two adorable human children.
STEPHANIE CHAVARA is a teaching artist whose focus is theatre and storytelling. She's been a lapsed Catholic since high school where she got detention for having a stripe on her shoes and nearly got suspended after an argument with her theology teacher. Her saint's day is St. Stephen's Day and, when her grandmother was alive, that meant she got 3 whole dollars every December 26th ($1 more than her cousins, since she's the oldest of 26 Chavaras). After working as an actor and creating theatre with young people from Bulgaria to Montana, she has made a home and garden with her husband in the small Western Pennsylvania area where her father grew up, a place that was once listed in Ripley's Believe it or Not as having the highest numbers of churches and bars per capita.