"I was talking with Father John Titus and told him I would love to write a play someday about what Blessed Frederic did, and Father said, 'Why not now?' So I did," said Zokal, a history major.

The play's timeline spans 20-some years — 1830s to Frederic's death in 1853 — and is set in France during the time leading up to the French uprising in 1848 and its aftermath.

"Blessed Frederic was always a layman, he wasn't a priest," says Zokal. "At that time, laymen were kind of unrepresented in the church. He left a ton of letters he had written to friends, and many of them have been translated into English."

The cast of 15 included both university and community members. Roy Lanham, director of the Newman Center, and Tim Mason, an EIU economics professor, were two of the cast members.