Australia's saint-to-be 'MacKillop the Musical' for Aussie saint-to-be is to be immortalised in an all-singing, all-dancing musical stage spectacular featuring dancers, acrobats and a massive chorus, the composer said Tuesday.Xavier Brouwer, who is scouring the country for his leading lady, said "MacKillop the Musical", in the style of Les Miserables, would be staged with a full orchestra to coincide with MacKillop's October 17 canonisation.
He issued a nationwide casting call seeking 80 singers, dancers and gymnasts for the two-hour "musical verging on opera", with an emphasis on strength and humility for candidates hoping to fill the principal role.
"Just like Mary MacKillop the leading lady will need to have a lot of stamina because she appears in almost every scene," Brouwer told AFP of his production, which has been 10 years in the making.
"Her life story is very well told on stage. She had quite a dramatic life and a lot of dramatic events like her excommunication, when she was thrown out of the Church temporarily," he added.
"Being set on stage it also allows the audience to actually feel what she felt and feel what she went through."
"MacKillop the Musical" will follow the life and travails of the Melbourne-born nun who started her own order and devoted her life to building schools and helping the poor.
The Vatican said in February it would canonise MacKillop, after recognising that she had miraculously healed two terminally ill women who prayed to her years after her death.
MacKillop, a bold and pioneering woman who founded her first school in a disused Outback stable, was born to Scottish parents and had a rebellious streak. She was briefly excommunicated from the Church for insubordination.
Some 101 years after her death, MacKillop has a strong following in Australia, with her own Twitter and Facebook accounts, a memorial chapel, commemorative coin, schools and even an electoral district named after her.
SIC: AFP