Northwestern College’s Drama Ministries Ensemble (DME) will tour and perform “Sioux Center Sudan,” a play about an Iowa teacher who became a missionary nurse, during spring break March 1–11. After performing in DME member Karisa Meier’s home church in Badger, Iowa, the team will travel to Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York. For tour details, visit www.nwciowa.edu/DMEtour2019.
The play and a book of the same name—authored by Northwestern theatre professor Jeff Barker—are based on the journals of Arlene Schuiteman, who is now in her 90s and retired in Sioux Center. In them, Schuiteman recorded, nearly daily, the events, relationships, and spiritual questions and insights she experienced during her three-decade career as a missionary nurse.
“Sioux Center Sudan” is set in the 1950s and follows Arlene on her first assignment to South Sudan. During the hourlong show, the nine-member DME will bring to life the sights, sounds and a sense of God’s spirit at work among the Nuer people. “Arlene’s story is raw, honest and compelling in ways that I believe could inspire a new generation of missionaries,” says Dr. Mark Husbands, a member of the Reformed Church in America’s Commission on Theology and Northwestern’s vice president for academic affairs.
The Northwestern DME has performed across the U.S. and in Ethiopia, Japan and Albania. DME director Barker is also the author of “The Storytelling Church.”
“Sioux Center Sudan” will be also be performed locally on March 17, 7 p.m., in Northwestern’s DeWitt Theatre Arts Center; on March 24, 11 a.m., at Rejoice Community Church, Le Mars; on March 31, 6:30 p.m., at Carmel Reformed Church; and on April 28, 6:30 p.m., at First Reformed Church, Sioux Center. The performances will be followed by a book signing with the author.
