St. Genesius

Who they were

Genesius is a saint whose veneration is ancient and whose story was elaborated later, so the frame comes first: he was a Roman actor of the Diocletianic era, his cult is early and Rome holds his church, and the acts that tell his tale in detail were written well afterward.

The tale is the theatre's own favourite conversion. Performing a comedy that mocked Christian baptism before the emperor himself, Genesius was seized mid parody by the reality he was lampooning. The stage baptism became, by his own declaration, a real petition, and the actor stepped out of the script to announce to the imperial box that he now believed the thing he had been paid to ridicule. The performance ended the way such performances ended under Diocletian. Whatever a historian keeps of the detail, the profession has claimed him for seventeen centuries, and actors' chapels still keep his image. Note that he is a different man from Genesius of Arles, the notary, whose feast falls in the same calendar and who is often confused with him.

Why people turn to St. Genesius

Actors, comedians, improvisers, theatre kids and the parents driving them to rehearsal. And everyone whose conversion ambushed them in the middle of scoffing, with St. Paul.

How to ask their intercession

Before the audition, the opening night, the set, plainly, the way the guilds always have. And if you are the one currently doing the mocking, he is the patron of being interrupted.