SINGAPORE — St. Clare of Assisi, as she appears on a church stage in Singapore this week, opens her story with a list of what her family owned. “We had money, we had servants … we had horses,” she tells the audience. “We had everything, but for a girl like me, my life was already written for me.”
The line comes early in “TO GAZE: St. Clare of Assisi,” performed Oct. 16 and 17 at the Church of St. Mary of the Angels, a Catholic parish in Bukit Batok in western Singapore served by Franciscan friars.
The official poster for “TO GAZE: St. Clare of Assisi,” presented by CANA and Saint Max in Singapore Oct. 16–17, 2026, for the Jubilee Year of St. Francis, with Sharda Harrison as St. Clare and Fra Rowland Yeo, OFM, as St. Francis. | Credit: Courtesy of CANA and Saint Max
Presented by CANA, a faith-based community and cultural hub in Singapore, and Saint Max, the production is part of the celebrations of the Jubilee Year of St. Francis of Assisi, which the worldwide Franciscan family has held to mark 800 years since Francis died in October 1226.
Actress Sharda Harrison wrote the script and plays the role of Clare; according to the organizers, she also directed the show. Fra Rowland Yeo, OFM, a Franciscan friar, plays St. Francis, and the productionʼs poster says all proceeds go to the development office of the Franciscan friars.
Fra Michael D’Cruz, OFM, welcomes the audience before the performance Oct. 16, 2026, in Singapore. | Credit: Benedict Tang
An organizer from CANA who asked not to be named said that after a year of jubilee celebrations for Francis, the play was a fitting way to close the celebration with “the precious legacy of St. Clare.” The group turned to Harrison, the organizer said, because she had portrayed St. Thérèse of Lisieux for them in 2024 in “St. Thérèse: The Little Way,” a play she also wrote and directed.
Asked what audiences should take home, the organizer answered with a question: “Why is poverty a privilege? … Why is this crazy lady Clare so resolved to live it?”
The second and last performance falls on Oct. 17, the United Nations’ International Day for the Eradication of Poverty.
Sharda Harrison, barefoot, addresses the audience as St. Clare at the first performance of “TO GAZE: St. Clare of Assisi,” Oct. 16, 2026. | Credit: Benedict Tang
Medieval marriage, modern ‘swiping’
In a city-state where Catholics live alongside Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus, Taoists, and others, the script reaches for references from everyday modern life. When Clareʼs father looks for a husband for her, suitors appear on a large screen: Guido, Bernardo, and Silvestro, “my fatherʼs favorite.” Clare asks the audience to vote. “In your time … you swipe right if you like the boy, and you swipe left if you donʼt like the boy,” she says.
The comedy gives way to the turning point of her life. Clare describes Francis as a merchantʼs son “born into wealth just like me.” She says: “I realized that I had everything, but I wanted none of it.” She slips out of her family home on Palm Sunday night, has her hair cut before Francis, and faces her furious father: “I belong to Christ now, Father.”
It is not a one-woman show. Other actors play Clareʼs companions and the early friars, and Clare pulls women from the audience into the story, choosing them as “sisters” and giving them vows as her community grows.
Clare’s hair is cut as she gives up her life of privilege, with Fra Rowland Yeo, OFM, as St. Francis, at a performance in Singapore on Oct. 16, 2026. | Credit: Benedict Tang
‘The right to possess nothing’
Poverty runs through the script. Clare recalls that her mother, Ortolana, “saw God everywhere, especially in the poor,” and adds: “They were not hidden like today.”
“This is what it means to live in the privilege of poverty,” she says, “to be given the right to possess nothing.” The world, she tells them, “did not understand. Not even the Church.”
The title of the play echoes Clareʼs letters to St. Agnes of Prague, a princess who, in the playʼs words, “decided to give up everything to become a poor lady.”
In welcoming remarks before the curtain, Fra Michael DʼCruz, OFM, the Franciscan friar overseeing the event for the parish, quoted those letters and described how the two saints, Clare and Francis, worked together. “Francis was the voice; Clare was the quiet powerhouse of prayer,” he said.
Near the end, Clare looks back on a life of refusals. “Perhaps saying no was never the whole point,” she says. “I had to learn how to say yes, yes to Christ, yes to poverty.”
After the cast took their bow on opening night, Harrison dropped Clareʼs Italian accent to thank those present “for wanting to be here to listen to Clareʼs story,” promising “a bigger, grander farewell” for the last night.
St. Clare died in 1253 at San Damiano, near Assisi, Italy, her home “for the next 40 years,” as she says in the script.
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