FAIRBURY — With a presentation last Friday of “The Song of Bernadette,” the Maiden Voyage Players made their seventh annual “voyage” into the world of theater.

A group of 15 home-school students from St. John the Baptist Parish in Fairbury, the Maiden Voyage Players are directed by their pastor, Father Scott Archer.

Father Archer also wrote this year’s play, adapting it from Franz Werfel’s novel about St. Bernadette’s visions of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Lourdes, France. Werfel’s novel was the basis for 20th Century Fox’s classic 1943 movie of the same name.

Last year’s 150th anniversary of the apparitions of Mary at Lourdes was Father Archer’s inspiration to write and present a play about St. Bernadette, a saint to whom Father Archer has a special devotion.

“The play also coincides with our Rosary Year here in the diocese, and the rosary was a very big part of the apparitions, as St. Bernadette prayed the rosary during the appearances of Our Lady,” said Father Archer.

The Maiden Voyage Players always present their plays on the first Friday of May at St. John the Baptist Church. When the group made its “maiden voyage” in May 2003, it was a production of another original work of Father Archer’s, “Father Byles of the Titanic.”

“Sometimes I just write the plays on my own,” Father Archer told The Catholic Post. “Most of the time we just do plays that have already been written.”

Father Archer started the Maiden Voyage Players as a special activity for home-school students in his parish, “just as a way to get the home- school kids together, to be able to do something together,” he said.

“They don’t get a lot of chances to do that in home-schooling, to get together with those besides their brothers and sisters,” he added.

Schools or groups interested in staging their own productions of “The Song of Bernadette” may contact Father Archer at (815) 692-2555.