Sunday evenings at St. Thomas can be quiet. But as the sun is setting on the weekend, in Brady Educational Center Auditorium, arms are waving, voices are singing and black-and-white robes are swinging.

Graduate students at the St. Paul Seminary are rehearsing their newest theater endeavor: a musical titled “Moonshine Abbey,” the comedic story of monks who make moonshine for a living in the midst of Prohibition.

A fourth-year seminarian at SPS, Deacon Kyle Kowalcyzk is the writer and director of the show. Kowalcyzk said he began work on Moonshine Abbey nearly four years ago.

“I was talking to a man who works in the Twin Cities area as a distributor of wine, and he was telling me that during Prohibition, there were monks who continued to make alcohol and ship it around the country,” Kowalcyzk said. “As a writer, sometimes inspiration just hits. And it just immediately hit, and I said, ‘That’s it. I need to write a play about that.’”

Soon after, Kowalcyzk had another revelation. He had been writing and participating in plays since high school, but he knew this production about monks had to be a musical. He enlisted fellow seminarian Sam Backman to compose the music, and even though Backman later left the seminary, the two men have continued to work together to create Moonshine Abbey.

Kowalcyzk wrote the song lyrics into the story and then sent them to Backman with descriptions of how he wanted the music to sound.

“He would come back a couple weeks later and play something for me that was better than what was in my head,” Kowalczyk said of Backman.

Kowalcyzk wrote and directed SPS Theatre’s first two plays, “Saved by the Guillotine” and “Murder and Idolatry,” establishing the program his first year at the seminary with the approval of the rector.

“I thought I had said goodbye to theater,” Kowalczyk said. “I didn’t think that I would really ever do theater again, and I didn’t really think there was time to do plays in seminary.”

Once the rector gave him permission to put on a play, however, he found that many of his peers were seasoned actors interested in theater. About 30 people worked on the first show, and Kowalcyzk estimates that about the same number volunteered for this year’s musical.

Many of the seminarians involved were intrigued by the prospect of a creative, social outlet outside of their daily theological studies.

For Joseph Wright, a second-year student at SPS, acting was a muscle he had not flexed for a while — until he became involved in the school’s theater program.

“I did a little bit of acting in junior high, and it was really, really fun,” Wright said. “And I just didn’t do it for a long time, and then last year, my first year at St. Paul Seminary (I found out) they have had a theater program going on to do plays that have Christian themes.”

Wright participated in last year’s show, “Death of a Liturgist,” and will play the role of Brother Lawrence in Moonshine Abbey.

Max Mauch-Morff, a first-year student at the St. John Vianney undergraduate seminary and an actor with four years of high school and community theater experience, has also had the chance to fine-tune his acting skills.

Mauch-Morff plays Agent Ness, a government official enforcing Prohibition. He schemes to find the monks’ moonshine, singing at one point, “I’m gonna get you like I got Capone.”

“I’ve actually never really gotten to play a lot of cruel people because I’m (usually) one of the goofy characters,” Mauch-Morff said. “I enjoy doing it, and it’s a challenge for me because it’s something different than I’ve ever done.”

Kowalcyzk believes the seminarians learn lessons about responsibility and friendship during the show that contribute to the formation of a well-rounded priest.

“One of the things I enjoy the most about it is this collaborative effort between so many guys. Everybody is important: the guys behind the scenes, the stage manager, the actors. Everybody comes together, and we can’t do it without everybody doing their job,” Kowalcyzk said.

The actors also get to break a seminary rule: Kowalcyzk got clearance from SPS administration for the actors to grow out large, “monk-sized beards.”

“For authenticity,” Kowalcyzk said with a smile.

Sophie Carson can be reached at sophia.carson@stthomas.edu.