The uncomfortable scene repeated endlessly on TV: Pastor Ted Haggard, the face of the evangelical movement, embroiled in scandal, talking to reporters from his SUV as his distraught wife and children looked on.

Now we can see that moment reenacted onstage as The Civilians, a New York-based theater troupe, bring their touring musical “This Beautiful City” back to the city where it was made. It runs today through Sunday at Colorado College.

The musical was commissioned by CC, and students worked with The Civilians, starting about three years ago, to capture the  growing political power of the evangelical movement.

For 10 weeks the group resided in Colorado Springs, considered the U.S. evangelical epicenter, to not only interview evangelicals but also liberals opposed to evangelical ideas.

While they were in the Springs, the sex-and-drugs scandal broke linking Haggard, New Life Church’s senior pastor at the time, to a Denver male escort.

In February 2007, a workshop version of the play, then called “Save This City,” played at CC.

Since then, the troupe has extensively re-worked the show and staged it in New York; Washington, D.C.; and Los Angeles, where it received positive reviews for its evenhandedness.

Los Angeles Times critic Charles McNulty called it “a diverting if curiously earnest performance piece. … The Civilians approach the show … like anthropologists out to understand a culture that for many urban theater types is as alien as some lost Amazon tribe.”

The Civilians created that cultural perspective by relying exclusively on comments taken verbatim from their own interviews with subjects, as well as public statements and media interviews.

“This Beautiful City” is more polished and streamlined than the workshop version performed 21 months ago in the Springs, said artistic director Steve Cosson.

Besides adding the Haggard scenes, the new version focuses more intensely on the division between Springs liberals and evangelicals, Cosson said.

“This version digs deeper into the conflicts in the city,” he said.

“There’s more about different points of view going head to head.”

Among the original segments preserved in the final cut is that involving Andrea Stiles of Colorado Springs.

Stiles and her husband were New Life members when the Haggard scandal broke.

In the play, the actress playing Stiles recounts Stiles’ born-again conversion and difficult relationship with her father, who is gay and renounces her evangelical beliefs.

In February, Stiles saw the play at the Vineyard Theater in New York. “I really feel like I was represented accurately,” said Stiles, 28.

Stiles initially was concerned about telling her story to a liberal-leaning New York theater company.

“I knew it was a risk,” she said. “It could be used to hurt the evangelical movement. But I was open and honest and shared my heart. I was willing to risk being mocked for the chance to share who God is to me and how he has changed my life.”

Nancy-Jo Morris of Colorado Springs also is in the final version. After being a civil designer for 22 years, Morris said she was fired four years ago when she game out as a transgendered person. Her friends at the megachurch Woodmen Valley Chapel stopped calling her, she said.

“The play tells how I lost everything just because I was trying to be my true self,” said Morris, 51.

She was also the inspiration for the play’s final title.

When Morris’ character is asked why she stayed in Colorado Springs rather than move to a place where people would be more accepting of her, Morris talks about the clean air, wildlife and impressive views of Pikes Peak.

“This is a beautiful city,” she says.

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To read more interviews about “This Beautiful City,” go to Mark Barna’s blog, The Pulpit, atthepulpit.freedomblogging.com.

LOOK FOR LOCAL REACTION TO THE SHOW AS WELL AS GAZETTE CRITIC TODD WALLINGER’S REVIEW AT GAZETTE.COM ON SATURDAY AND IN THE GAZETTE ON SUNDAY.

Photo by TOM KIMMELL