A "Portrait" Before Quarantine

As I sit here, nearly 2 weeks after the shelter-in-place mandate was enacted in the Bay Area, I feel grateful and privileged that I was able to perform my one-woman show only a few days before the mandate went into effect. The show, Portrait of the Heretic as a Young Woman, debuted at the Rogue Festival in Fresno, CA the first two weekends in March.

The show is a 45-minute exploration of finding Jesus in the unlikeliest places—at my grandfather’s funeral, in a run-down hotel in Jerusalem, and at an evangelical youth retreat in the Deep South. Each vignette goes one layer deeper into the eternal question: When did we lose connection with our spiritual and erotic truth—and how do we reclaim it? In the play, I share my quest for personal meaning, my battle with anorexia, the pain of divorce, and my teenage shame of finding eroticism in Jesus—long before I was supposed to know about such things.

While the show certainly remains rough around the edges, it feels like a fitting metaphor for my current quarantined state—wandering, uncertain, embryonic, fumbling through faith, and searching for meaning in what seems to be a hopeless situation.

I know there will be more Portrait to come. The words, the directing, the story are forming—something rumbling and tumbling, like a stone in running water, that is taking shape during this time of viral-enforced hibernation.

For now, I will leave you with a few words from some of the audience members who graciously came to see the show at the Rogue.

~ Phenomenal

~ A moving performance

~ Wide-ranging personal theatre

~ Profound insights

~ Powerful performer and skilled personal storyteller

~ Bravely brings to life vivid and vulnerable moments

~ Very engaging actress

~ A heartfelt testimony of faith

You can also read a personal artist statement that I wrote for Kings River Life a few weeks before the show premiered.