The NY Times on Church
Posted by Slay on Friday, June 26, 2009
The New York Times had a great review and a little slide-show about Church from when it was in NYC at PS122. The audio/photo bit is great because Young Jean Lee talks about her personal experience with religion a bit. (Once you go here, click on “LEE” to skip to her part.)
Here’s an excerpt from the review:
People of faith are often treated as either jokes or villains in the downtown theater scene, but that may be starting to change.
Still, most seasoned audiences would expect that a drama by an experimental playwright at Performance Space 122 featuring four ministers discussing God’s glory is inviting smirks. But Young Jean Lee, who wrote and directed “Church,” isn’t joking — or if she is, the joke is on us. Her slyly subversive drama ambushes its audience with an earnest and surprisingly moving Christian church service that might be the most unlikely provocation produced in years.
With a cast of speakers, Ms. Lee, described in the press materials as a nonbelieving daughter of Korean-American evangelicals, portrays the kind of Christians secular downtown hipsters may find hard to dismiss: open-minded, liberal, tolerant.
“I don’t know that God exists any more than I know that God doesn’t exist,” says José (Greg Hildreth), a cerebral minister who mocks the arm-flailing brand of preacher sent up by the performance artist Reverend Billy. “The truth is that the world is a mystery.”



