Emily, Debra, Joyce, and I actually made it out to see Julia Sweeney's one woman show Letting Go of God at the Groundlings Theatre. The show is essentially her search for God as a lapsed Catholic (as they are called). The whole experience is initiated by, of all things, a visit from two young Mormon missionaries.
A word of warning: you have to be fairly open-minded about people's religious beliefs before attending, she manages to study and dismiss a number of them before she's through. (Did I really need to say that?)
Highlights? Her Bible study teacher telling her, "If St. John's Gospel is John on pot, then Revelations is John on acid", at which point Julia recites a portion of Revelations while In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida plays and a psychedelic light show starts overhead.
It was like being magically transported to Haight-Ashbury.
Or after Julia told her mother she was an atheist her mother replied, "That doesn't mean you're going to stop going to church, does it?"
Very funny and highly recommended.
Especially considering the last cultural outing this group took was to a play at the Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum (a play which had only been performed once in 1846, then promptly buried along with the playwright by the audience).
Taking this report as being an accurate portrayal, it's interesting to me that the performer in the one woman show is so unclear as to the facts of the matter that she doesn't even know the correct names of the Bible books. It would hardly qualify her as a novice, let alone an expert! :o)
Well, Garry, it might have been this reporter's notes, certainly. I guarantee she studied harder to perform the show (and thus has the correct names of the Bible books) than I did taking notes. I was way in the back and man, was it dark!
Standing corrected,
Tim