We’re in the parking lot of the New Jerusalem Missionary Baptist Church on a hot Good Friday afternoon in Dallas, Texas. We’re also on stage in the Pamela Brown Auditorium of the Actors Theatre of Louisville, Kentucky – and on computer and smartphone screens in New York, and anywhere else in the United States, via the League of Live Stream Theater.
On the lot, and the stage, and the screen, a quartet of devoted churchgoers, all four of whom are Black and queer, open up whole worlds to outsiders — of a church tradition full of Usher Boards and Holy Spirit seizures at Seven Last Word services, and of queer life within that tradition. The visibility and acceptance of LGBT worshippers – which is a struggle in organized denominations throughout the U.S. – gets an insider’s airing in “I Am Delivered’T,” written by Jonathan Norton, who grew up the son of two members of his church’s Usher Board. The production, directed by Robert Barry Fleming, the artistic director of the Actors Theatre of Louisville, ends its run this afternoon.
Even the strange title of the play is an insider reference, to an old video of a then-21-year-old church member declaring.“I’m not gay no more! I am delivert!”
When the play starts, three people burst into the parking lot, one of them leaning virtually unconscious on the other two. During the service, Jackie Breedlove — E. Faye Butler*) had been overcome with the Holy Spirit – she fainted – and two ushers are bringing her to fresh air. As she comes to her senses, we sense a tension between Sister Breedlove and Rosie Franklin, the Vice-President of the church’s Usher Board, whom everybody calls Sis. (Liz Mikel, familiar to New York audiences for her roles in the recent Broadway revival of 1776, and her phenomenal performance Off-Broadway in Fruit Trilogy) We eventually learn that, twelve years earlier, the two were lovers, that Breedlove left New Jerusalem shortly afterwards, and has come back for the first time this afternoon to hear her new pastor deliver a guest sermon as part of the Seven Last Words service.
“Of all the churches doing Seven Last Words tonight, you have to walk up in mine,” Sis sighs.
“Alright, Humphrey Bogart,” Breedlove cracks.
By Sis’s side is her assistant and protégé, the newest member of Usher Board # 1, Ivan Shamar Pickles, whom everybody calls Pickles (Zachary Willis.) Pickles has his own love-related complications. Ephraim Love (Naiquai Macabroad.), whose gay friends call him Effie (in homage to Dreamgirls), has come to the church, hoping to reclaim his boyfriend Zeno, who left him for Pickles.
If the symmetry might seem pat, the journey they take towards reconciliation is no more straight or smooth than the rough road they traveled to both the church and self-acceptance.
I Am Delivered’T is performing one last time this afternoon.
