What if you reviewed church services?

Editorial
I’m aware that I’m not exactly blazing uncharted territory in noting the similarities between religious services and theater: the seating arrangement, the rising and falling action, the prickly but urgent choices regarding the musical program. But I’ve never walked into such an event with a theater mindset, and the Rock appealed for a few cogent reasons. First, holy water leaves such unsightly scars. And then there’s my second-hand experience of the Rock’s attendees over the past several years. Filling up the parking lot at Jefferson Community School, presumably waging holy war for spillover spaces with Brave New Workshop devotees, they nonetheless always gave me a positive impression: well-mannered, often with children in tow, open and friendly (as I walked past with my wolf-like dog), seemingly on the sort of benevolent high one seeks from art, or the transcendent. These people have been my Friday night neighbors for some time, in other words, and I was predisposed to like them. So I strolled in and took a seat at the back of the K-8 auditorium, having no idea what would come next. Up first was a musical act, with a singer-guitarist, a bass player, and a cellist. The audience was all standing, and swaying with the mid-tempo offerings. Musically, it was credible: some of the better stretches might have found a place on a Radiohead out-takes collection. Lyrically, we hewed close to the concept of Jesus and God as entities that can fill the voids in our emotional lives and greater existence. I am not opposed to filling these voids, and while I didn’t share my fellow audience members’ conclusions for how to do so, I respected their open-hearted communal vibe. That being said, the critic in me reared his head. George Harrison did this much better. Big-combo gospel could blow this stuff out of the water. But then I guessed that the earnest singer onstage might not disagree with me, and wasn’t doing his thing for my evaluation. The lights came up, and there were logistical announcements. Then we were told to turn in all directions and introduce ourselves. I did so, digging the moment, enjoying this breaking of the wall between stage and audience. Someone that very day on the street had nodded and called me his brother, which I found a welcome intimacy on the public stage. Fewer barriers are better than more. Of course I felt like an interloper, but I fell back on the ostensible structure of this thing: The Rock is open to anyone who wants to attend, for whatever reason, and I had lent my corporeal form for a time to see what they were up to. Then came the sermon. Pastor Mark Darling took the stage in jeans and a leather jacket along with his silver hair, and I looked for signs of bad theater. For this was theater: one-man semi-improv, in costume, with no props and little to accentuate his message other than amplification and basic lighting. I found that I have absolutely no problem at all with Mark Darling. The focus of his talk was on keeping one’s head together through tough times. He illustrated it with examples of his own troubles, which apparently continue (as they do for us all). He then proceeded to offer up some concrete advice for keeping one’s head in the game, which to my ear sounded like a Christian version of Zen mindfulness, confirming my suspicion that the best aspects of religion tend to mirror one another across the world. But Darling doesn’t require my approval for his performance; he held his audience as closely as Spalding Gray, taking them down some byways and then getting at his point: that the integrity of the spirit is difficult to maintain, and that it cannot be held together in isolation. As theater, the night was bare-bones, but had the advantage of a devoted audience. Communal uplift was achieved. Stories were told. A group of humans heard about shades of themselves, laughed, got serious, and fed some energy back onto the stage. I walked out with one of my boilerplate takes: this thing worked on its own terms. Theater is not about chicanery, it’s actually the opposite, it is groovy. And the Rock fit the bill.
Headshot of Quinton Skinner
Quinton Skinner
Quinton Skinner is the theater critic for City Pages. He is also the author of the novels 14 Degrees Below Zero and Amnesia Nights, as well as non-fiction books on fatherhood and rock 'n' roll.