Event

Patriarchs and Penises

In Act I Brother Sam recounts a hair-raising childhood among "tongues-speaking, snake-handling, frothing-at-the-mouth holy rollers from the Ozarks" and his subsequent reversion to the "natural atheistic state into which we all are born," before concluding with a mercilessly satiric deconstruction of the role of God in American life. Act II has Brother Sam teaching a "biblically accurate but somewhat irreverent" Sunday school class in which he details the symbolic use of penises throughout the Bible. The play contains a dizzying number of provocative ideas expressed in language which, if not exactly of the everyday variety, is remarkable in its clarity and authenticity. That Brother Sam crams so many laughs into so much substance is what makes Sam Singleton Atheiist Evangelist, Patriarchs and Penises an experience like no other.