faith and hope but mostly crazy people

23 Jul 2006

Amanda and I went to see The Play tonight. It was quite enjoyable, and Amanda was even quoted in it, making her almost as famous as Aunt B.

For those just joining us, B wrote parts (a great deal, from what I could tell) of a play called Faith/Doubt, which is a series of stories compiled from Nashville themed around religion – namely, faith and doubt.

I enjoyed it but I am not sure it was entirely for all the right reasons.. See, here’s the thing. I came away from the play with the following: Religious people: crazy. [Sarcastro][3], er I mean, Atheists: funny. I am not sure if that was really the intent – I mean, we all know how I feel about religion, so maybe this is the result of some of my own biases going in. But pretty much every story that was not self-deprecatory or mocking that fell into the “faith” category was, well, at least a little bit crazy. Usually a lot crazy.

But, it wasn’t all crazy. Parts of it were actually touching.. There was one story from the perspective of a Sunni Iraqi girl that was pretty good, though I couldn’t help but be a snotty know-it-all in noticing one thing that irked me. She talked about how the war in Iraq was basically a religious one between Sunni and Shiite muslims, and how she was Sunni, etc. She then talked a bit about being in the states after 9/11, and how she felt isolated and alienated, naturally, because she was a Moslem. Further, she felt angry, because Osama Bin Laden was “one of them – who we’re fighting against”. Osama Bin Laden is a Sunni Muslim (“one of us”). But whatever. Anyways. Only I could fisk a random story from some Iraqi girl character in a play, right? I’m such a cockhole.

The last bit which was a story of a native american woman talking about her near-euphoric descent into death, finished off with a decent song. It was awesome – beautifully written, and the actress had quite a voice.

In any event, it was funny and very entertaining, and I’d recommend it to anyone.