Event

Sam Singleton Atheist Evangelist

Sam Singleton Atheist Evangelists live performances draw a surprisingly diverse audience--not only the expected true nonbelievers and philosophical and theological types but, a lot of people who just like to laugh, according to tour manager Cari Park, who describes the two-act comedy as a theater piece rather than a stand-up act. Park describes the scene: The stage is black and bare except for a pulpit, a small altar bench, three rickety folding chairs, and a coat tree, all starkly white. Brother Sam, in his signature frock coat, blue vest and matching spectacles, conducts the crowd through a hilarious and hair-raising tour of his childhood among the tongues-speaking, snake-handling, frothing-at-the-mouth holy rollers, and subsequent reversion to the atheistic state into which we all are born, before ending Act I with a mercilessly satiric deconstruction of the role of God in American life. She notes that the second act has Brother Sam teaching a biblically accurate but somewhat irreverent Bible class in which Brother Sam satirically details the symbolic use of penises throughout the Scriptures. Nobody ever told me that what ties the whole book together, its narrative thread, is penises, he says. Don't look for Richard Dawkins or Sam Harris, says Park. This is comedy. From the subtlest irony to the most flagrant ridicule, it never fails at its purpose, which is to provoke both thought and laughter. Like Brother Sam says, If anybody can use some laughs and encouragement, its atheists. The performance itself lasts a little less than two hours including a 15 minute intermission.