Homo Pentecostus

Joel Bray is a talented actor, dancer and writer who has collaborated with Peter Paltos and Emma Valente to produce a very personal and penetrative insight into his experience as a gay man in a Pentecostal church. His queer identity and religious faith are inevitably two incompatible worlds. This high spirited and humorous account of his experience of discovering just how at odds these two worlds are, is often very poignant.

Bray and Paltos use a variety of narrative techniques to relay this story and, although at times the threads are a little loose, the overall effect is astonishing. The  sterile religious ambience is captured with perfection via the set design and conveys the drab officialdom of the Pentecostal movement. The depiction of what occurs at these religious gatherings is a very uncomplimentary one. The gradual deconstruction and dismantling of the practice is conducted via a very simple but imaginative manipulation of the set and props. The direct reference to Hillsong is also indicative of the way the show wishes to highlight how this movement has insidiously infiltrated its way into Australian culture and even reached into our political sphere. The portrayal is as chilling as it is amusing.

The cult-like practices that are alluded to explain the profound homophobia of the movement. The forms of conversion therapy imposed on members of the church clearly only produce a deep and traumatising sense of shame, contradicting some of the basic principles of the church. This performance acts as an exorcism of sorts; a kind of purging all of the twisted and harmful logic that governs this faith. 

The latter part of the performance takes on a very surreal and spectacular quality that is strangely exalting and spiritually moving. The imagery suddenly becomes fantastical and mythical and almost achieves the kind of sanctification advocated by Wesleyan theology. The irony of this is ingenious.

This performance is funny, honest, moving and troubling. It bravely exposes a very questionable movement whose tentacles are advancing on the social and economic fabric of western society, leaving a well camouflaged trail of destruction in its path.

Patricia Di Risio 

Photographer:  Gianna Rizzo