Show: 34
Title: Leave Room for Jesus
Category: Comedy / Improv / Musical Theater / Audience participation / LGBTQIA+ Content / Political content / Religious content
By: Hannah Wydeven
Directed by: Hannah Wydeven
Location: Barker Center
Summary: An evangelist revival show featuring songs, testimonies, and inspiration from Pastor Marla.
Highlights: This show was a bigger energy boost on my final six-show day than the cold brew I was drinking! It was a late add to my schedule based on several recommendations, and I'm so glad I saw it. As one of the Shrieking Harpies, Hannah Wydeven is an expert at musical improv, and in this show applies it to this wildly entertaining character. Dressed in a purple sparkly gown, with big hair and big glasses, Pastor Marla is a stereotypical TV evangelist. She walks through the audience talking to people to get song suggestions (what's something you're struggling with? what advice do I always give!), which she turns into little musical gems that sounds like fully formed songs (except ridiculous). She was joined by a rotating cast of performers over the five shows, and I'm not exactly sure who performed at the one I saw (except for fellow Harpie Lizzie Gardner as one of three backup angel singers, along with Anna Weggel). She had a fantastic keyboard player who improvised right along with her, an actor playing her sullen teenager who literally did nothing but watch Friends on an iPad and try to hide inside her sweatshirt, and two followers planted in the audience, who came up to give testimony, sing a song, or be baptized. By the end we're all converted to the church of Marla, and we're even treated to a visit from Jesus himself (Will Schroeder). It's a fun, joyful, rousing kind of show, the perfect choice for the first show on the last day.
