Church: An Experiment
In January of 2023, I co-created and hosted a show at Play Dance Bar called ‘Church’--a grungy, queer, strange night of drag and congregation. While I strove to never take the work too seriously, the concept sprang out of my desire for community and wholeness. We took the format of a church service, with communion and blessings and a sermon in the middle, twisted it on its head and balanced a reverence and disdain for all that ritual and meaning to make something that struck a nerve, but eventually faded away.
My crack at helping to build and maintain Church for the queerdos of Louisivlle wasn’t what I considered a smash success. While we had an incredible crowd of passionate regulars, expansion of that audience was a challenge. The space I wanted to work in needed some upgrades and those upgrades didn’t materialize in time for our first performances. People coming to Play and expecting the usual flash and polish of the mainstage shows may have been unsure of how to interface with something as intimate and scrappy as the work the cast and I were doing. And, of course, there was some interpersonal drama behind the scenes.
One of the hardest parts of trying to build community amongst any group of humans is the way we all are wounded before we come to the table of relationship. While my team and I set our sights on something emotionally meaningful as well as debauched and fun, we all brought our own issues to the table. This is something I experienced time and again in nightlife all across this country. Human beings are just messy. I yearn for committed and deep human connection, but I’ve got baggage–insecurity, self-doubts, manipulative tendencies, people pleasing, etc. When you throw liquor, late nights, and a need to be profitable into the mix, you’re certainly up for a challenge.
Church sunsetted and, in the midst of prepping for the next phase of Sunday nights at Play, I left my full time position there. While leaving at the time certainly felt necessary for my growth and well being, I struggled with the regrets of my time at Play. Those regrets reflected a decade of work in performance and nightlife where I felt so consistently unable to sustain the kind of uplifting community I wanted to create. “What am I doing wrong?” I often thought, “Why has my work continued to be fruitless?”
Since the beginning of 2025, however, I’ve seen a myriad of posts from folks who participated in Church articulating a yearning for it to return and an appreciation for the work that we created on Sunday nights at Play. This has been a delightful surprise. Our little grungy show on the dingiest stage at that giant bar with an audience that often only amounted to fifteen people plus cast and crew left an impression that is still maintained to this day. On top of that, during my time at Church, a documentary about the show was filmed. I thought this documentary went nowhere, but recently discovered that it has been submitted and won awards at multiple film festivals! While I still haven’t seen the final edit, the story of our work and of the idea that was Church has made an impression on audiences I’ve never met.
The desire for connection is something I’ve struggled with for a long time. I often feel most deeply about what I consider failures–confusing and hurtful breakups, friendships that end in resentment, and larger community projects, like Church, that seem to go nowhere. However, I think my experience of being reminded of the work we tried to do with that little show exposes something much more hopeful. Through all of our human messiness, the desire and attempt to connect in any meaningful way has a lasting impact. Maybe the success I’ve yearned for has been right in front of my eyes this entire time, and maybe all of these endings have simply made space for new beginnings. Maybe next time, it’ll work out the way I hoped. Maybe it always has.
