Cyde Weys Musings

Last night I saw A Very Merry Unauthorized Children’s Scientology Pageant with my friends Greg and Kat. It was … strange. The cast consisted of eight kids, four boys and four girls. It took place in a very small theater located on a bustling block in Adams Morgan, DC. To get to the theater, you have to go up a stairway to an art gallery on the second floor (a head shop is on the first floor), to the back of the gallery, out the rear door, down a staircase, then through another door into a small building that houses the theater. The theater is unheated. It has rows of seats along two adjacent walls, with a large carpet in the opposite corner of the room that serves as the stage.

We sat in the front row, so the performers were very close to us during the play (it was awkward for the first five minutes). At some points they even brushed past us, and I noticed Kat having to uncross her legs so one of the kids could get by between her and one of the props they were using. So yeah, it was a very intimate experience. There were also only thirteen people in total in the audience (I don’t know if Thursday is a bad night for them or if the play simply isn’t doing well). But the whole thing was totally unlike the recent Broadway musical I saw.

As for the play itself, it’s exactly what it sounds like: the story of the life of L Ron Hubbard, as told in a pageant format. The premise is that, many years down the line, Scientologists have their kids enact an embellished version of the story of L Ron Hubbard (he’s born in a manger in the pageant), much like children presently do today with Christian legend. Except the play isn’t pro-Scientology at all. It’s a deadpan satire, talking about the absurdities of Scientology in a straightforward manner rather than making fun of them outright. That part of it was a success.

The actors were kind of hit and miss. I suppose the best way to describe it would be inconsistent. The younger kids made more mistakes (and I caught one of them yawning during the play!), while the older kids, who also had all of the solos, did a better job. The singing was decent and the costume design and set were very low budget, exactly like a typical pageant. If you go into this thinking it’ll be a well-polished play, you might be disappointed. But if you compare it to other children’s pageants, this one is better in every way (chiefly in that it isn’t brainsuckingly boring). It really helps that the music is catchy, original, and funny.

In the end, I suppose I would recommend the play, with some caveats. It helps to know a bit about Scientology before seeing it, otherwise a lot of it will be lost on you. And you have to get into the proper mindset. This is mindfuck theater; a lot of the humor in it comes from the absurdity of seeing children spout off lines of Scientology propaganda. Having all of the actors be children, and using the production values of a pageant (except on the songs) gives it a very unique feel. I left there not quite sure of what I had just seen, it was so different and unexpected. In terms of leaving me questioning it, it was a huge success.

But I started wondering about those children. I read the playbill afterwards and saw that many of them had been in not insignificant other productions. This was a professional cast, by child standards anyway. So what were they doing playing in some really small, dingy theater to a mostly empty audience? How did they get there? Are they just dropped off by their parents after school or something? I only saw two people in the audience who looked to be parents watching their kids perform. Another girl was there who was obviously a friend of one of the performers. So that brings the real audience number down to ten.

The same thing that bugs me about Christian pageants bugged me about this one too. Do these kids, especially the younger ones, really understand what they are saying about Scientology? If the tables were reversed, and a bunch of Scientologist kids were performing a play mocking Christians, wouldn’t people be upset? Is it right to use children for this purpose? I’m not sure all of the ethical issues are resolved. Children typically don’t arrive at religious beliefs naturally, but rather, are brainwashed by their parents (a brainwashing that usually lasts a lifetime). So I guess what I’m saying is I think the play is okay if the children truly do believe that Scientology is absurd on their own, but it’s not if they’re simply being used by adults to badmouth something they themselves don’t know much about.

If this pageant intrigues you as much as it did me, you may want to check out the reviews of the New York City Off-Off-Broadway production by the New York Times or TheaterMania. Note that the New York City production has a larger cast, better production values, and a larger venue. But the songs and overall concept seem to be identical. And, just for the hell of it, here’s a YouTube teaser of the NYC production:

This entry was posted on Friday, January 4th, 2008 at 23:37 and is filed under Pop Culture, Religion. Keywords: Tags: children, Church of Scientology, pageant, review, Scientology, theater, theater review. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.