You’ll Want to See ‘Hand to God’ at Orcas Center

Thursday – Sunday, July 5-6-7-8 and July 12-13-14-15, Orcas Center Black Box

— from Laura Kussman for Orcas Center —

Leave the kids at home. Call a babysitter, drop them by the neighbors, enlist the grandparents. Consider this your humor-needed advisory.

In a church basement, a group of adolescents gathers (mostly at the insistence of their parents) to make puppets that will spread the Christian message, but one of the puppets turns out to be more demonic than divine. “All I have to say is….the devil made me do it” supposes Tyrone at the beginning of the play, setting the scene for a puppet show akin to “The Book of Mormon” and “Avenue Q” – somehow brilliantly formed in both wisdom and foolishness.

Written by Robert Askins and directed by Robert Hall, “Hand To God” comes to the Orcas Center Black Box theatre on July 5th running two consecutive weekends Thursday-Sunday, wrought with that just-right juxtaposition between what’s acutely funny and amusingly deep.

We are so pleased to announce Ben Burris, lead actor in an extended run of sold-out shows at the Seattle Public Theatre, joins us for this performance. Ben plays Jason, a meek young man who recently lost his father and finds an outlet for his anxiety through the Christian Puppet Ministry in his devoutly religious, small town of Cypress, Texas, as well as Tyrone, the crude puppet with a shocking personality all his own. Watching the two of them perform is exactly that – easy to forget there is only one Ben on stage. And the show continues in that way, presenting the audience with questions about binaries. You may ask yourself, where do we find our truths? Somewhere between good and evil? Heaven and hell? Light and dark? Does it make us anxious to admit our fragility? Our morality? Did Jason choose his puppet, or did the puppet choose him?

With “Hand To God”, as well as many of the other plays written by Askins, he peers into odd corners of the world and faith. He illuminates universal qualities of human nature. And as he finds much to mock, he also finds messages that he uses to explain his cathartic relationship to writing.

“It’s the most important thing in the world. If you can do it, no one can say no to you,” he said. “No one can say to you you’re wrong, because the entire audience – the room of [60 at the Orcas Center Black Box!] people experienced something. They laughed, or they cried and they gasped and then they got up and clapped. And no one – no academic, no father figure, can say to you that that didn’t happen. This is not academic. This is visceral, and that’s exciting. It’s sacred.”

Tickets for “Hand To God” $20, $16 for students, $2 off for Orcas Center members, and may be purchased at www.orcascenter.org or by calling 376-2281 ext. 1 or visiting the Orcas Center Box Office open Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays from 12-3 p.m. $5 subsidized tickets available at the Box Office. For more information about Orcas Center’s 2017-2018 season visit www.orcascenter.org.

*$5 off special! Any local actors or directors who have previously acted or directed in a play at Orcas Center are invited to purchase discounted tickets by calling the Box Office during hours provided above. 

**There is a special promo ticket available for purchasing both Hand to God + Shook Twins tickets on July 13^th, which run back to back. Double show special: $40 for both