"God's Man in Texas"
David Rambo
Irving Street Players, 2004
"God's Man in Texas" is a marvelous three-man show about spiritual values and the search for the replacement of the founder of a Baptist mega-church in Houston, Texas. The board wants Dr. Philip Gottschall, the 81-year-old patriarch of the Rock Baptist Church, to groom a successor, and Dr. Jeremiah "Jerry" Mears is the likeliest candidate.
Mears gives a couple of guest sermons, signs on as associate pastor, and comes to grips with the responsibilities of the promised position as well as the competitive jealousy of Gottschall, who was played by Boyd Kelly in our production. The third character is Hugo Taney (Jim Bartels), a Vietnam vet and recovering drug addict who is the church's sound engineer and all-round handyman, and whose "soul" becomes the object of a power struggle between the two spiritual leaders.
There's a touch of King Lear in the plot, with a strong fathers-and-sons motif, but it's more about conflicting management styles, board politics, and marketing than religion, per se.
Lots of our Jewish friends from Temple Beth Israel came to see me in the show and enjoyed it immensely. On the other hand, since Irving Street Players shows were staged in the basement of First Immanuel Lutheran Church at 19th and Irving in Northwest Portland, there were plenty of elderly Christians in our audience, as well as First Immanuel's pastor, Melinda Wagner, who said afterward that she found many of the issues and conflicts in the play quite familiar.
It's an odd feeling to be preaching away about Jesus from a pulpit, and see heads nodding steadily in the audience. After one performance, an elderly woman came up to me and said, "I could tell that was from the heart."
Uh no, ma'am, that's acting.
These photos were taken by my brother, Toby Loftus, with his cell phone camera.