Interludes

VIEWPOINTS – Sex positivity and learning how to love, respectively, in the theatrical memoirs BEAUX CHURCH and DID YOU EAT?

• By drediman
• October 31, 2025
• No Comments

Currently Off-Broadway, you’ll find a number of autobiographical shows — many of them solo shows — that endeavor to candidly impart life lessons to their audiences. I recently caught two of these offerings which, respectively, bask in sex positivity and the process of learning how to love. As always, read on for my thoughts on these unabashedly personal theatrical memoirs.

BEAUX CHURCH
Ars Nova
Through November 21

This fall theater season has seen a fascinating lineup of queer Black works that have proactively sought to create a symbiosis with churchgoing. Alongside the Sia jukebox musical Saturday Church and Jordan E. Cooper’s new play (with music) Oh Happy Day!, we now have Brandon Kyle Goodman in Ars Nova’s production of Heaux Church (RECOMMENDED) to appropriate and channel the ecstatic experience of attending service into the fabric of its theatrical world. Although technically not a solo show — naughty puppets and a boisterous deejay play a part in the evening — the shape of the show and its overarching storytelling fall squarely on Goodman’s shoulders. In short, the work is an exorcism of shame from the act of sex, connecting it with the paramount commandment of self-love. The immersive staging by director Lisa Owaki Bierman literally attempts to replicate the celebratory and communal experience of going to church, thereby inviting the audience to wholly partake in the proceedings, including participatory affirmations and ample music (complete with call-and-response and sing-along bits). Luckily, Goodman is an immensely charismatic performer who has the gravitas of a natural preacher. He handily commands the evening with a performance that is both authentically rooted in joy and open to vulnerability (one of the more emotionally affecting moments of the show is when Goodman expounds on his difficult relationship with his mother, who has denounced his homosexuality and out-and-proud lifestyle). That being said, although it’s hard not to have a thoroughly enjoyable time at Beax Church, it’s hard to shake the feeling that it’s been designed to preach solely to the proverbial choir.

DID YOU EAT?
Ma-Yi Theater Company at The Public Theater
Through November 16

Down at The Pubic Theater, you’ll find Zoë Kim in Did You Eat? (RECOMMENDED). Presented by Ma-Yi Theater Company — which is The Public’s current company in residence — the piece finds Kim reflecting on her own Korean-American identity vis-à-vis her difficult relationship with her parents. The solo show is an act of deep empathy on Kim’s part, who spends much of the hourlong performance attempting to make sense of her parent’s emotionally abusive treatment of her, in the process pointing to her astonishing resilience. Indeed, although she’s had to face persistent abuse for much of her childhood and early adulthood (in an extreme case, her father has gone so far as to threaten her life), throughout it all she’s attempted to decipher any sort of “love language” from their strained relationship. Although it never becomes explicitly clear exactly what triggered her parents’ deplorable behavior, in mind it seems to be a tragic example of the immigrant experience gone terribly wrong, one in which inherited intergenerational traumas are magnified in the cross-cultural exchange. Of course this shouldn’t excuse their emotionally stunted response to parenthood, but such empathizing has allowed Kim to build a hard won bridge towards grace, and understanding, and ultimately love — or at least a cautious form of it, wherein our host learns to responsibly give and receive it. Despite the instant likability of Kim’s performance, there is no doubt of the steely strength that underlies it, which is partly manifested though the heightened physicality of her performance (the choreography is attributed to Iris McCloughan). In many ways, Did You Eat? — which has been staged with clarity by Chris Yejin — seems as much of a catharsis and therapeutic guide for her as it is for us.