Church Discipline: Reformed – A Well-Acted but Confusing Horror Play

While Urban Death may be the quintessential Zombie Joe’s Underground Theater experience, the venue is also a haven for indie and experimental theater throughout the year. Church Discipline: Reformed is very much both, and director Brandon Slezak is no stranger to putting on shows at ZJU (Bindy Lipton: The Future Court Massacre, West Destiny). While there are some interactive elements, Church Discipline is mostly proscenium theater in which the audience members are parishioners and convicts in a dark parody of a Southern church set in a prison. From the moment Papa Preach (Slezak) welcomes us into the meeting hall, it’s clear that things aren’t what they seem.

We Are All Sinners Here

As we take our seats (apart from certain spots reserved for cast members), things look to be a pretty straightforward church gathering. But the red flags quickly emerge, beginning with the ripped and tattered attire of some of our fellow parishioners (the cast), not to mention the severed limbs hanging from the ceiling. As the play unfolds, we learn that we are among the survivors of a bloody but ultimately successful prison uprising, each of us serving time for whatever crimes we scribbled down on paper slips provided by Sister Lucy (Helena Hafstein) outside before the show. The show’s plot is built around Papa Preach leading us through what might have been a passionate sermon on how nobody is beyond redemption – were it not for the frequent references to just how violent our path had been to get here and Crazy Carl (Jake Harrison) interrupting from his cell. 

After the sermon, it’s of course time for confession. But not the Catholic sort. No, in this church we confess our sins before everyone, and it’s here that we learn those crimes we confessed to earlier have another purpose. They are, in fact, prompts for Brother Charlie (Brenton Sullivan) and Brother Abel (Max Zumstein), and even Papa Preach, to each improvise a tale of the crimes they committed to land themselves inside this prison we all call home. I’ll give extra credit to Zumstein and Sullivan for taking up the gauntlet of improvising confessions based on audience prompts. Poor Zumstein got stuck with mine, which was worded rather vaguely.

I hesitate to lay out much more, as seeing it all unfold is part of the charm, but suffice it to say that things only gets darker  from there. 

Boy, That Man Can Preach

Leading us on our ecclesiastical journey is Papa Preach, and Slezak is impressive in how well he sells himself as a genuine, if self-appointed, jailhouse preacher. At his right hand is the devilishly handsome Daddy Deacon (Dylan Stretchbery), whose assistant football coach persona serves as a complement and foil to Preach’s exuberance. Comic relief comes from excitable keyboardist Brother Fingers (Jess Weaver), the peanut gallery sniping from Crazy Carl, and the Brothers Cain (David Dickens) and Abel. Unlike in the Bible, the latter duo are openly attracted to each other here, to the consternation of the rest of the congregation. So content warning for some mild simulated incest, but it doesn’t go any further than first base. 

The Moral of the Story

At first glance one could simply take the theme of Church Discipline to be a dark mockery of Christianity, but I think there’s more to it than that. It’s Antichristian, rather than anti-Christian. Certainly there are elements that are direct inversions of the real-world Christian faith: Cain being in love with Abel rather than out to murder him, confession being a public rather than a private affair, and a couple other items that I won’t spoil for you here. But my personal read is that it’s not as simple as an upside-down Southern Baptism. It feels like what’s really being taken aim at is the idea that you can fix a broken, evil person just by giving them religion. For all the earnestness of Papa Preach’s belief in our eventual salvation, we are all still guilty of terrible things (by our own confession), surrounded by severed body parts, and apparently on the path to cannibalism. What happens to Preach, and ultimately to us, further serves to undermine the idea that simply being sorry for what you’ve done, or asking God for forgiveness, somehow absolves us of murder or sexual assault. 

It’s also possible that I’m projecting or misreading. To be honest, it took me a day or two of mulling over the experience to pull an interpretation together; during the show I wasn’t entirely sure what the message was. Now, in fairness, I actually enjoy shows which leave me wondering a little after it’s over, but this one was a little hard to read. This brings me to my next point.

The Bible Has Its Issues

Unfortunately while the performances in Church Discipline: Reformed are all very good, the script could use some work. It feels like it stumbles a little under the weight of its own ambition: The pacing is off in at the beginning and the end, there’s the aforementioned lack of clarity about what the experience is trying to say, and there are a couple elements that felt bolted-on.

The first is the improv component. It’s a cool idea that has legs, and it adds a bit of whimsy to the show. But, while this may sound odd, I feel like the audience needs a bit of warning going in. When my crime was pulled and Papa Preach asked who’d committed it, I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to stand or not. I decided not to and eventually Brother Abel stood to confess to my crime, but it didn’t seem like he was fully expecting to. The confessionals can be just as easily done scripted, so if it’s more important for the audience to go in blind, then the crimes can be played off like they’re being drawn from the pot but are actually rigged so the actors know what they’re getting. If the improvisation is vital to the show’s vision, then it might be better to prime the audience so they’re ready for it (and write prompts aimed at their true use). It could potentially even be made into a game, with the audience voting with their applause as to whether the confession and contrition have earned absolution.

The other piece that feels like an afterthought is the very end, and I think that’s a shame. The scene is full of great, spooky visuals, but guests barely have time to process what they’re seeing while being ushered out of the theater. And plot-wise it comes out of nowhere, so guests might not be prepared for it. The way things wrap up, it comes on abruptly and out of left field, and narrative-wise it feels like it’s forced on the audience. It might be more effective if it was slowed down a little, letting the audience know why we, and not just the cast, end up the way we do. 

So, Should You Go?

Church Discipline: Reformed is not perfect, but it’s not a bad time either.  It features a talented cast having a lot of fun, and ultimately it’s a $15 show that blends horror and humor with an unconventional take on a church service. A little bit of tightening the pacing of a couple segments would fix the issues I encountered, but even in its current state there are worse ways to spend an hour.

Church Discipline: Reformed is performed on Sundays at 8:30pm at Zombie Joe’s Underground Theater in North Hollywood, running now through November 3rd. Tickets can be purchased online here, and you can learn more about Zombie Joe’s from their website, their Facebook page, or their Instagram.