Seeing AriDy Nox’s A Walless Church at Pillsbury House + Theatre
By MATTIE WONG
We almost didn’t go. Hours before the show we received horrifying news about a friend – the kind of news that starts your ears ringing and you can’t feel your body in the world anymore. We talked on the phone, and we both said we absolutely could not make it. But we spoke a bit longer, circled back, and knew that our friend was as safe as they could be at the moment, and there was nothing either of us could do. Our options were: a) stay at home and let the grief bounce off the walls of our living rooms, or b) go to the show, because, for at least tonight, nothing else could be done.
So that’s how we showed up at the show, a fresh grief webbing between us, not really knowing exactly why we were there, that night. We entered the theater, the stage condensed to a smaller raised circle with the godlings Oru, Nona, and Mo preparing to create a God. The process is simple enough – they merely have to collect a pure emotion (but ‘pure’ really isn’t the right word, Oru will admit), a shared intention, and a conduit. They explore and embody various relationships between mortal black women, interpersonal conflicts with seemingly no solutions – certainly feeling like there was nothing shared, or ‘pure’. The walls of their world grow thin, and the Godlings realize that on top of their troubles, they are on a time limit, otherwise the two worlds, mortal and immortal, would bleed into each other with unknown, devastating consequences.
My friend and I felt the walls thin. We sat there, entranced by the play and the story, and occasionally would put our heads in our hands as another wave of horror swept through us from the world outside the theater. Sometimes the lines of the play would bleed over to our subconscious thoughts, addressing our very specific sadness, as if they knew. ‘There are many ways to create God,’ the Godlings would tell the audience, explaining how mortals create Gods all the time, unintentionally, and recklessly. Regret is a very strong God-creating emotion, and so is Grief. The Godlings revisit their mortals, diving deeper into each situation, and slowly uncover that the things that seemed so binary were much closer to gray, a melding of the fullness and bigness of each conflict.
The set itself was beautifully designed, each detail evoking a shared memory, down to a plastic couch cover that most of us will remember from some older relative’s home. Lighting and sound helped move us between the worlds, even as the stage remained set. Aimee K. Bryant, Nubia Monks, and Essence Renae who play Oru, Nona, and Mo, respectively, each expertly navigate the shifts in character and mannerisms to help us distinguish which mortal they are embodying at which time…..even when the mortals start sticking around in the immortal world.
Our personal grief never left us that night, but we stepped into a space where grief can be shared and honored among all its iterations, that the Gods we create, even haphazardly, are here, in this world, moving and guiding us.
*A Walless Church concluded at Pillsbury House + Theatre on October 13th. Follow Pillsbury House + Theatre for more shows coming up, and a huge congrats to AriDy Nox and the team behind the production.
Mattie Wong is the editorial layout coordinator for the alley. She has been connected to the Phillips Community for many years through various jobs, projects, and community events.
