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Michael Speciàle converted to Mormonism in the early ’00s, finding comfort in the religion’s sense of personal order and promises of prosperity in exchange for following the rules. He wasn’t out to himself at the time, but others around him sensed he was likely gay. Though he attended a performing arts school in Vancouver, Wash., Speciàle still grew up in a community at a time when open homophobia was still socially acceptable.
“2003 in Clark County, Wash., was not exactly the most—we went to Vancouver School of Arts and Academics, and even that school only had one out kid in my class, but now if you go to VSAA, I think 50% are genderqueer or queer or questioning or something,” Speciàle tells WW via phone. “But back then it was still a scary time. That fear led me to the Mormon church.”
Speciàle later did come out to himself, and the world, but not before spending seven years among the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He attended Brigham Young University after completing a missionary trip to South America, but later transferred to New York University and renounced his faith. Even though he learned a great deal about himself through exploring his sexuality and reconnecting to the worlds of theater and art that he left behind, Speciàle still felt a hole in his life.
“[Mormonism] helped me make sense of the world at the time,” Speciàle says. “It helped me create order in a world that was very disorderly, and it also solved some of the bigger questions for me, the biggest one being whether being gay is right or wrong, and that was a question where there was a lot of grayness for me still.”
Speciàle’s cabaret play Bottoming for Jesus is about the holes he tries to fill in his life. Audiences will explore his, and their own, holes at the Brooklyn neighborhood nightclub Process on Thursday, May 8, when Bottoming for Jesus makes its local debut. Part standup comedy, part TED Talk, part testimony, and part diva worship at the altar of Judy Garland, Bottoming for Jesus ultimately aims to make common ground for religious and LGBTQ+ communities.
“My story is highly specific, but there’s a lot of universal themes we’re getting at, and I think that humor lets people be brave enough to look at some of the hard stuff,” he says.
Speciàle chose Process due to his friendship with co-founder Andy Warren, which began a decade ago when the two partied in the same circles.
“By not only performing the show but placing it in nontraditional spaces, I’m trying to bring these conversations to where we are and where we’re spending our time,” he says. “I looked at a few different spots and venues, and ultimately when I went to Process and saw the space and the lighting, it’s just really beautiful.”
Bottoming for Jesus premiered in Los Angeles back in March, with goals to ultimately reach the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. After getting feedback that audiences wanted more, Speciàle has added 10 minutes of new material about his family, written while back in Portland.
“My family was not religious growing up, but I think we connected religiosity with this idea of goodness, like religious people were good to us,” he says. “My time in Mormonism was an escape from my family in its own way, and also a performance I was giving. I often call my time in the Mormon church my biggest work of performance art to date because I took their imaginary circumstances and lived them as 100% complete truth.”
Queer comedian Margaret Cho opined that Jesus was the ultimate power bottom (Google it if you have to), willingly enduring pain and humiliation for the betterment of all mankind. Bottoming for Jesus can be taken as physically as audiences want, but they see it as a spiritual calling to follow Christ’s example if they’re too squeamish to consider what goes on in the bedroom.
“It’s true that Christ was the ultimate example of a bottom for God,” Speciàle says. “He did act as a submissive being, 100% submitting himself to the will of the Father—so kinky! It also gestures to the vulnerability of not only sexual submission but religious submission in the ways that they can mirror one another. The show is about power, about submission, devotion, the longing to be filled not only sexually but with presence, with meaning, with something bigger than you.”
Bottoming for Jesus is less about advocating for or against religion, but rather addressing what LGBTQ+ people culturally leave behind whether they leave, or are kicked out of, the faiths they practiced in their formative youth.
“I’m more interested in bringing a sense of faith and hope back into queer communities,” Speciàle says. “It feels like there’s a spiritual hollowness we’re all feeling right now, between being part of an empire that’s clearly crumbling around us and institutions that never fully lived up to the promises that they made. I think people are seeking new ways to find belonging, and I think a lot of us that left the church are trying to find ways to bring faith and spiritual practices back to the forefront, or just talk about it more.”
SEE IT: Bottoming for Jesus at Process, 5040 SE Milwaukie Ave., processpdx.club. 7 pm Thursday, May 8. $21.05–$43.15. 21+.