Tent Meeting
by Levi Lee, Larry Larson, Rebecca Wackler

THE STORY: Convinced by written instructions from heaven that the poor misshapen creature to which his daughter has given birth is the Messiah, the Reverend Ed Tarbox kidnaps the baby from the Arkansas laboratory where it is being studied, christens it Jesus O. Tarbox, and, with his daughter and son in tow, heads off in their mobile home toward the promised land—which turns out to be Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan.

The Reverend Ed is a bullying, Bible-thumping redneck preacher who may well be the father of the lamentably deformed baby; son Daniel is a slow-witted World War II vet who claims that the scar from his hernia operation really came from a Nazi bayonet; while his hapless daughter, Becky, stuffs cotton in her ears to muffle the celestial music that plays incessantly inside her head.

It appears that what Reverend Ed has in mind is the ritual murder of the infant, but his plans change when, in a marvelously theatrical scene, its bassinet lights up mysteriously from within and rolls over to a typewriter which, all by itself, begins typing out another message from on high.

Which, in turn, leads to the lively climax of the play, with a rousing hymn sing, a splashy baptism (bassinet and all), and a blasphemous yet outrageously funny epiphany involving, of all things, an eggplant.