Lee Boek was a boy evangelist who turned his gift of gab from winning souls for Christ to selling people vacuum cleaners. And that’s only one of the revelations from this hilarious and thoughtful show, Confessions of a Pulpeteer, showing at Collage on Sept. 13.
As artistic director of Public Works improvisational Theatre, Lee has been an integral part of the theater since the 1970s. Previously, he had successful careers as a fundamentalist, evangelist, preacher, radio host, actor, writer, producer, union organizer, and champion for the underserved and wronged. A staple of the Silverlake arts community, Lee continues to be at the forefront of socially relevant performing arts productions. He has helped create, direct, and perform virtually all of the original plays and performance art pieces produced by Public Works since 1979.
Providing fascinating insight into the attractions and complexities of the American evangelical movement, he brings all the passion, eloquence, and theatrical power he learned as a preacher to create a thought-provoking and – in some surprising ways – inspirational evening. Lee will be accompanied by bass clarinetist Paul Fleisher.
Lee has been telling these “confessions,” or stories he lived, for years, from the age of eight years old to 27. Confessions focuses mainly on the late 1960s to early 70s, when Lee was between 17 and 27 and the Civil Rights movement was the historical backdrop. In 2014, he wrote these stories down.
His parents converted to fundamentalism when he was a little boy. It changed Lee’s family’s life considerably. His family began attending church constantly. Lee’s father was a “true believer” and a new convert. Lee noted that those tend to be your best church members in those kinds of situations.
“He became a preacher himself,” said Lee, “what we call a jackleg preacher,” — someone who operates without official ordination, seminary education, or accountability to a religious denomination. Lee has a song in the play about it. His father was a charismatic, handsome man who strongly influenced him. Lee and his brothers started travelling with him throughout California. Soon, they were attending church or meetings sometimes 30 nights in a row.
As Lee grew, people noticed his “gift of gab,” even at school. In the fifth grade, he was assigned to be the master of ceremonies of the May Day celebration, and throughout high school, he was often an emcee, or announcer, or had the lead in plays. He began to develop routines where he would entertain the student body with improvised comedy acts. He also got a group of young men together and formed a quartet, singing and performing satire.
This was Lee’s “looser side” during his days as a fundamentalist. He said the youth were well taught to keep control of themselves while growing up in their close-knit environment. When Lee graduated at age 17, he was offered a full scholarship to a Baptist college, but his father and the elders felt it was too dangerous to get a liberal education. They belonged to the Church of Christ, which Lee noted believed in using one cup at the communion table and did not believe in Sunday School or having musical instruments during church services, among others.
Lee was raised on debates about all these questions.
“This is what makes the play interesting,” said Lee. “Because while many people haven’t heard of it, many others have been raised around fundamentalism, and it refreshes their minds just based on their own experiences.”
As a young preacher, Lee had to debate and to argue these beliefs, which he said he was never really good at. During his training, he travelled with a seasoned evangelist for a couple of years before striking out on his own. At 19, he was considered to be a very promising young preacher from California. He got a job in the panhandle of Florida, preaching for a church in the Bible Belt. And soon, he got married to Lola, a young woman he knew from church. But before his marriage, Lee traveled with an evangelist from Mississippi all over the United States, town to town, holding gospel meetings. During this time, he said he got a really good look at the Deep South.
“This was as the civil rights movement was just getting started, with the Freedom Riders in the South and sit-ins at drugstores, and churches were being burned down all around the South,” Lee said.
Lee, along with an African American friend, opened a church around this time; and as history tells us, this kind of activity in the South was quickly met with violence. Ultimately, while Lee received support for the church from the Black community, it was burned down.
Over the next few years, Lee continued to preach, travelling around the country. He also had two sons, Nathan and Daniel. Unfortunately, Daniel suffered from seizures, and had severe intellectual disabilities. This caused a big upheaval in the family’s life, and Lee said it changed his viewpoint. The family moved to Sacramento so Daniel could be closer to the medical facilities he needed.
Lee’s family experience is a big part of Confessions of a Pulpiteer’s storyline, which coincides with the civil rights movement and the assassination of Medgar Evers in Jackson, Mississippi. When he returned to California, Lee’s ideas and philosophy began to change. As he became more educated, he read a lot, he studied hard, and saw discrepancies in the doctrine and story he grew up with. He began holding seminars with one of his mentors on the question of fellowship and who should be fellowshipped and who shouldn’t. They held seminars throughout the state, garnering a lot of interest and many attendees. The church leaders, however, were upset about the seminars, which re-examined the tenets of their faith. After some time, Church of Christ churches stopped inviting Lee to preach. His desire to do so had diminished greatly.
“I didn’t want to do it because I didn’t buy in anymore, which began to frustrate me,” Lee said, because I began to develop a more, I guess you’d say, liberal point of view.”
After relocating, Lee enrolled in American River College and became fascinated by everything he was learning. He met artists, poets, storytellers, and good musicians. Eventually, he got together with two artists, and they started writing.
They formed a band and even had a radio show called The Survival Revival Hour, based on Lee’s former life as a fundamentalist preacher. He became known as Brother Lee Love. They did a show on a flatbed truck in San Francisco in front of City Hall, during an anti-war demonstration. Then KQED invited the band to do a show on their station. When they returned to Sacramento, KZAPP FM radio invited them to do a weekly show, which lasted for about a year. The Survival Revival Hour became very well known in Northern California around the hippie community, and then the arts and crafts community.
Confessions
Paul Fleischer, who Lee called a wonderful musician, will be accompanying Lee in the production of Confessions. Fleischer played in the original Broadway orchestra of Jesus Christ Superstar. And later in life, Lee noted, Fleischer opened for Joan Baez, riding a unicycle, while playing saxophone and telling jokes.
“I love to perform,” Lee said. “That’s my calling, [and] what I’ve always done. I like it because it speaks to people. The main reason I [put] the show up was [because] around the time when people realized that instead of just despising everybody they disagreed with, they needed to figure out a way to talk to them. I figured my play would help them know who they wanted to talk to, which was fundamentalists.”
Confessions of a Pulpiteer has been hosted and sponsored by the Center for Inquiry (CFI) West, a branch of the global Center for Inquiry organization that promotes science, critical thinking, and secular values. CFI West featured Confessions of a Pulpiteer at its primary Los Angeles venue, and has sponsored offsite performances alongside groups like California Freethought Day.
“After we played at CFI West, they liked it so much, they offered to help us and gave us a grant to take our play on tour,” Lee said.
Next, the show will travel to Santa Barbara, Goleta, Sacramento, Ukiah and the last stop is in Redwood Valley at the Fry Winery.
“One of the reasons that we got this grant from CFI is [that] their main endeavor is to maintain separation of church and state,” Lee said. “They see this as a play that speaks to that issue, which is why they were interested in [initiating] a tour and supporting it so completely.”
Confessions of a Pulpiteer is a Public Works Improvisational Theatre production. The company recently produced Rilke, which showed at Collage earlier this year. It also produced singer/actress Hope Levy in her show, Connie Converse, and many musical events with fine musicians, including Music for the Ageless with The Elderman, coming to Collage Sept. 26. Public Works also produces Storyphile, featuring poetry, music, and storytelling, which it puts on frequently at various locations throughout LA.
As Lee grows older, he said these stories are a small part of his life, and yet it was a major part because it set his life on a trajectory, and from then on he became an artist.
“One of the main features of this play is about being inclusive and not exclusive,” Lee said. “And finding ways to respect each other’s belief systems and not be so hateful to each other just because we don’t see things alike.”
For more information or to receive a packet on the play, email leeboek@gmail.com
Details: https://tinyurl.com/Confessions-of-a-Pulpiteer and publicworksimprovisationaltheatre.org