Play Without Ceasing at Bechdel Project

Wren Phoenix is many things: non-binary, neurospicy, an artist, a dog mom, and a Goonie. They’re also a preacher’s kid and a survivor of Project 2025 Christianity.

In “Play Without Ceasing,” Wren Phoenix invites audiences to church, but not the church they remember. Part docudrama, part queer camp, and part witchy, paint-splattered revival, the performance turns the rituals, language, and iconography of evangelical Christianity upside down. What emerges is a messy, raunchy, irreverent reckoning with religious trauma, queer identity, political transformation, and the possibility of resistance.

“Play Without Ceasing” reclaims the church's theatricality from the sermon, the testimony, the ritual, the altar, and the collective gathering, transforming it into something unruly and queer. Through humor, confession, camp, rage, and ritual, the lay searches for what to salvage, transform, or burn down entirely. The result is a theatrical revival for anyone who has ever had to build a new worldview from the wreckage of an old one.

Wren Phoenix and director Ash Marinaccio share a history with the world the play interrogates. As the politics and rhetoric of Christian nationalism have increasingly entered American public life, the trauma that once felt deeply personal has taken on new urgency. “Play Without Ceasing” asks: What do we do with the rubble left behind?

The production is produced by Docbloc, a nonprofit organization working at the intersection of theatre, journalism, and documentary storytelling. Docbloc creates nonfiction performances that draw on testimony, research, interviews, archives, and collaborative processes to explore resistance, collective memory, and social transformation. “Play Without Ceasing” has been developed and presented as part of the FIFE Coho Residency at Bechdel Project, which supports artists in developing bold, interdisciplinary work within a collaborative creative community. Drawing its name from bell hooks' Feminism Is for Everybody, FIFE CoHo is an artist residency grounded in solidarity economy principles, mutual aid, and reciprocal community care. Through the program, artists exchange volunteer service for access to free creative space while developing mission-aligned work alongside a multidisciplinary cohort of collaborators. Building upon the success of the Founding Cohort, FIFE CoHo is helping reimagine how artists and arts organizations can sustain one another through shared resources, collective stewardship, and community-centered cultural production.