David Templeton's WRETCH LIKE ME Solo Show to Play at the SF Fringe

The San Francisco Fringe has seen its share of plays about people losing their faith, but never before has one featured a guy singing Amazing Grace forwards and backwards ("Me like wretch, a saved that sound, the sweet how grace amazing!"), further demonstrating what Amazing Grace sounds like when sung to the tune of 'Gilligan's Island.'

With additional stuff about teenage evangelical puppetry, the dangers of baptism at the beach in December, communion served with Jack Daniels and a marijuana brownie, and a girl who occasionally wets her pants for Jesus ("Hallelujah!") and you have David Templeton's 'Wretch Like Me (or How I Was Saved From Being Saved),' which played to critical raves at last year's Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland. Now, playwright, author, and NEA-honored journalist David Templeton brings the jaw droppingly funny one-man-show to this year's San Francisco Fringe.

In Wretch Like Me, Templeton-an award-winning Bay Area arts journalist originally from Los Angeles-tells the unbelievably true story of his teenage years in the 70's, where, as an outcast High School freshman with a strange family and a serious puppet-addiction, he became caught up in the spiritual-cultural tsunami of the 1970s Jesus Movement. Directed by Sheri Lee Miller, Wretch takes audiences on a wild wave of laughter and emotion as David journeys through a freaky Wonderland of Bible-thumping evangelists and surf boarding "Jesus freaks," populated by marvelously detailed characters: David's shockingly to-the-point lounge-singer mother; a schoolyard evangelist known as The Jesus Lady; the seriously committed believers Righteous Rick and Jesse P; the super-serious Rev. Dude (a former acid-dropping surfer guy who found Jesus in a tent in Hawaii while tripping on magic mushrooms); and Cindy, a beautiful young believer who will stop at nothing to bring others to the Lord, including wetting her pants for Jesus.

Sunday, Sept. 13, 4:00 p.m.; Friday, Sept. 18, 7:00 p.m.; Sunday, Sept. 20, 5:30 p.m.; Thursday, Sept. 24, 7:00 p.m.

EXIT Stage Left at the EXIT Theatreplex, 156 Eddy Street, San Francisco

Fringe website: www.sffringe.org

Wretch Like Me website: www.wretch-like.me.org

About the San Francisco Fringe Festival

Now in its 24th year, the San Francisco Fringe Festival brings fresh, daring, exciting theater of all varieties to open-minded audiences of all persuasions. Often over-the-top and under-the-radar of traditional theater, "The Fringe" has its rabid devotees-and wins more fans every year.

The 2015 San Francisco Fringe Festival runs September 11 - 26 (every day but Monday), and brings 34 different shows to San Francisco's EXIT Theatreplex, 156 Eddy Street. The EXIT Theatreplex is within walking distance of Union Square and the Powell BART Station. For complete listings of venues, shows and times, visit the Fringe website at www.sffringe.org, or call the Fringe Hotline at (415) 673-3847.

Tickets for Fringe shows are $12 or less at the door (cash only) and $14.99 or less online in advance. A Five show Frequent Fringer pass is $45. EXIT Theatre, the producer of the San Francisco Fringe Festival, has been presenting indie theater in downtown San Francisco since 1982.