Leila Threesome

Leila Threesome

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Threesome Nearly Naked Theatre
Review by Gil Benbrook | Season Schedule

The play begins in the bedroom of an Egyptian-American couple who have invited a white American man home for a threesome. The couple, Leila and Rashid, are nervous about what is in store for the evening and start to have second thoughts. They also appear to be having some relationship issues that center on a book Leila has written about her personal, previous experiences in Cairo a few years back during the political upheavals, which she has yet to fully share with Rashid. She hasn't even let him read a draft of the book. Rashid is a photographer and assumes he will be working on the book jacket design. We start to realize that their issues go far beyond the contents of Leila's book. Doug is the charming and somewhat naïve man they invite home and soon discover is the person who has been hired to shoot her book jacket.

El Guindi's play is an intriguing discussion on various subjects, including sexual and gender politics and the clash of cultures between the West and the East. The script is full of evocative and complex conversations with debates around the freedoms that men take for granted in regard to both power, position and sexuality; body issues and hang-ups of both sexes; and the nervousness that sexuality and sexual kinks can create, with a cautionary overview of Arab-American relations.

El Guindi's dialogue and characters are realistic, intelligent, intriguing, and very well written. If you look beneath the funny barbs and smart dialogue you'll pick up on the fact that El Guindi has drawn his audience in by promising a bedroom sex farce (there is plenty of full nudity) then changing gears midway into a more dramatic realm to gets us to change and question our perceptions on women, and Muslim women in particular. Just like Doug states in act two when he attempts to dress Leila in a traditional abaya for the book cover photo, saying that it will draw readers in based on their perceptions and fantasies of what Middle-Eastern women should look like, it gives El Guindi, through Leila's character and words, the ability to draw us in only to make us question our preconceived views.

As Doug states in the first act, when he is in bed, naked, and a witness to Leila and Rashad's in-depth conversation on these topics: "It's like a seminar. Without any clothes on."

However, while the play makes for an interesting discussion on these subjects, it does meander a bit and is somewhat repetitive in the fights and debates that are portrayed. Also, it is interesting that, while Rashad comments on how Leila has gone into explicit detail in her book to describe what happened to her, El Guindi reveals little information about the incident in the play and only spoon feeds us a few details. While the ending is especially startling, I'm not sure if it would be more or less effective if we knew more details about what happened to Leila in Cairo.

Director Damon Dering does an exceptional job of ensuring that the shifting tones of the play—from sex farce comedy to introspective drama—never seem at odds. He's also found three talented performers who gracefully transition between the two styles yet still present realistic, multi-dimensional portrayals.

Jenny Cohen Sanchez is superb as Leila. Through her rich, passionate and powerful portrayal, we clearly understand Leila's struggle and her fight to free herself from what happened by writing about it. Her witty and wise delivery of the comical dialogue keeps us intrigued, especially when the play becomes more serious and Leila's vulnerability is fully revealed. Bernhard Connor Verhoeven shows us that our pre-conceived notions of the hunky, clueless Doug are far from the truth of who he really is. His layered portrayal of this handsome, muscular man lets us see that Doug is somewhat nervous about the threesome and even he has body issues and doubts. In the second act Doug has a monologue about an encounter he had with a Muslim woman overseas which, while shocking and somewhat far fetched, doesn't feel false in Verhoeven's capable hands. As Rashid, Dylan Kim plays the least developed of the characters, but Kim's impassioned delivery allows us to see the hurt and pain Rashid feels even if he mostly comes off as an uncaring jerk. All three also ground their performances with a humorous and truthful earnestness that works well for the shifts in tone of the play.

Dering and Paul Wilson's set design also plays into the two sides of the piece as it playfully portrays a realistic sex farce bedroom in act one that explodes into a fantasy of color in its harem-themed boudoir, complete with hookah and Middle-East patterns and designs, in act two. The ending packs a wallop due to the expert combination of Clare Burnett's rich lighting and P. Swartz's immersive sound design.

Threesome starts as a funny sex farce but turns into a dramatic story of a woman's passionate search for self-identity and reclaimed dignity. With a superb cast and solid direction, Nearly Naked Theatre's production is a funny and awkward yet always compelling, interesting and intimate expose of the tensions and preconceptions we all have on some very explosive topics. It is a smart and timely play with intriguing characters and an ending that is deeply moving in its raw passion.

Threesome runs through February 4th, 2017, at Phoenix Theatre's Hardes Little Theatre at 100 E. McDowell in Phoenix. Tickets can be purchased by calling 602-254-2151 or at nearlynakedtheatre.org .

Written by Yussef El Guindi

Director: Damon Dering

Stage Manager: Kenneth Anthony

Scenic Design: Damon Dering and Paul Wilson

Lighting Design: Clare Burnett

Costume Design / Properties Design / Hair & Make-Up Design: Damon Dering

Sound Design: P. Swartz

Cast:

Leila: Jenny Cohen Sanchez

Rashid: Dylan Kim

Doug: Bernhard Connor Verhoeven

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Dylan Kim, Jenny Cohen Sanchez, and Bernhard Connor Verhoeven Photo by Laura Durant

With the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) Churchwide Assembly underway in Milwaukee this week, we’ve stepped up our coverage of Lutheran news. Last month, I wrote about Bishop-elect Paul Egensteiner of the ELCA’s Metropolitan New York Synod declaring that Hell is empty. My colleague Chelsen Vicari offered a preview of various progressive memorials (the ELCA equivalent of resolutions or overtures) at the Churchwide Assembly.
Meanwhile, another bishop-elect in the ELCA has invited controversy with her endorsement of polyamory. YouTube channel Barcroft TV recently interviewed two women and a man who are in a relationship with one another as a “throuple”.
The Baltimore threesome describe their meeting and eventual departure from a Pentecostal church, where husband Luis and wife Katie performed as musicians. After bringing Raquel into their relationship, they report that they were asked to leave.
Enter the Rev. Leila Ortiz, who recounts their meeting and learning of their relationship:
“There’s still many people who would be scandalized and would even be scandalized by my acceptance of them. And that’s okay, that’s okay. I’m very grounded in my faith,” Ortiz assures viewers. “How do you judge and how do you point fingers and condemn people that don’t know any other way of being? People have been in polygamous relationships for decades, they have just been private about it. So now we are in a place where it is public. This isn’t just a fad. This is a reality that has always been.”
Ortiz was elected June 15 to serve a six-year term as bishop of the ECLA Metropolitan Washington, D.C., Synod (the Barcroft TV segment first streamed August 1). She has served on the staff of the Metro DC Synod for three years.
“It is a kingdom that is not as interested in being right as it is in being in relationship,” Ortiz preached at the ECLA’s 2016 Churchwide Assembly.
A self-described “Luthercostal”, Ortiz refers to the Holy Spirit as “she” and describes a call “to preach and teach in communities that wrestle with their complicity in the unjust systems.” Ortiz is a doctoral candidate at United Lutheran Theological Seminary of Pennsylvania (the consolidation of the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg and the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia) with an interest in “Protestant Latinx Liberation Theologies”.
Once again, a well-deserved tip-of-the-hat to Lutheran blogger Dan Skogen , who originally flagged the story:
“This is an ELCA bishop proclaiming support for polygamous relationships. Polygamy is against God’s will as He clearly outlined in Scripture (see here ). The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America has become so opposed to the Truth of God’s Word that threesomes are fine.”
The Lutheran Confessions identify marriage and the family as foundational structures that support human community. In the 2009 document Human Sexuality: Gift and Trust , the ELCA notes that the historic Christian tradi tion and the Lutheran Confessions have recognized marriage as a covenant between a man and a woman with “promises of fidelity and public accountability.” The document makes reference to “two people” and effectively opens the door to same-sex couples (stating that “consensus does not exist concerning how to regard same-gender committed relationships”) but makes no reference to polygamous or polyamorous unions.
Watch the full interview with Ortiz and the Baltimore “throuple” here:
Ortiz is set to be installed as bishop on October 12 at a ceremony held at National Presbyterian Church in Washington.
Comment by Eternity Matters on August 9, 2019 at 5:37 pm
“How do you judge and how do you point fingers and condemn people that don’t know any other way of being? People have been in polygamous relationships for decades, they have just been private about it. So now we are in a place where it is public. This isn’t just a fad. This is a reality that has always been.”
Oh, I didn’t realize that if it wasn’t a “new” or public sin then it was OK. Got it.
These goats and their followers never had excuses before (Romans 1 and all that) but they really have not excuses now.
Comment by Rev. Randy on August 11, 2019 at 9:30 am
Agree. After all, if not being “just a fad, [but] a reality that has always been” were a criterion for being morally correct, then stealing, beating, and killing could all be considered “right” by this standard.
Comment by Loren J Golden on August 10, 2019 at 1:04 am
“In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.” (Judg. 17.6, 21.25)

“Those days” are here again.

“Where there is no prophetic vision the people cast off restraint.,
but blessed is he who keeps the law.” (Prov. 29.18)

True prophetic vision comes from the Word of God. But false undershepherds like ELCA “bishop-elect” Leila Ortiz do not believe the Word of God, especially its teachings on marriage and sexuality, discarding the “foolishness of God” for their own wisdom. And so, “the people”, like the three poor, lost souls pictured above, “cast off restraint”, indulging impenitently in the passions of the flesh, blithely ignorant of the serious damage they are doing to their immortal souls. The sexually immoral will not inherit the Kingdom of God (I Cor. 6.9-10), but in the final Judgment of God will be excluded from the holy city, the new Jerusalem (Rev. 22.15), cast into “the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death” (Rev. 21.8).

But “the foolishness of God is wiser than men” (I Cor. 1.25). The Lord Jesus says, “For you say, ‘I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing,’ not realizing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire, so that you may be rich, and white garments so that you may clothe yourself and the shame of your nakedness may not be seen, and salve to anoint your eyes, so that you may see.” (Rev. 3.17-18)

But they spurn His offer. Not finding the Jesus of the Bible sufficiently amenable to their wanton sexual passions, they empty Him of His Biblical identity, keeping only the shell of what they perceive they like about Him, and then they fill this shell with empty platitudes like “love don’t judge”, as if the Jesus who said, “Judge not, that you be not judged” (Mt. 7.1), did not also say, “Do not judge by appearances, but judge with right judgment.” (Jn. 7.24)

“For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.
“Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.” (Rom. 1.21-25)

And so the madness grows, and the Church of Jesus Christ is consumed by it. When the Church becomes more like the world, it does not grow: it withers and dies. And we see this painful reality playing itself out in the formerly Mainline American Protestant denominations, like the Episcopal Church, the Presbyterian Church (USA), the United Methodist Church, the United Church of Christ, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), the American Baptist Churches USA, and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. When Literary and Historical Criticism of the Bible came into vogue in the academy, these denominations adopted it with gusto. When Evolutionary Theory became all the rage, they jettisoned the Biblical doctrine of Creation in favor of it. When candidates who disbelieved the Virgin Birth, the Substitutionary Atonement, the Bodily Resurrection, and even the Trinity and the Hypostatic Union were presented for ordination, they did not hesitate to find pulpits for them. And now that Sexual Orientation/Gender Identity dogma has made sexual perversion socially acceptable, these same churches were in the vanguard to jettison Biblical sexual ethics in favor of fad, prostituting themselves in a vain effort to a world that finds them useful but does not love them, nor ever will.

O King Jesus, forgotten and presumed upon by Your Bride, so that everyone may do what is right in their own eyes, come quickly, and set your Church to rights!
Comment by MikeW on August 10, 2019 at 8:41 am
“For we must all appear before the judgement seat of Christ, that each may receive the things done in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad.” – 2 Corinthians 5:10 When sexual perversion replaces the marriage covenant of one man and one woman… and when persons worship the flesh and do not worship in the Spirit or truth… they are truly lost. Also, to proclaim oneself as a bishop – an ordained minister of the Word and Sacrament – and believe that Polyamory is acceptable, is a blasphemy before God.
Comment by Lee D. Cary on August 10, 2019 at 9:11 am
They don’t call D.C. the “Swamp” for nothin’.
Comment by Mike on August 10, 2019 at 9:14 am
Wow. Just wow. No semblance of Christianity here. This is depressing to see people lead down this path.
Comment by Michael Snow on August 10, 2019 at 12:36 pm
Something I wish I’d never seen! Few Christians speak up and defend the love of the Bible. We have few disciples/learners these days. It is why I wrote “When Love Becomes Heresy” https://zeitgeistcontext.wordpress.com/2014/08/19/cutting-the-ground-out-from-under-our-childrens-feet/
Comment by Rev. Dr. Lee D Cary on August 10, 2019 at 2:15 pm
I understand your response, but I’m glad I read this piece, Mr. Snow.
The ELCA is just another example of the long death rattle among the old, liberal “Seven Sister” Protestant denominations, struggling to stay alive.
The UMC will be the next, and last, major “Sister” to expire.
For all the Sisters, it’s been, and will continue to be, a merciful death by suicide.
Meanwhile, the Body of Christ lives on among others, elsewhere.
Comment by Olivia on December 29, 2019 at 7:12 am
Thank you for your integrity, Deaconness Kelly and JR. While solid objections can be made, most of the arguments here fail to recognize what is in our own Bible….and the failure to recognize what is in our Bible is by the same people who are invoking the Bible as a basis for judging others (typical!).
With your helpful responses, I can more clearly recognize this issue as a a matter of patriarchial systems of polygamy being okay in their time and being easily excused and sometimes even esteemed (but certainly forgivable!)….but not okay in our time and not okay once they apply to women. If “opponents” of these people’s relationship would actually bring wisdom, clarity, and humility of recognizing what we do sanction and revere in the Bible already, I’m sure that would not feel as comfortable to them or as easy to judge…but that would help us all to find God’s way forward on matters like this.
Comment by MikeS on August 11, 2019 at 12:43 am
Liberal Christianity lacks a stable belief system or morality. If a heretofore-proscribed act is desired, then lo! the bible is discovered to actually give warrant to the act. Tradition was just wrong for all those centuries. As others have noted, this is a contributing factor to the demise of the liberal churches. If in the final analysis we are free to do any consensual act we want, why bother attending?
Comment by Donna Shirley on August 11, 2019 at 1:09 pm
I am a Lutheran, & I am appalled at this!!!!!!!! This does not go with our teachings, & the Bible
Comment by JR on August 12, 2019 at 12:16 pm
I do recall that Jacob had a couple of wives and a couple of concubines. And he seemed to be blessed by God… he certainly wasn’t called out on it. Plus Abraham, David, and Samuel…
Personally I find this a bridge (maybe a couple of bridges) too far, but I’m not particularly interested in sharing like this.
It seems to me that it’s a lot more ‘searching for something to get people upset by’ than a notable issue for Christianity.
Comment by Jeffrey Crawford on August 12, 2019 at 2:07 pm
If it were possible, I wonder if Abraham would weigh in on how his lack of faith in God’s promise, which led to him taking Hagar as another wife, cost the world. Remember, his son with Hagar was Ishmael…
Comment by JR on August 13, 2019 at 9:41 am
… whom God blessed, and spoke about that directly with Abraham.
Comment by Randall Johnson on August 21, 2019 at 10:42 am
In the video, the husband is the one who encourages his wife to explore her bi-sexual desires. Instead of leading her to be holy, he encourages her to explore and ends up endorsing the threesome lifestyle. Ephesians 5 s
Sexy Teenie
Teen Gets Swallows
Secretary Stockings Sex

Leila Threesome

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