UNWITNESSED: The Search for Identity After Leaving a Cult
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A NoHo Arts theatre review of Michael Lovestrong’s solo show UNWITNESSED: The Search for Identity After Leaving a Cult, directed by Jessica Lynn Johnson as part of the Soaring Solo Stars Series.
We are all fascinated by cults, aren’t we? How can a person be pulled into one? How is the hold sustained for lifetimes? And of course, how does a person leave?
Michael Lovestrong was literally born into the Jehovah’s Witnesses cult. His parents and their parents before them had been preachers, high up in the organization. In fact, Michael was destined for greatness within the confines of this secretive and in many ways debilitatingly cloistered pseudo religion.
Michael’s story is one that you may think you have heard before, and perhaps you have, but not like this. Not from the heart and mind of Michael Lovestrong. Michael wakes up one morning with the realisation that everyone he loved and everything he believed in was a total lie. Once he broke the fever, there was no going back. He was ostracised, he lost his life, his family, and everything he had worked toward. For Michael, it was a clear choice to leave. But the hardest thing he had ever done.
This play is Michael’s story. His life within the cult, as a child, as an adult and as a man training to become a leader. The expectations, the fiercely held beliefs, the strange abusive routines that were difficult to witness, let alone be a part of. What was it that finally made him walk away, change his life, his name, and his heart? For all that he shares with us during this eye-opening and truly phenomenal play, I’m still not exactly sure. But then maybe neither is he. Either way, Michael has written an astonishingly honest and very moving account of his life so far.
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