Less than four hours before curtain time at Black Ensemble Theater’s Saturday night performance of “It’s Just Like Coming to Church (Welcome to The Church of You),”news broke that Black transwoman activist Elise Malary’s body had been found along the Evanston lakefront. She had been reported missing on March 11; fliers with her photo are plastered on the storefront windows around BET’s Uptown space.
That’s the brutal, inescapable, real-life context of a scene when MJ Rawls, a Black, trans activist playing a Black, trans activist in BET’s musical revue, stands in a stark spotlight proclaiming that she has “fight every day, just to be.” After speaking on the immense challenges on her road to self-acceptance, Rawls then delivers a triumphant, passionate rendition of Lionel Richie’s “Jesus Is Love,” filling the theater with a defiant and celebratory mood. Whatever your thoughts on Jesus, you can’t deny the urgency and conviction Rawls brings to the music and the stage.
