The Charitable Sisterhood Of The Second Trinity Victory Church

However, this allows the audience to experience something they can’t get in a movie, which is the energy generated by the performers working in a continuous flow. It seems the play was filmed in its entirety about four times to give the editors enough to choose from. So not only do we have that show glow of going at it live, we have a filming method that saves both time and money. Now that’s an indie production formula you can bottle up and pass around all over the planet.

Owen-Sims makes the perfect choice of filming handheld onstage in the action, as that slight waver of the frame increases the feeling of a captured live performance. You could film any live play in this method and get vibrant results, which could also allow a lot of good plays to get out there.

“…cracked the code of capturing live theater onscreen.”

The one live element of the play that unfortunately cannot be transferred onscreen is the audience laughing their heads off all throughout. The Charitable Sisterhood Of The Second Trinity Victory Church is very funny, with Wilson loading the script with all these Southern Baptist depth bombs dropping constantly. A live audience would barely have space to come up for air while rolling in the aisles. However, as Wilson is also a skilled dramatist as well as a comedian, we get some excellent emotional hooks and genuine surprises. I found myself glued to the story in a way I had not predicted, walking into a church charity concept.

Owen-Sims and Wilson have a ball with the 1977 setting, evening working a painting of Jesus standing with John Wayne and Elvis into the mosh. The actresses have a great time with the Southern accents, which is impressive considering all the Australians working to bring this to fruition. It doesn’t surprise me at all that Australians would tackle this show, as it was when I lived in Australia that I first noticed their unique fascination with the American South. And in 1977, Virginia was way more South than it is now. However, as Wilson points out, there is always someone in the South who claims to be more Southern than others. And you can’t get more South than down under.

I am scoring this as an experimental versus traditional film because this experiment worked marvelously. The Charitable Sisterhood Of The Second Trinity Victory Church is an excellent play that has been documented in a form that entertains and engages. Everyone should take a bow.