Sinner.

We, women raised in the Fundamentalist Evangelical church, are trained to be silent, subservient, hunger-less and small. We are taught to relinquish the ownership of anything that could potentially inconvenience or usurp the agreed upon power structure. Our voices, our autonomy, the empathy and nuance of our better judgment, we learn to distrust them; to detach from the sinful nature of the flesh. We are raised that 'righteousness' lives in the slight, silent, beige frame of a co-dependent woman, toiling to anticipate and graciously meet the needs of others, a boundary-less servant, without inconvenient emotion or objection. She is smiling, unquestioning support and a tray of Nanaimo bars at the ready…She is a tool to be utilized; A colourful male accessory. While she buys-in, mistrusts and relinquished her own essential strength, he is safe; righteous, she belongs, she is called 'Blessed'…

But, what happens when someone who you trust as infallible, fails, when the lines blur and the black and white that made you superior can no longer hold the weight of life's messiness? You know you've never really fit. You've always felt wrong. But, as the pillars fall, you realize for the first time, that maybe it's not you, maybe you're not fatally flawed and one wrong word or action away from being unlovable or, well, burning for Eternity... maybe you're not broken and there could be another way. Maybe the failure of the 'gatekeepers' means a door has been left open to somewhere else. Maybe, outside of the Garden; inside of the label of 'Sinner' it may not be the dark, mythically dangerous, wilderness warned of since childhood. Fire and brimstone, and judgement, rejection and shame…spiritual death. What if we are strong enough to take the leap off of the righteous dualistic high ground and into ourselves? Breaking down the scaffolded exoskeleton of ideology, and trusting that the 'sinful nature' is just bad marketing. What if, by cultivating our voices and owning our bodies, we found, through the arduous, insecure work of rebuilding, a home, a tribe, an orgasm; a connection with everything…what if, in exile, we found the wide open arms of fearless, vulnerable, unclenched, laughing, warrior-love? Out of Eden, eyes watering, feeling a very similar spiritual stirring, alive, welcome, and loved at 3am, sweating, surrounded by 7 foot tall drag queens in 8 inch heels, as we did on a Sunday morning. We build a new foundational home together with open doors to hold space for other exiles. Free to breathe deeply, to lead, to love: as "Sinner"s. What if we found that the darkness outside of the Garden was not spiritual death, but an invitation to start anew, to grow something beautiful, not a tomb, but a womb.

"Sinner" is the story of such a journey. If Ali Wong, Glennon Doyle and Beyonce created a Musical Comedy about Deconstruction, this is it. Raised that feminine sexuality is dangerous and all-powerful; all at once taught to repress it as the source of all the world's sin by her church community AND also to weaponize it, in order to establish a valid place in the world. Marla was raised to be voiceless, disembodied and codependently performative. She tried, but just naturally didn't fit, she was too much, too emotional, too big, too loud, too intense…

"Sinner" is the comedic musical story of her journey from the Fundamentalist Evangelical church, with its purity culture and chastity rings; Patriarchy and control, through Bible College; the wild west of the escapist Expat life in South Korea, terrible sexual encounters, life lessons in fast forward, and the process of building a new internal foundation of worthiness, spirituality and identity from scratch outside of the evangelical community and framework. Finally, coming to see that this "community", this church "family", from the outside, descends dangerously quickly into a fear-based mob mentality, and that the walls of Eden, from exile, are obviously topped with barbed wire…

We see her go through the dark night of the soul that arrises as she realizes how she has internalized that Patriarchy; how the voices, shame and expectations that were once deafening from well-meaning parents, the side eye of the judging church hierarchy, and the weaponized words of the Apostle Paul, now reside within her… in her connective tissue, shame, fear and anxiety, once disguised as a righteous, protective conscience, now a self sustaining ecosystem of orgasmless, boundariless, codependent aching, narrated by a voice that perfectly mimics her own.

We see Marla brave the wilderness, singularly slashing through the thick brush that exists between the 'safe', "straight and narrow" Patriarchal territory of belonging, and the Promised Land, the warm Holy ground of embodied freedom, the land of 'Sinner's.

Marla Torgerson is a Neo-soul Singer/songwriter from Central Alberta, Canada. A centre of the Canadian bible belt. While a thinner, more late 90's style belt, it is a bible belt none the less, and the vibe and fundamentalist evangelical fervour is the same.

Marla has a BAMu in opera and has traveled the world performing, co-writing, and working with many impressive names that she drops whenever possible.

Marla wrote the initial draft for "Sinner" whilst living in Sevilla, Spain in the first few months of 2020. Mid March, Miss 'Rona arrived in force and she was locked down; police with big guns in the streets. Weeks before her planned departure and move from Vancouver to Toronto, she had to find a way home to Canada. Flight after flight, cancelled, all three jobs lined up in TO, along with her apartment sublet there, dissolving before her eyes, she was terrified. She reached out to her friends in Alberta, who also come from her tradition but have since deconstructed. They took action and before long, she was on a flight back to 'berta on the only flight left leaving the Sevilla airport that day, to an extra condo, which had been furnished and stocked for her quarantine. A detour back to the Bible belt where she is working with the Alberta Playwright's Network on the show, and because of its Christian undergirding, people are friendly and helpful, and during a pandemic, that is a truly soothing and beautiful thing.