Gbenga Akinnagbe as one of the 11 characters he plays in The Thin Place at Intiman Theatre (Photo: Chris Bennion ©2010)

Though Intiman’s The Thin Place (through June 13) is mostly about the varieties of religious experience, it does feature one atheist, who objects strenuously to Seattle’s supposed godlessness. You can’t get away from God, he opines, not even around here.

I couldn’t, not this week, anyway: I went from Fiddler on the Roof at the Paramount, to The Thin Place at Intiman, to Stigmata at SIFF. (PNB’s Coppélia isn’t overtly religious, although you could argue it’s a parable of sorts.)

Conceived and directed by Intiman’s associate producer Andrew Russell and written by Sonya Schneider, The Thin Place isn’t fully baked yet but I liked the moxie behind it. This run marks its world premiere, and it’s caught–like its protagonist Isaac (Gbenga Akinnagbe, aka Chris Partlow from The Wire)–between two worlds.

The one-man play is based on interviews that KUOW’s Marcie Sillman conducted with ten Seattleites about their faith (or lack thereof), and it remains half-play, half-NPR segment. This is a little frustrating because the play-half is about Isaac’s search for a calling, as he deals with seizures and some ferocious ego-dystonia (it’s a little reminiscent of The Spirit Catches You And You Fall Down, in terms of how mental disorder is viewed culturally). To care about his search, we have to believe he’s real.

But Isaac is not a whole character simply because he’s so often a mouthpiece for Sillman’s interview subjects. Their experiences pass through the play’s reality undigested, unassimilated, and though there’s a feint at explanation (Isaac “hears voices”), it’s too crude a linking device to work. Akinnagbe has varying success inhabiting his ten other characters; some he’s got dialed in, but with some of the women he’s doing a low-key drag, without the fabulous outfits.

Similarly, Isaac’s conflicts, indicated by his sharp words for the Pentecostal church he belonged to as a child, his attempt to fashion a warlike Christian refuge in the service, aren’t explored dramatically so much as expositorially. Somerset Maugham got a whole novel out of this type of thing, but the play rushes past something as rich as the rise of Christian fundamentalism in the military, people who think “Onward, Christian Soldiers” should be the U.S. Army motto.

It’s not that interested in dramatics–like anyone who’s had a religious experience, it’s got something important to tell you. It doesn’t have much to do with church, per se. What you get are lessons in how to regard your captors as fellow human beings; how to take up an adversarial stance to your own beliefs, how to find the strength to criticize prejudice and discrimination; how to accept your failings and still try to live up to ideals; how to commit to putting service to others before yourself.

It’s not the old-time religion, is it? It seems like the play could have equally been titled “Many Faiths, One Truth.” Maybe it’s time to rethink Seattle’s irreligious reputation, and reconsider it in terms of the anti-institutional ethos that’s long defined the region. Listening to the “Seattle ten,” you hear members of a larger community of faith in discussion–a community more open to human connections than to inspired certainties. Even an atheist can get behind that.