I’ve always thought of the theatre as a kind of church, but I also grew up Pentecostal in the 1990s. Projecting church-like spirituality onto one’s surroundings is just the inevitable effect of a Pentecostal upbringing – no matter how long it’s been since one left the church.

“The world is seen through a Spiritual prism”, writes Joel Bray in his artist’s note for Homo Pentecostus, a new thrilling tragicomedy that fuses contemporary dance and confessional theatre to ask how we might see this Pentecostal world long after we’ve left it.

Hilarious, heart-wrenching, and formally playful, it’s a searing portrait of the complex tensions between sexuality, culture and history that define spirituality for two gay men.

Joel Bray: Homo Pentacostus. Photo © Gianna Rizzo

Bray greets us as we enter Malthouse’s Beckett Theatre with tea, coffee and an earnest grin any youth pastor would envy.

His scene partner Peter Paltos is vacuuming every corner of a blue carpet on stage, peeking over his shoulder with a cheeky smile or flirtatious wink. It’s hard to tell if we’re being courted, cruised or welcomed into a Hillsong-style Megachurch, which is also kind of the point.

Bray’s work has...