Solo mission

Julia Sweeney has performed her one-woman show, “Letting Go of God,” for 10 months in Los Angeles and three weeks in New York.

Yet to Sweeney, no city is more fraught with significance than Spokane, her hometown.

“Letting Go of God” is Sweeney’s sometimes-comic, sometimes-moving monologue about her journey from faith to non-belief. Spokane is where that faith first flowered.

“I think in some ways it’s more meaningful for me to do the show in Spokane than it will be for any one person in Spokane to see it,” said the former “Saturday Night Live” star, who opens a two-night run tonight at the Bing Crosby Theater.

“It sounds very indulgent, but I keep thinking, ‘I wish I were doing this show for all the people who taught me at (Gonzaga) Prep and the nuns at Marycliff.’ … In my mind, it’s like I’m getting to tell them back what I think, for once.”

She can be certain that one important figure will be in attendance: her mother, Jeri Sweeney.

And Sweeney already knows what her mom thinks about this whole non-belief thing. In 2003, her parents read a newspaper wire story that said, “Julia Sweeney has come out. As an atheist.”

“My parents went crazy and wouldn’t speak to me,” said Sweeney, by phone from her Los Angeles home. “They said, ‘OK, you’re out of our life.’ It was terrible!”

Yet they soon forgave her. Now her show includes a long passage about this family trauma and ultimate reconciliation, which occurred before her father, Robert Sweeney, died in 2004.

Even so, Sweeney wasn’t certain that her mother would ever approve of her doing the show in Spokane. After all, the family’s spiritual and social life has always revolved around the Catholic Church.

“I had put her in an awkward situation and I feel bad about it,” Sweeney said.

Then some surprising developments occurred.

“Friends of my parents started coming forth and saying, ‘You know, I feel the same way as her,’ ” said Sweeney. “Then my mom’s friends started saying, ‘She should do it here.’ “

Sweeney was intrigued, but left the decision entirely up to her mother.

“My mom finally said, ‘I give you dispensation,’ ” she said, with a laugh. “And I said, ‘Will you sell the CDs in the lobby?’ And she said, ‘No, I will not. Because I will say, “Don’t buy it.” ‘ “

So Sweeney booked two shows at the Bing Crosby Theater, even though someone else will have to man the merchandise table.

Getting the original show onstage in Los Angeles was a struggle as well, for entirely different reasons.

It began with what Sweeney describes as a “profound experience” a few years ago when she went looking, in vain, for God.

“I’m a monologist and I talk about big experiences in my life,” said Sweeney. “To me, this was the biggest one.”

She had already enjoyed Broadway success with her one-woman show “God Said, Ha!” so her producer asked her to come to New York and pitch a new show. It could be about anything she wanted, absolutely anything she wanted, he said.

“So I came and said, ‘I want to do one about religion,’ and I sat the director down and did about four hours. At the end, he said, ‘Nobody wants to hear about religion.’ “

He said he was more interested in her “funny dating stories.”

So Sweeney eventually wrote and performed another show, “In the Family Way,” which was about adopting her daughter, Mulan, from China. Plus, it included some funny dating stories.

“But I had a bug in my bonnet, and I went, ‘I’m going to do this show and it’s going to be the best show!’ ” said Sweeney. “It’s the first one I directed and produced myself.”

It opened in October 2004 at L.A.’s Hudson Theater and the early indications were a bit dicey. Audiences were respectful and quiet – too quiet. The first review, in the Hollywood Reporter, said that Sweeney had only a child’s faith to begin with, so losing it was not such a trauma.

But then the Los Angeles Times called it “brave and hilarious.” The crowds rolled in. After about a month, Sweeney noticed that something was different about her audiences.

“I started getting laughs earlier,” said Sweeney. “They liked the ride they were on.

“I got people who were returning. It was the right kind of people. Not necessarily the people who agreed with me, but people who cared about the topic. By the third month, it was the most pleasant professional experience I’ve ever had.”

The run lasted 10 months and only stopped because Sweeney didn’t want to keep it up four days a week. Even then, it didn’t stop. For another year, she continued to do the show one day a week: Sundays at 11 a.m.

“It was a good time for my particular piece,” she said.

Then she took the show to New York’s Ars Nova theater for a three-week run in 2006.

“In her fluent, friendly and offhandedly riveting account, what started with a visit from two young Mormon missionaries soon became a fitful but unrelenting quest for an adult understanding of the deity she always sincerely sensed was at her side,” wrote critic Rob Kendt in The New York Times.

He called the show “refreshingly unrancorous, lucid and, yes, inspirational.”

However, the biggest boost, by far, came when she performed a 19-minute excerpt on the public radio show “This American Life.” Host Ira Glass called it the “single most popular story” the show had ever aired.

“It was the sort of public radio equivalent of being a movie star overnight,” said Sweeney. “I got 3,000 e-mails in a 10-day period, some of which I still haven’t read.

“About 5 percent were angry: ‘You’re going to hell.’ Another 5 percent were: ‘Oh, you just haven’t looked at it this way.’ But I would say 90 percent were: ‘My God, I’ve gone through the exact same journey as you.’ “

Some of the most poignant letters were from priests.

“They said, ‘I feel exactly the same as you do, but what am I going to do? I’m 63. What am I going to do? Work for the post office? This is my profession.’ “

Others, were, of course, not in such agreement. However, she said that many of the priests who don’t agree are “really nice about it.”

She just got one letter from a priest who said he didn’t agree, but liked her “spirit of inquiry.”

The two Spokane shows will be followed by two shows in Chicago and then a few more in L.A. She considers all of them to be warm-ups for the next big step: a film version. She will film the show live in Los Angeles on May 5, then submit it to the Telluride and Toronto film festivals.

The show has already been recorded in audio form. That would be the CD her mother won’t be selling.