c. 1998 Religion News Service

WASHINGTON _ His church is too small and his flock has the attention span of a fruit fly. He ministers to a town so backward even the Episcopalians handle snakes, while Veranda, the town’s southern belle from hell who’s competing in a beauty pageant, wants him to pray that God will smite her enemies’ thighs with cellulite.

The beleaguered clergyman is, of course, the Rev. Will B. Dunn, preacher and spiritual counselor to the residents of the fictional southern town of Bypass.

Preacher Dunn, and his endearing and exasperating comic strip congregation, are the creation of cartoonist Doug Marlette. His strip,”Kudzu,”appears in some 300 newspapers across the country. Now, however, audiences can watch the reverend cope with his trials and tribulations on stage in”Kudzu: A Southern Musical,”which had its world premiere at Ford’s Theatre _ one of Washington, D.C.’s top tourist spots _ earlier this month. It is scheduled to run there through June.

The musical was created by Marlette, Jack Herrick and Bland Simpson. Herrick and Simpson are members of a North Carolina string band, the Red Clay Ramblers. It is a co-production of Ford’s Theatre and Duke University in Durham, N.C., where it ran for two weeks of previews in February.

Though set in the South, Bypass could be a any American small town _ it’s Garrison Kellior’s”Lake Wobegon”smothered in barbecue sauce or Grover’s Corner (Thornton Wilder’s”Our Town”) knee-deep in gospel music.

In addition to preacher Dunn, the town’s cast of characters include Big Bubba Tadsworth, the town’s greedy mill mogul; Kudzu Dubose, the 18-year-old who wants to leave town and become a writer; Kudzu’s Uncle Dub, who runs the hamlet’s filling station; Momma, Kudzu’s overbearing mother; and Veranda Tadsworth, the teen-age beauty queen.

Like most small towns, Bypass has its conflicts: Big Bubba wants to make big bucks by selling Uncle Dub’s filling station _ and the land under it _ to the Japanese. Uncle Dub doesn’t want to sell the land. In addition, there is Veranda’s refusal to return Kudzu’s affection while Kudzu, the wannabe writer, is stuck working for his Uncle Dub.

Because he is the preacher, the Rev. Dunn is a key figure in the life of Bypass.”Will B. Dunn knows everything about folks in the town,”Marlette said in an interview before a rehearsal.”He’s there for them from when they’re in diapers to when they get married to when they die.” But like many clergy, Dunn himself is not immune to conflicts.

For example, if he persuades Uncle Dub to sell his land, Big Bubba will build him a big church and arrange for him to be a televangelist. But this requires performing an exorcism on Dub’s dog. This is hard for the reverend, said Tim Hodgin, who plays the preacher.”Will B. Dunn likes both Dub and his dog.” There’s an internal struggle going on within Will B. Dunn, Hodgin said.”Bubba paints glorious pictures of this great big church and TV ministry. The reverend. thinks, `I’ll do anything to get that!’ But at the same time, he feels it would be good for the town to grow. Not just for himself but for everybody there.” Hodgin said he loves the character.”Like every human being, he combines striving for something higher than himself with being greedy,”he said.”The things he says and does are so silly; but there’s meat to the character.” Marlette, 48, the Pulitzer Prize-winning political cartoonist and conscientious objector, said he got his inspiration for”Kudzu”from the small Mississippi towns where he grew up. He began to think about creating a comic strip after he’d been a political cartoonist for some years.”I grew up during the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War,”he said.”Political cartooning was going through an exciting period and I got pulled into it.” Developing a comic strip was more a matter of practicality than of inspiration, Marlette said.”Then, if you did a strip, you did it for the rest of your life. I had to do something I knew about and wouldn’t get bored with.” Though Marlette grew up as a”military brat”moving from town to town, his family had worked in mill towns for generations.”In my genetic memory, I knew what it was like to be under the thumb of the mill owners,”he said of the creation of Big Bubba.”I (also) grew up going to the Baptist church _ for Sunday school, for services, for Wednesday night prayer meeting. So I knew what preachers were like,”he said.

What proved most helpful to him in creating the strip, Marlette said, was that”the Baptists really knew how to tell stories. Compelling stories. Not just the Jesus Christ event, but the miracle stories, the parables and the Old Testament stories.” This is one reason, he said, readers enjoy the strip, particularly Will B. Dunn.”The preacher keeps your attention by telling stories. Your eyes would glaze over if he talked in rhetoric,”he added.

Clergy _ from Baptists ministers to Catholic priests to Jewish rabbis _ have formed a cult following around”Kudzu.”Marlette believes the reason for this is because”Will B. Dunn’s funkier than most ministers. Like most clergy, he wants to be perfect. But, as is the case with clergy, he’s a human being. He can’t be perfect. Clergy identify with that.” How funky is Dunn? “He says what clergy think, but can’t say. For instance, if he’s marrying a couple, he’ll notice if the bride’s overweight,”Marlette said.

What Marlette likes best about Dunn is that he doesn’t fit neatly into any theological category. The reverend isn’t an ultra-conservative or a politically correct liberal. The preacher wants to be faithful to the gospel, while keeping the Bible relevant to today.

For example, in”Kudzu: A Southern Musical,”the preacher asserts,”The holy Scriptures are as relevant today as they were 2,000 years ago. But people have the attention span of a fruit fly! You gotta’ hit ’em where they live _ dysfunctional families in paradise! Lot salts driveway with wife! That’s hot! Get it? Tabloid gospel!”

DEA END RNS