Logan Shirley was walking around New York City one day in 2016, when he had a realization: “New York City doesn’t need the kind of theater that I want to do.” But Shirley knew that his hometown of Grand Junction, Colo., on the other hand, was exactly the kind of socially conservative community that could use a healthy dose of “advocacy theater.”
“I’m simply not interested in just entertainment. It doesn’t make my soul soar,” said Shirley, now the founder and creative director of Get Uncomfortable Productions in Grand Junction. He credits his interest to his time at the Stella Adler Studio of Acting in New York City, which “stretched me as an actor. I fell in love with theater that pushes boundaries.”
For example, Shirley and Get Uncomfortable Productions just finished a performance of “Hand to God.” The play follows a puppet club that brings chaos to a church basement in Texas through sex, sin, and a foul-mouthed puppet named Tyrone. Shirley, who played the demanding dual role of Jason and Tyrone, said “‘Hand to God’ is a challenging play for audiences.
“They have only two hours to process what us actors have had weeks to process. We just about broke even on ‘Hand to God.’ The response has been very positive,” he said. “We have a remarkable amount of local theater in our community, much of which is family-focused, but I do think there is room for something for the adults; something worth getting a babysitter for,” said Shirley.
Shirley attended Grand Junction’s Bookcliff Christian School as a child but said he was “always uncomfortable in a Christian school.” Shirley said that despite growing up in the church and being the son of a pastor, religion never quite worked for him. Theater, on the other hand, worked well for him. He began acting locally at a young age with the now-defunct
