About Holy Rollers: The Crazy Oregon Cult That Wasn’t Rajneeshpuram
Event date moved from May 27, 2019 to May 20, 2019.
Presented by Alastair Morley Jaques, Actor, antiquarian, and
storyteller
A small town is gripped with scandal when a wild-eyed,
charismatic, apocalyptic cult leader takes possession of the hearts, the minds,
and perhaps the very souls of their mothers, their sisters, and their wives.
The enraptured women proclaim their leader to be nothing less than the second
coming of Jesus Christ and join themselves to him as the multiple brides of
their fiendish new messiah.
When the self-styled prophet and his “Brides of Christ” retreat
into the wilderness to await the dawning of a new age and reports begin to
circulate about week-long cult rituals that are one half religious revival, one
half wild orgy, the few remaining townspeople not under the messiah’s spell
decide it’s time to act.
By the time the smoke of gunfire, arson, and animal sacrifice
cleared, three were dead, headlines were made, and a once peaceful community
was rocked to its core.
It’s a story that evokes all the thoughts and associated names like
Waco, Jonestown, the Manson Family, or Rajneeshpuram. It’s a story that began
in Corvallis, Oregon in 1903 and ended with gunfire, murder, and suicide on the
streets of Portland.
About the Speaker:
Actor, antiquarian, and storyteller Alastair Morley Jaques studied
Theatre Arts and American Literature at the Evergreen State College and the
University of Oregon. He has appeared in a professional capacity on stages all
along the West Coast in Shakespearean and contemporary roles, as well as lending
his talents to numerous commercial voice overs on radio and television. A born
and bred Oregon, he is perhaps best known to Bend audiences for his wildly
successful one person show An Evening With Edgar Allan Poe. An avid reader and
collector of stories and artifacts pertaining to the strange, eldritch, and
arcane, he lives in Portland, OR and spends much of his time in a bell tower
overlooking a crypt and a columbarium.
For more information, please visit: https://alastairjaques.com/
