Review: "How to Become a Saint (while wearing pants)" Gives Us Transcendence in Trousers

How to Become a Saint (while wearing pants)

Created and performed by Lex Alston, Becca Canziani, Brooke Ferris, Lynn Hodeib, and Ania Upstill

Presented by Butch Mermaid Productions at wild project

195 E 3rd St, Manhattan, NYC

April 1-4, 2026

Lex Alston, Becca Canziani, and Brooke Ferris. Photo by Ruby Goldner.
One might not think of excessive weeping as a divinely bestowed gift, but medieval English mystic Margery Kempe claimed her copious crying as a sign of her special relationship to Jesus Christ, arguably repositioning a "feminine" weakness as a strength. Kempe is one of a trio of the saintly who assemble in How to Become a Saint (while wearing pants) for a celebration of one of their own that ends up throwing their perceptions of history and self into question. Written by the cast, the freewheelingly funny How to Become a Saint is part of the 2026 New York City Fringe Festival, an open lottery-based theater festival in which one hundred percent of box office proceeds go directly to the artists, and which this year runs from April 1-19 at UNDER St. Marks, the wild project, Chain Theatre, and The Rat NYC.

As audience members make their way to their seats, they are greeted by a white-clad, blue-haired angel (Butch Mermaids founder Ania Upstill) with a clipboard who checks them in along with the other guests on their rsvp list, all of whom are saints. This is Saints' Heaven, after all; and assisting the first angel is a second (Lynn Hodeib), less composed and capable and more interested in breaking out her snack food. The second angel and the minimalist set also partake in the blue and white theme (Kempe [Brooke Ferris], when she appears, is dressed in solid blue, an echo of the angelic perhaps hinting at her self-importance). The occasion is St. Marinos's Day, and part of the celebration involves reenactments, the method by which the saints share their stories with one another. Marinos (Lex Alston), though, is supremely shy, as embodied hilariously but relatably by Alston. Marinos has to be led onstage and prevented from leaving again after they stumblingly introduce themself to the audience. Their reenactment, when it comes, expands on these introductory details, with a story that involves Marinos becoming a monk like their father, raising a child who also became a monk, and being discovered upon their death to have "boobs!" That this discovery is declared in the same line "A miracle!" seems like a handy dodge for the patriarchal authorities.
Lex Alston, Becca Canziani, and Brooke Ferris. Photo by Ruby Goldner.
Kempe is next to arrive on the scene, introducing herself as the first woman to produce an autobiography in English and a virgin with 14 kids. The Long Island-accented self-importance with which Ferris plays Kempe is hilarious (and even funnier for those who have read The Book of Margery Kempe), as is her being "hot for Jesus," as she repeats in song. Funny as it is, her attitude also reflects the medieval eroticization of Jesus's wounds, itself bound up in discourses that sometimes undercut gendered norms, conflating those wounds, for instance, with sites of nursing. Joan of Arc (a fantastic Becca Canziani) is the final arrival, a "special guest" who is newly sainted and not sure why she is there. (Whatever the reason, the second angel, played with comedic aplomb by Hodeib as often a bit off the beat, metaphorically and sometimes literally, clearly feels about Joan the way that Kemp feels about Jesus). Following a slo-mo battle reenactment that Joan then says is not what happened, the characters try different ways to figure out the reason for Joan's canonization. On the way to concluding it must have been her wearing pants, they are forced to reexamine who is telling these stories (historically, even Kempe's Book was dictated, introducing a layer of mediation between her and the reader) and why.

The play, which in its program credits M.W. Bychowski's scholarship on trans saints as a source of inspiration, reminds us that the archive is not always trustworthy and suggests alternative avenues in the search for truth (it is perhaps relevant that the voice of God, when it comes, is polyvocal, in a clever bit of staging that has the cast speaking in unison with their backs to the audience). As the characters come to and engage in that search, they engage in a little audience interaction and a lot of physicality–no doubt reflective of the amount of clowning experience collectively held by the cast–from the choreographed passing of years in Marinos's reenactment (which also sees Upstill playing the Catholic Church with a headpiece somewhere between costume and prop) to Margery Kempe's R&B-style song for the divine love of her life and Joan's climactic musical spoken-word/dance number. There, as throughout, How to Become a Saint (while wearing pants) makes transgressiveness sparkle.

-John R. Ziegler and Leah Richards

More reviews from the 2026 NYC Fringe Festival:

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