Schenkelberg credits her daughter with convincing her to leave the church. She had opposition to many of their teachings: they were anti-gay; she had gay friends. To make her understand their point of view, no kidding, she had to make clay figures out of playdough and then act out scenarios with the figures. We won’t even get into Xenu, the galactic overlord. But she was compelled to leave when the church began whispering in her daughter’s ear about joining the SeaOrg (which came with a billion year contract), she grabbed her best girl and fled. But it wasn’t easy.

“When you’re a Scientologist, all of the people around you are too,” Schenkelberg says, “I was not only indoctrinated, I was also isolated. My manager, my agent, my doctor, my chiropractor, my dentist, my accountant, and my friends – all were Scientologists, and I knew that when I was going to leave, they would also leave me.”

It wasn’t until Schenkelberg was out of the church that she learned her family had been terrified for her. She was labeled a suppressive (a church term for bad influence) in 2011, the same year her cherished father died. After his death, her mother found a shoebox full of letters and clippings all about Scientology, with letters he’d sent to the clergy and to people who deal with cults, a Time magazine article, as well as due diligence researching Scientology and disconnection. “If I’d known, I would have left earlier. Hindsight,” she says with a sigh.

The title, Squeeze My Cans, comes from the auditing cans that are hooked up to an e-meter that helps you go “clear.” As Schenkelberg puts it, “Everybody’s into different s–t.” So when she got out of Scientology she went to an Indian store in Los Angeles and bought some beads. “I needed something – I asked for beads that represent healing and growth, and I made this bracelet out of them.”

She always wore it, and was wearing it when she went to see Smith’s critically-acclaimed Rabbit Hole at Dezart Performs that he directed. It was late January 2018, two years after she had written Squeeze My Cans, a year after she had won Best of Fringe in Hollywood and Edinburgh, and two months before Smith would die of a heart attack on March 1. They were in his kitchen and he was mixing one of his famous martinis, the ones with the hand-stuffed olives, when he suddenly turned to her and said, “You know, you did it, Cathy. You said you were going to do it, and you did it. You followed through on what you put out there.”

It was at that very moment Schenkelberg experienced a real-life metaphor; the bracelet she had made so many years ago broke apart and all of the beads clanged on the ground and scattered.

Proceeds from her performance will go to Dezart Performs and the Scott Smith Scholarship Fund.

Squeeze My Cans, Oct. 7-8, Desert Rose Playhouse, 69620 Highway 111, Rancho Mirage. Tickets are $30 each. dezartperforms.org