As a solo performer, comic actor Julia Sweeney explores love, cancer, family and faith. Her latest solo show and CD, Letting Go of God, is about the "quest for something I could really believe in" -- which turns out to be no God at all.

Why you should listen to her: Known for her four-year run on Saturday Night Live and her powerful solo shows, Julia Sweeney is carving out her own territory in entertainment, one that moves between the personal and the political, the controversial and the comical. Her most recent piece, Letting Go of God, traces a spiritual journey that takes an unexpected turn toward science (a turn that, incidentally, also led her to TED) and ends with atheism.

In this, as in all her performances, Sweeney projects a warmth and sincerity on stage that's unmatched in today's theater; you immediately feel you're chatting with an old friend. And this gift of intimacy allows her to achieve the impossible: an utterly disarming show that honestly confronts the most controversial topic of our times. Her earlier shows, God Said “Ha!” and In the Family Way also garnered praise and prizes for their pairings of humor and poignant truth.

"Without breaking her affably conversational tone, in Letting Go of God she inhabits the emotional memory of each step on her path."
New York Times