The new Amos 'n' Andy?

All this devotion has meant gold for Perry, the 36-year-old son of a New Orleans house builder, who now lives in an Atlanta mansion he calls Avec Chateau ("with house") as a reminder of the days when he was homeless, living in his Geo Metro and scraping together money to produce his first show. Perry's rise from difficult beginnings, about which much has been written, is a vital part of his mythology. As a child, he was abused by his father -- "The first 28 years of my life, I don't remember ever being happy," he says -- and he started to write after hearing Oprah Winfrey talk about how cathartic it is to put your troubles on paper. The result was "I Know I've Been Changed," a gospel musical about adult survivors of child abuse, which Perry produced at venues around the country for six years, without much success. Perry was so discouraged, he has said, he contemplated suicide. But he collected enough money for one last production, at the Atlanta House of Blues in 1998, and on the first night, he looked out the dressing-room window and saw a line snaking around the corner. The show wound up selling out all eight performances. Perry was on his way.

Eight years later, he's on top of the world. In addition to promoting "Madea's Family Reunion," Perry is currently putting the final touches on his first book, "Don't Make a Black Woman Take Off Her Earrings" (coming from Riverhead in April), writing his third movie, "Daddy's Little Girls" (due next February), finishing his ninth play, "What's Done in the Dark" (which should hit the road by September), and working on a proposal for a children's animated series. And Perry still travels the country constantly, performing Madea live to 2,000-seat audiences. In his current touring production, "Madea Goes to Jail," Perry spends at least half the show as the center of attention, stomping around the stage in drag, yelling, shooting off pistols and improvising huge chunks of dialogue.

As soon as he gets offstage, he switches to business mode. "I've had phone meetings with Tyler where I can hear the audience laughing in the background," Paseornek says. "We'll talk for a while, and then he's like, 'I have to go. I'm due onstage.' " When Salon spoke to Perry earlier this month, he was in a South Carolina hotel room, still exhausted from the previous night's performance. "Where am I?" he said. "Charleston, I guess."

After all that time in front of his fans, Perry knows them well; his plays are calibrated to please them. The actresses in his shows look like his audience. They are what that Dove soap ad campaign calls "real women" with "real curves." On the other hand, the men are fantasy types, with ridiculously cut bodybuilder torsos. Perry's story lines are also designed to satisfy his fans, many of whom have experienced plenty of tragedy. In "Madea Goes to Jail," we meet good-hearted Katie, who's in jail because of some sad mistakes. Madea meets Katie there and agrees to check in on Katie's rebellious 16-year-old daughter, Toni. Madea winds up taking Toni in as a foster child, to get her away from a father who is threatening to pimp her out on the street. We also spend time with Madea's nephew, Sonny, who works as a jail guard and puts up with a slutty wife, Vanessa. She goes to bed with Sonny's co-worker and gets so wrapped up in her illicit passion that she ignores the cries of their 6-month-old child, who winds up almost drowning in the bathtub.

These messed-up youngsters drive the plot of "Madea Goes to Jail," but the real stars are their mothers and aunts, who worry, fret and pray to Jesus for help. That is, unless they're the no-nonsense Madea (who has nothing to do with Euripides' "Medea," by the way). Whenever she comes across a villain like Vanessa, Madea does just what you might want to do -- kick her in the ass. In the theatrical version of "Madea's Family Reunion," she catches a Vanessa-like tramp seducing the husband of her best friend's daughter -- and chases her out of the yard with a couple of gunshots and an Eastwood-worthy catchphrase. "Girl, you like Skittles?" she yells, brandishing the pistol. "Well, taste the rainbow!"

Perry's audience loves nothing more than a Madea rampage, and Perry milks it for every bit of fun. After the tramp runs away, Madea tries to calm herself down by rolling a joint, but it doesn't work. "I said I wasn't going to bother nobody," she tells her friend. "But that woman done worked on my nerves." Madea paces, waves her gun in the air and gets so angry that her enormous fake breasts bounce up and down. "She done worked -- on -- my -- nerves," Madea bounces, as the audience falls out with laughter. "I ain't lying," she says. "I'm ready to go to jail to-day."

In a Perry stage show, this mix of serious and slapstick is all part of the over-the-top experience, along with the shirtless hunks, the melodramatic stories -- and especially the roof-raising gospel music. Perry's shows feature a live band, an enormous sound system and a cast that can seriously belt. Every few minutes, a character breaks out with a number that starts in sorrowful lamentation and builds to a joyful climax that gets the audience to their feet, pumping their hands and praising the Lord.

But the fun of the stage shows doesn't necessarily translate to the movies. Lions Gate had no advance press screenings of the film version of "Madea's Family Reunion" in New York (a clear sign that they're expecting bad reviews) but Perry says that, like "Diary," it features a lot less singing and a lot less Madea than the stage version. "I'm not trying to duplicate the theater experience," he says.

But maybe he should try. "Diary," which was directed by music-video veteran Darren Grant, is a sentimental and often boring melodrama that comes alive only when Madea is on-screen. Perry directed "Family Reunion" himself, but to truly capture the divine madness of his plays, he needs to take some daring risks that neither he nor his audience is probably ready for. Making his next film a full-on musical and putting Madea front and center would help. But the Boston Globe's Morris has an even nuttier idea: "I think John Waters should direct his movies," he says, with a laugh. "What you have now is trash that doesn't know it's trash. Someone like Waters or Pedro Almodóvar could take that trash and transform it into art."

Next page: "Somebody always comes to God in the end"