In 2007, the Philadelphia Live Arts Festival commissioned actor and Writer Brian Osborne to write a one-man play about Gortner. The play, The Word, premiered at the Festival with Suli Holum as Director and main collaborator. In 2010, the play was recreated as The Word: A House Party for Jesus, with Director Whit MacLaughlin. The new play opened October 14, 2010, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and has since been performed in New York (the Soho Playhouse), Los Angeles, Philadelphia (the 2011 NET Festival), and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (the Kelly Strayhorn Theater), with other productions planned for Austin, Chicago, and Minneapolis.