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| Godspell |
The Godspell play was a great success at Carnegie Mellon and, in early
1971, was performed in New York City at the La MaMa Experimental Theatre club.
It then re-opened as Godspell at the
Cherry Lane Theater in May 1971, with a new musical score and lyrics by Stephen
Schwartz. The off-Broadway play became a great success, especially after cast
members sang the popular song, “Day by Day” (which reached number 11 on the top
forty charts in 1972) on The Today Show
on NBC. After that appearance, the play was sold out for virtually every
performance (de Giere 2008: 67). It became the third-longest running
off-Broadway play in history.
In 1973, the film adaption of
the play appeared. The film uses New York City as the backdrop for the story,
but the ten characters who make up the cast act out their story in an
eerily-deserted city. Unlike its contemporary, Jesus Christ Superstar, which was also made into a film in 1973,
the film version of Godspell was
generally not well received.
The film begins with John the
Baptist gathering a diverse group of eight disciples out of the crowds of New
York City—a student (Lynne), actress (Gilmer), waitress (Katie), professional
woman (Robin), taxi driver (Jeffrey), parking lot attendant (Jerry), ballet
dancer (Joanne), and clothes delivery man (Merrell)—while blowing a shofar and then
singing the song, “Prepare Ye the Way of the Lord.” John the Baptist then
playfully “baptizes” these eight new followers in Bethesda Fountain in Central
Park.
Jesus then appears clad only in
underwear and with clown-like make-up, including a red heart on his forehead;
John the Baptist baptizes him—after protesting as in Matthew 3:14—and when
Jesus stands, he is suddenly dressed in a Superman shirt, with striped pants
and suspenders, a carnation, and clown shoes. Jesus begins to sing, “Save the
People,” and everyone begins to follow him; all are now also clothed in
mismatched, clown-like clothes, singing along as they make their way through a
deserted New York City.
Jesus and his new followers end
up in a junkyard that becomes a playground for speaking and visually
representing Jesus’s teachings. The teachings of Jesus, especially the
parables, dominate the first hour of the film. In the junkyard, Jesus paints
the faces of his new followers and then begins to teach them. Their antics,
like Jesus’s teachings, present an alternative reality—what life should be like
in the kingdom of heaven. A whimsical and playful Jesus and his whimsical and
playful followers speak of and also perform that kingdom for us—and they build
a community of believers in doing so (Walsh 2003: 84).
In the next post, I will start to analyze the film's distinctive interpretations of the parables of Jesus.
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