LGBT Milestones - Corpus Christi

In 2001, SNAP! Productions presented Corpus Christi, one of the most controversial plays of all time. Terrence McNally's controversial play about growing up gay in a Texas Gulf Coast town is about a miracle-working, love-preaching healer named Joshua. His story presents an update of the Bible in thoughtful, vividly human ways. The nativity takes place in a roadside motel, during Joshua's wandering in the desert. The devil appears in the form of movie star James Dean, and the apostles don't face easy decisions devoting their lives to this guy with a halo; they have to leave behind law firm partnerships.

Time magazine called the play "one of McNally's best, most moving and personal works. His updating of the Christ story is witty but not patronizing, as sober and cleansing as a dip in baptismal waters."

The play's form is story theatre: 13 barefoot male actors perform a play within a play, starting with the birth of Joshua/Jesus in a Texas motel. Soon evils emerge, such as wife-beating, loveless sex, gay-bashing and clerical humiliations. The playwright uses this parallel story of Christ to tell a contemporary, colloquial tale of the fight against cruelty, division, hatred and, above all, hypocrisy. Love and acceptance are the antidotes.





The dramatic early attempts to prevent the play from being produced raised a flood of controversy on both sides - freedom of speech versus religious censorship. The New York Times, in an article headlined "Censoring Terrence McNally," wrote, "What we are witnessing, once again, is the peculiar combat between freedoms that is repeatedly staged in America. The practitioners and beneficiaries of religious freedom attack the practitioners of artistic freedom - freedom of speech - without seeing that the freedoms they enjoy cannot be defended separately."

The play is directed by Don Nguyen. The cast includes Nick Zadina, Michal Simpson, Mitch Fuller, Tom Lowe, Ed Baye, Jerry Evert, Michael Taylor Stewart, Damion Potter, Matt Yohe, Jeremy Earl, Tony Schik, Daniel Saucedo, and Rick Gobble.


About Terrence McNally: His first credited Broadway musical was The Rink in 1984, a project he entered after the score by composer John Kander and lyricist Fred Ebb had been written. In 1990, McNally won an Emmy Award for Best Writing in a Miniseries or Special for Andre's Mother, a drama about a woman trying to cope with her son's death from AIDS. A year later, he returned to the stage with another AIDS-related play, Lips Together, Teeth Apart, a study of the irrational fears many people harbor towards homosexuals and people who have the disease. In the play, two married couples spend the Fourth of July weekend at a summer house on Fire Island. The house has been willed to Sally Truman by her brother who has just died of AIDS, and it soon becomes evident that both couples are afraid to get in the swimming pool once used by Sally's brother.

With Kiss of the Spider Woman in 1992, McNally returned to the musical stage, collaborating with Kander and Ebb on a script which explores the complex relationship between two men caged together in a Latin American prison. Kiss of the Spider Woman won the 1993 Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical. He collaborated with Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens on Ragtime in 1997, a musical adaptation of the E.L. Doctorow novel, which tells the story of Coalhouse Walker Jr., a fiery black piano man who demands retribution when his Model T is destroyed by a mob of white troublemakers. The play also features such historical figures as Harry Houdini, Booker T. Washington, J.P. Morgan and Henry Ford.

McNally's other plays include 1994's Love! Valour! Compassion! which examines the relationships of eight gay men; and Master Class (1995), a character study of legendary opera soprano Maria Callas which won the Tony for Best Play.


In 1997, McNally stirred up a storm of controversy with Corpus Christi, a modern day retelling of the story of Jesus' birth, ministry, and death in which both he and his disciples are portrayed as homosexual. In fact, the play was initially cancelled because of death threats from extremist religious groups against the board members of the Manhattan Theatre Club which was to produce the play. However, several other playwrights such as Tony Kushner threatened to withdraw their plays if Corpus Christi was not produced, and the board finally relented. When the play opened, the theatre was besieged by almost 2000 protesters, furious at what they considered blasphemy. When Corpus Christi opened in London, a British Muslim group called the Defenders of the Messenger Jesus even went so far as to issue a fatwa sentencing McNally to death. On January 19, 2008, Robert Forsyth, Anglican bishop of South Sydney condemned "Corpus Christi" (which opened for February's Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, a play depicting Judas seducing Jesus): "It is deliberately, not innocently, offensive and they're obviously having a laugh about it." The play also showed Jesus administrating a marriage between two male apostles. Director Leigh Rowney accepted that it would offend some Christians and said: "I wanted this play in the hands of a Christian person like myself to give it dignity but still open it up to answering questions about Christianity as a faith system."

Review: Omaha World Herald Review, Published Saturday
November 24, 2001


Lead actors shine in 'Corpus Christi,' modern Jesus story
BY JOHN KEENAN
WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER


The first line of Terrence McNally's "Corpus Christi," currently playing at the Snap!/Shelterbelt Theatre, promises an "old and familiar story."

It's correct, but only in one sense. "Corpus Christi" is a re-imagined story of Jesus, which tells of a new messiah, a gay man called Joshua, born in Corpus Christi, Texas.


The premise enraged the Catholic League almost from its inception, but McNally's goals are provocative in a different direction. Rather than re-imagining a historical Jesus, he seems more interested in examining the fate of a gay man who arrived in the modern world with the same messages and gifts that Jesus brought. The result - rejection, scorn, torture and death - would ring true even if Matthew Shepard hadn't been killed in Laramie, Wyo., the day before the original production of "Corpus Christi" opened.

McNally strings together episodes in Joshua's life that mirror those of Jesus', including the virgin birth, the temptation in the desert, the resurrection of Lazarus, the 30 pieces of silver, the last supper and, of course, the crucifixion.

But McNally alternates them with scenes in modern times - Joshua facing scorn in high school, Joshua hitchhiking, the disciples enjoying themselves at a disco - which gives the play a weird, disconnected vibe, as if the characters existed outside of time.

With most of the actors playing more than one role - Nick Zadina as Joshua and Michal Simpson as Judas are the only two that don't - the play has an allegorical tone that is inescapable.

Some critics have suggested that the modern sequences may be somewhat autobiographical, because McNally grew up in Corpus Christi.

These autobiographical sequences, if that's what they are, are among the drama's most compelling, and Zadina is very good in these scenes as a young Joshua struggles not only with his awakening sexuality, but with his awakening divinity.


It doesn't all work - Satan in the form of James Dean is an odd choice - but the play draws a good deal of its power from these scenes, which speak to a disconnection from other people and a sense of not belonging that a young Jesus very easily may have felt.

The retelling of the basic New Testament stories actually is less compelling, a bit episodic, although McNally throws in a twist or two. But theatergoers may find themselves almost counting down to the crucifixion, a sequence beautifully staged by director Don Nguyen.

The cast as a whole is strong. Thomas Lowe is a standout in the role of Simon Peter, and he also plays the Virgin Mary and a high-school classmate of Joshua's called Spider Sloan.

Damion Smith is also memorable as James the Less, and he is very good as Patricia, Joshua's unfortunate prom date. Also memorable are Daniel Saucedo, Jerry Evert and Edward Baye.

Still, the production rises and falls with Zadina and Simpson, and the two actors nail their roles, demonstrating a palpable chemistry as well.

Zadina has the more challenging assignment as the center of the play, and he is quite good, although his righteous anger sometimes seems only loud. Zadina also has the play's best line: After he strikes down a priest, one disciple protests, "But you told us we should always turn the other cheek," to which Joshua retorts "I must have been in a very good mood that day."

Simpson gives a quieter performance, never quite fitting into the group and often suggesting a lurking quality. His second line - "What about me?" - is full of foreboding, and he carries out the inevitable treachery with a sense of superiority and sorrow that makes for a strange but compelling mixture.

There is no curtain call for "Corpus Christi," a decision that works, giving the play's somber conclusion more resonance. A thought-provoking work, "Corpus Christi" offers its own kind of reverence.