Fifty-two years ago on May 17, 1971, “Godspell” opened at Cherry Lane Theatre. In 1976, it closed and reopened on Broadway. The musical by John-Michael Tebelak is a retelling of Jesus’ ministry structured around a series of parables, mostly from the Bible’s Gospel of St. Matthew. The play was tried out at the avante garde La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club. Stephen Schwartz joined the production to write much of the music that made Godspell so captivating. The lyrics that were not written by Schwartz mostly come from the Episcopal hymnal.
With the deadline for his thesis at Carnegie Mellon University two weeks away, Tebelak needed to release his stress. So, he attended an Easter Vigil service in 1970 at Pittsburgh’s St. Paul Cathedral, wearing his usual overalls and a T-shirt. A police officer frisked him for drugs after the service. He wrote, of this experience, “I left with the feeling that, rather than rolling the rock away from the Tomb, they were piling more on. I went home, took out my manuscript, and worked it to completion in a non-stop frenzy.”
In 1973, the musical was produced as a movie set in New York City. The song “Beautiful City” was written for the film.
Jesus is portrayed as an outlandish hippie clown. At first, his appearance can be off-putting and seem a bit ridiculous. But gradually you realize that your initial rejection of portraying Jesus as a clown is like the rejection of the real Jesus by the religious and political powers of his time. You begin to see the humanity of the actors shining through. Clive Barnes of The New York Times called the “whole premise rather nauseating…”
The concept was taken from theologian Harvey Cox’s book Feast of Fools. Cox was famous for his book that proclaimed cities like New York were irretrievably The Secular City. “Godspell” and “Jesus Christ Superstar” seemed to be rumors that maybe God was not yet dead in the secular city. The year after “Godspell” ended its run on Broadway in 1977, New York City started to experience the beginnings of an evangelical Christian revival, first in the boroughs, then twenty years later in Manhattan. Many other religions also boomed in the city.
The playwright was a lifelong member of the Episcopal Church, considered becoming a priest, and may have attended an Episcopal seminary for a time. He was a dramaturge for the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City and staged liturgical drama there. In April 2020, Stephen Schwartz participated in the “Saturday Night Seder” which premiered to an audience of more than 1 million viewers and raised more than $3.5 million for COVID relief.
[202212117_1200]
