What a fantastic opening weekend for The Last Days of Judas Iscariot! Congratulations to the cast, crew and Forum team. Thank you to all who made it to our two previews and opening night show. Now everyone gets a well deserved break for a few days before the performance Thursday night (followed by an OpenForum post-show discussion). I’m so excited to keep coming back night after night to this show…
Michael here–
Thought I’d post a quick link in the midst of JUDAS pre-opening craziness. With uncanny timeliness, the Washington City Paper published an article this week on the scientific/medical explanation for how crucifixion actually kills.
You can find the link here.
How’s that for an “extra feature?”
Back to the theatre—hope to see some of you this weekend~
m
Maggie is a company member with Forum who has appeared in productions of Kid-Simple: a radio play in the flesh (photo above), The Memorandum, and BECKETT: The Shorter Plays. In The Last Days of Judas Iscariot she plays Mother Theresa and Loretta.
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I find religion to be a very personal thing; a belief that you as an individual must experience, a spiritual journey to figure out the world and you in it. This is a very exposing exercise. My father is
Catholic, my mother is Protestant, and I am me. When asked, which by the way Americans seem to be obsessed with labeling folks, I state that I am both Catholic and Protestant. There is no lie in my
statement since I used to attend both churches with my parents. Sometimes I went to church three times a Sunday as a kid. I was baptized with a Priest and a Minister present and my family is very
active in American Association of Interchurch Families (AAIF) http://www.aaifusa.org. Check out the website if you are interested, it is a cool group of people.
I have a hard time with religious organizations that state beliefs in black and white terms, “it can only be this way.” For me the world has too many gray areas. I play Mother Teresa in the show and she, in her public life, lived in the black and white dogma. As recent documents have shown her private life was full of more doubt, the grays of life, if you will. For her job, Mother T had to be of complete convictions. Her fears and doubts of God not wanting her, of God not being God, etc
are similar to many questions and doubts we have in our own lives. Anyone ever had doubts about being liked by your “crush,” friends, or even your dog? Or how did we end here in the world? How can there be a God when there is so much suffering? Mother Teresa’s life was no picnic and she wasn’t always a saint to deal with either. But she makes me wonder- What is it like to live a public and private life? Saints and those to be canonized were once real people (except for
maybe some of the earlier myth based Saints) with flaws and fears, just like us. After seeing the show think about how much gray there is.
Mother Teresa quotes Thomas Merton about despair, a sin that both suffered from in their lives. Listen carefully for when despair is mentioned in the show. I feel the way in which Adly-Guirgis uses the despair quote, it is to highlight the state of static. If nothing changes your state, for good or bad, then what is the value of it? With God’s help life will get better or God has a plan for you with the difficult times. If you trust in that belief something has to change. Despair puts everything on hold. If you believe in purgatory, isn’t it static as well? And what is Judas but lost in despair, staticin purgatory?
Side notes:
1) Thomas Merton spent a good chunk of time at the Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemeni near Bardstown, Kentucky. It is lovely place where meditation happens as soon as you step on the grounds, and they have excellent cheese. I grew up in Louisville and went to the abbey with my family and the AAIF when I was in middle school. One of the monks spoke with the group in a causal setting. He shared that back in the day all the monks ever knew about the outside world was told to them by the Abbey. He said that the Abbey announced the start of WWII and its ending, the rest was silence. Life at the Abbey is quite different now but can you imagine being free from the world’s constant barrage of information?
2) When I was a temp, a long time ago, I found this website: http://www.catholic.org. Go to the saints section and read up on all the saints. The stories of the saints’ lives are fabulous! Saint Genesius is a ridiculous saint and he reminds me of a few actors I’ve worked with in the past. Read about my favorite Saint here:http://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=185
Today’s entry comes from Scott McCormick, who plays prosecuting attorney Yusef El-Fayoumy. Scott is also a company member of Rorschach Theater where he takes care of their theatrical blogging.
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This a play about the fear that exists within the minds of disaffected or recovering Catholics.
I know other folks will see their own religious beliefs reflected in The Last Days of Judas Iscariot. But for me this is a play about the things that those of us who grew up Catholic and have now left the church for various reasons feel life, death and Jesus.
I went to Sunday School (CCD for you public school Catholics out there) until I was 14, which actually took place on Saturday mornings. My folks rarely took me to actual mass. I have never been clear on that disconnect, but I think it set the tone for my own spiritual process. Lots of theory and very little of actual worship.
I went the whole way through religious training and received each successive sacrament: baptism, holy communion, confession and finally confirmation. I debated the teachers and had my own doubts about all the big questions that a young man has regarding his faith and his ever growing sexual and intellectual awakenings.
How do I reconcile my desires of the flesh with what the church tells me is right?
How can I be a good Catholic and believe in evolution?
Do they really expect me to tell them every sin that I have committed even if I am not convinced that it is a sin?
And the question get even harder the older you get.
How could a savior whose message was one of love and peace be used to instigate so many wars and deaths over the last 2000 plus years?
How does a church which talks about the destruction of the Earth as being a mortal sin, have absolutely no answer to the question of over population and in fact encourages families that can not fee themselves to continue to have more and more children?
I have known many good Catholics in my life. I don’t begrudge them their faith in God or their love of the church. The changes that have taken place in the last 40 years have moved the church to a place closer to where it should have been, in my opinion, from the beginning, but for me it still hasn’t come far enough.
For all of my questions about the Church I do believe in the teachings of Jesus. I turn the other cheek as often as I am able and I try to treat all people with the respect that they deserve.
Recently both my sister and my best friend have entrusted the Godfather-hood of their sons. They seem to think that I am a man who they could trust to teach their children how to be moral people if the need should ever arise, even if I don’t go to church every Sunday. I like to think I earned that trust not because they see a person who tries his hardest to live a moral and just life not just someone who blindly follows a church because it he was born into it.
Like everyone in this world I have had to weigh the difference between religion and belief. And therefore my beliefs have forced me away from religion.
I can not be a member of a church that treats women as less than men. I can not belong to a church that tells gay men and women that their lives are a sin and the only way they can be saved is to deny their very nature. I can not belong to a church which would sacrifice a woman’s life or right to choose.
It is because of all of these things that I am unable to say that I am a member of the Catholic Church.
Do I worry that I am wrong and that going to church every Sunday, believing in Creationism and Confessing my sins is in fact the way to get into heaven? Yes I do.
And after that detour into my spiritual life I think that there is one question the play that sings out to me most clearly. Can you be a good person and still end up in Hell because the church you grew up in was right and the modifications you have made to your own beliefs jeopardizes your immortal soul?
I hope the answer is no, but there will always be that nagging doubt at the back of my head saying the answer is in fact yes.
There is only one way to find out and I am not ready to do that sort of empirical research yet. The alternative is to live the way Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, Moses and Confucius all said in their own way ; love your family, friends and strangers; try and do least amount of damage I can to this world no matter who or what created it. And most importantly whether your life is a gift from a loving God or a series of ever more amazing astronomical, geological and biological accidents, love and cherish that life. But you don’t have to listen to me, I still hope to achieve what I just wrote but like any faith or life it is about the journey.
Julie is playing Fabiana Aziza Cunningham, Judas’s defense attorney in The Last Days of Judas Iscariot. She shares her thoughts below.
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I was raised Catholic. Upon my confirmation and adult entry into the church at age 13, I stopped going to Mass. Perhaps it had to do with my parents’ divorce and subsequent religious schism. My father had a religious rebirth and joined the Evangelicals. My mother sued my father for the rights to my little sister’s soul. As confirmed (yet un-practicing) Catholics, my brother and I were safe. But my sister’s eternal salvation (and option to marry in the Catholic Church) was dependent on a judge’s ruling. My dad won that battle, making the Catholic Church a place to revisit for weddings of extended family members. I went to the new church with him on the holidays out of guilt (once a Catholic, always a Catholic, right?). Despite my otherwise healthy upbringing and young adult life, I still questioned God, Jesus and organized religion.
I have always been skeptical of the Bible. I saw it as a political tool, both in its creation, generations of translation and editing, and modern use. I saw it as historical fiction. Elements were based in fact, and the message was strong, but it wasn’t a reliable source of empirical information. Then I started taking Steven Adly Guirgis’ words as truth. They must be truth in the world of this play, but the reality is that we are bringing this play into our world. I needed to know how much of it was truth, and how much of it was literary embellishment. And where could I turn? The Bible- the once source that I had doubted and tested my whole adult life. I would sit down to read the Bible just to research the references in the play. Then I would find myself getting absorbed in the stories and messages. Two hours would pass, and I’d realize that I had been doing work on myself, rather than the play and my character. It has been time well spent, and I will continue even after The Last Days of Judas Iscariot closes.
At first read of the play, I thought that I had very little in common with Cunningham. My parents both loved me, and any obstacles I encountered in my own life were to a much lesser degree than those in Cunningham’s checkered past. While I struggled to find a common life thread with Cunningham, I found a similarity that was even scarier- our similar spiritual life: our skepticism, our denial of what we know to be true, in exchange for the truth we create; a glib self-righteousness that points a finger at anyone who answers to a higher power, but the inability to provide answers herself; and despair, the unwillingness to let go and hand yourself over to God.
After a relatively short life of adversity, Cunningham has become not stronger, but harder. She has not found peace with her lot, instead she has made it her mission to justify and rectify her miserable existence. She insists on trying to control “the natural order of things that the good Lord has so thoughtfully put together.” She is convinced that she is right, and everyone else-including God- is wrong. She is surrounded by evidence of God and his justice, but she still refuses to admit her belief in him. And in the end, she is the one who is accountable for her own despair, for she is not able to let go and let God fill her with joy and forgiveness. Cunningham IS Judas. She is presented with God’s love (albeit via Satan), and she denies it out of her own self-inflicted guilt and despair. She is in Purgatory not because she is being punished, but because she is punishing herself. And ultimately, she will meet the same fate as Judas.
I believe in Steven Adly Guirgis’ script. I believe in his words and his poetry and his rhythms. I believe in the world of the script- its characters and its content. I would not feel compelled to do a show that catered to a fundamentalist Christian audience. “Preaching to the choir” is far too easy. I am also not interested in a story line that flippantly glamorizes irreverence. Guirgis does neither. Judas Iscariot is not an educational romp through Bible-story land. Due to its far-from-middle-America characters and colorful expletives, it certainly is not a play that any church would put on for its theatre-loving congregation. But perhaps it should be. This play would pose important questions to the faithful- make them reexamine their relationship to God and their place in this universe. I’ve always believed in God- or more generally, a higher power. The Judeo-Christian God always seemed to me to be a fatherly punisher of sinners, a wrathful, rule-spouting, bush-burning, flood-sending force that turned over the family business to his next of kin and eventually lost touch with humanity. Guirgis presents a perspective that is new to me- that God isn’t up in heaven shouting from a megaphone. His love is ever present and the only thing keeping us from Him is ourselves and our inability to hear the “music of God’s love”. God doesn’t punish us, he sends us challenges and we chose how to deal with them. We can overcome our obstacles and become stronger, or we can be bitter and resentful and shut God out of our heart, mind and soul.
A response to the play from cast member Frank Moorman who is making his Forum Theatre premiere playing Butch Honeywell.
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Responses are now coming in fast from the cast. Below is a letter to James Martin, SJ written by our very own Judas, Jason McCool (shown above with me at last year’s Helen Hayes Awards). Jason also appeared in Forum Theatre’s production of Kid Simple.
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Dear “Father Jim”…
Forgive my familiarity, but in a way I feel I know you through your writing, and have traveled a remarkable journey with your work A Jesuit Off-Broadway over these past few weeks. My name is Jason McCool, and I’m an actor in Washington, DC about to appear as Judas in the DC premiere of that same play that you worked so diligently and lovingly to co-create those few years ago. Directed by acclaimed DC veteran John Vreeke, this production is being mounted by the young, super-dedicated and talent-rich company Forum Theatre. Along with others in our cast and creative team, I’ve been reading your book during our rehearsal process, and it’s been fascinating to watch our work unfold alongside your recounting of the original production. In many cases we have been informed and influenced by your thoughts and the processes of the original cast, creating what Emerson (one of my spiritual influences) might have called “a game of circles.”
Like your production, ours has been shaped by the impulses for spirituality inherent to all of us, and we’ve enjoyed discussing with great urgency the perplexing questions your friend Guirgis brings up. Also similar, at times the ordinary flow of our technical rehearsals become interrupted by some vexing, intractable theological concerns which somehow must be addressed before we move forward, and this is so interesting for everyone involved. One of the great things about the piece is its flexibility – not forcing anyone to “take a side,” but demanding in a way that we bring our own personal narratives to the table. I particularly enjoyed this element of your book as well, and we’ve done much of the same work during rehearsals – sharing personal stories about our relationship to God and the Church, or in many cases discussing how amorphous this relationship can be.
In an odd way I’d locate myself in this latter category – my relationship to organized Church-going begins with the story of my father, Joseph McCool, officially a “former” Catholic priest ordained at St. Peter’s, who studied with Bernard Lonergan at the Jesuit-run Gregorian University in Rome during the exact years of Vatican II. Coming from this tradition, my father, now a marriage counselor, “left” the Catholic Church, unable after the vitality of those years to reconcile with the orthodoxy and conservatism he experienced upon returning to his parish in Rhode Island. (Our classic story is that when he had decided to leave, he posed the question to a higher-up “What could be better than spending one’s life asking questions?” to which the older priest responded “Having the answers!” As you will remember, this story rather directly mirrors the ending of Guirgis’s scene with Mother Teresa!) My father left the priesthood and married my mother Mary Jane, who also came from a traditional Catholic background, and proceeded to raise two sons in relative secular seclusion. We only went to Church once or twice a year, and I experienced practically none of the traditional rituals associated with “growing up Catholic.” (Save perhaps for my first theatrical performance, which was an innkeeper bellowing “No room!” to Joseph and Mary in a local Nativity play!) In recent years, however, my 60-something parents have rediscovered their roots in Catholicism, banding together with various groups of like-minded “former” priests (almost all of whom became therapists – go figure!) and their wives in Massachusetts (known as Corpus, Voice of the Faithful, etc.) and forming their own deeply intellectual, unabashedly liberal (!) community of celebration. I affectionately refer to them as “The Church for Aging Hippies!” I’ve been to a few of their services, which usually max out capacity in someone’s living room, and always place a premium on individuals having a voice and speaking out. (My Dad visits Rome at least once a year, and his favorite piece of artwork brought back from one trip is from the Priscilla Catacombs – an image of a very early Christian community seated around a table as equals.) Personally, I think these services are a trip… except that I tease my Dad about the vanilla-bourgeois music they tend to use! In any case, my father still considers himself called to be a priest, and has reclaimed this role in his life irrespective of what the “official” Church tells him is correct. He often officiates at services, and has incorporated Henrietta’s stark and moving opening monologue from Judas in his recent sermons, alongside the final image of Jesus washing the feet of Judas. And finally, I have my father’s priesthood to thank for finding my girlfriend, who is the daughter of a former priest named Dan McCarthy (a remarkable 75-year old man currently making his annual 500 mile walk – the “Camino de Santiago” in Spain), who had served as deacon prefect on my Dad’s hall at Our Lady of Providence Seminary in Rhode Island over 40 years ago. File under: the Lord works in mysterious ways!
Anyway, I wanted not only to thank you for your stories and influence on a work that has and will continue to challenge theater artists and audiences, but also to extend to you an invitation (albeit on rather short notice!) to attend our production, which I humbly posit will be fantastic and moving. (Hey, the Washington Deluxe bus is only $35 round-trip, and I’m sure you get some kind of priest discount!) You’ve felt like such a kindred spirit during this process, and from a creative perspective I imagine you would enjoy seeing a work you know so well interpreted by completely new faces. As an actor who has seen numerous productions of plays I had previously worked on, I can vouch that this can be a rather mind-altering experience! Of course, I understand how busy you must be, but I thought it couldn’t hurt to drop you a line and a postcard. Or if you know anyone in the Washington, DC area who might be interested in this work, perhaps you could pass on one of the enclosed cards? All best to you and your work, Father Jim, and I look forward to keeping up with your writing and maybe even catching one of your sermons next time I’m in NYC. It must feel cool to be such a rock star in the theater community!
Peace,
Jason McCool
We got our second response to our call out to the cast members of The Last Days of Judas Iscariot. Cesar Guadamuz, who plays The Bailiff and Simon the Zealot offered us these thoughts.
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Up until the age of 12 or so, I constantly lived in fear of the fact that if I ever questioned the existence of hell, that, in itself would buy a pass straight to damnation. There was very little room for doubt in my upbringing. Not that my parents oppressed my insatiable and constant need to ask how and why when it came to the topic of religion, but that they too wholly believed, or had the unshakable faith that there had to be a Hell, simply because there had to be a God. No doubt about it.
So when it came time to deconstruct Christianity and organized faith, as I had sought to do through a semester of God Deconstructed (or something to that effect) in my second year of college, I had nothing but a willingness to believe or disbelieve the answers I was so hoping to find to all the questions I had collected.
What I found was this: There is a reason why it is called Faith.
When my mother’s mother passed away suddenly and without warning, she turned to daily prayers to afford her the strength to close a chapter in her life and move on. When my father underwent a very risky operation, our prayers, I’m convinced, gave him the power to rehabilitate and move on. Throughout my life, I had often turned to the words I had so ingrained in me, those communions, devotions and supplications to find the solace, courage and direction to “deal and move on”.
It was during that rigorous examination of the Bible, complete with essays and exams, that I began to understand what it meant to have faith and why it has been so important in the life of my family. Only then was I able to answer my questions as to God’s existence and approach the idea of Hell, as a spiritual representation of what it meant to be in Hell, to be going through Hell, to be put through Hell. No longer did my fear exist because I understood, or perhaps I adopted, after a period of often tedious introspection, that Hell was a human state of helplessness, of absolute fear, of utter loneliness, a state completely devoid of Hope.
I’ll be quick to say, when asked in discussion, that I am Catholic. But ask me if I attend Mass or go to Communion or even Confession, and I will also tell you that I do not participate. Yet, I do have any less faith because of it.
Personally, to me, faith represents a reason to be alive, a desire to “pull through” and to overcome. My belief in the power of prayer and the Saints and God and Hell is a place where my faith can live, grow, be challenged and supported. My faith, which so happens, because of my upbringing, to be identified with the tenets of Catholicism, is as personal, as real and as important to me as any other ideas and opinions I possess. My faith gives me a place in this world and brings a worth to my life.
Having said all this, I’m not going to argue that the idea of Satan and Hell still manages to scare me every once in while. But now that I’ve been able to work out my faith, to basically adopt a belief, I can approach the possibility of a “Hell” with more strength and with less mystery.
When I first started work on this piece, I quickly latched on to the idea of Judas in Hell, a physical place. As we are nearing opening night, I’ve come to understand, or once again accept personally, that Judas’ Hell in a way, is his own, within him.
I would like to say that in my life, I’ve had no criticism of Atheism, of non-Christian religions, of those who’ve taken from different religious doctrines. We all share this Faith, I believe, this Will.
I think Judas has the power to break out of Hell. I have Hope that he can. I think he has the power to find within him the Faith to undo it.
We’ve asked the cast members of The Last Days of Judas Iscariot to send us their thoughts on the play, rehearsals, and their own personal connections to the material and their religious histories.
Jesse, who was in Season 2’s The Memorandum, is playing Dr. Sigmund Freud and St. Thomas.
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I was raised as an Atheist, though I consider myself Agnostic. I do not believe in God or in any afterlife, or any real purpose to our humanly existence. I’m lucky to be playing both an intellectualizing atheist (Freud) and a doubter (St. Thomas) in this production as I can bring some of my natural cynicism to the roles. ‘Intelligence and Faith are two different things’ says Freud, and while I shy away from the narcissism of his assessment, I do believe he is right. I’m a practical guy–I consider myself an intellectual, and I absolutely demand proof for everything.
I am very excited to be a part of this production. Religion is an important part of history, and a part of history that I know very little about. I am excited how dialogue and debate is modernized, urbanized, sensationalized…and then thrust into the mouths of very important and controversial characters. Guirgis has assembled a panoply of persons, pious and profane. The subject matter is epic and theatrical, and yet the play takes place in one of the most confined and mundane of domains–the litigation courtroom.
This play has aroused my curiosity. Lately I’ve been finding myself typing in Biblical names and places into Google and skimming through the results. Just who the heck was Caiaphas the Elder? There’s very little that I know about the Bible, and honestly, in order to effectively rationalize my position toward Religion, I have to know what it is I am rationalizing against.
I must admit, the Bible is completely contradictory, sensationalized, ludicrous–but damn if it’s one heck of a read.
I am uncovering fascinating stories, parables and myths. To me, these are human tales–epic soap operas–sparked by deep psychological undercurrents that reveal human fears and desires–the perfect ingredients for great drama!
This play taunts us, provokes us, dazzles us and surprises us. I don’t have to be religious to say that I find this production to be very exciting and very challenging. Guirgus takes the ethereal and makes it something decidedly human. This I can identify with.
It was exciting being at two rehearsals in a row this weekend. Saturday focused on the first act, Sunday the second. Following a work through on Sunday, the actors were filled with discoveries. Rehearsal was put on hold for some time as people were anxious to share their views. I think I’ve said this before, but it is thrilling to be in a room with people who are all so passionate about a play. This story, not just the Biblical story but the personal stories that are being told hit deeply in the watching and in the performing.
Hopefully the actors, when done memorizing, will have some time to write a little bit about how the show is effecting them.
