Guest column: ‘Godspell’ broadens knowledge, unites cast

Published 5:00 pm Thursday, April 23, 2009

My friend Bob Goldberg is acting in a spring production of Godspell at the Astor Street Opry Company. He plays both John the Baptist and Judas in this musical based on the Gospel of Matthew.

For the next two weekends, Bob and his thespian cohorts will cavort with Jesus, played by chiropractor Seth Goldstein.

“This is the first play I’ve been in here that has another Jew in it!” observed Goldberg, a New York-cum-Seattle-cum-Astoria ham I first met at the Coaster Theatre in a holiday run of Fiddler on the Roof. He rocked as the village rabbi; I sold horses and bagels.

Between scenes backstage our talk ranged from sociology to religion. Gesturing in our traditional costumes there were moments I imagined we were huddled in a dimly lit yeshiva.

It was the perfect place to start a cross-cultural conversation that continues to energize our friendship. Community theater is an old tool for sharing truths. It can turn a parable or midrash into a ritual that opens our hearts and minds.

I felt some of that opening while performing “Sabbath Prayer” around the table with my stage family. Bob taught me how to doven while canting in the glow of the candles. The music and motions resonated in my bones even though the candles had little electric light bulbs.

In a similar way, Goldberg tells me Godspell has expanded his awareness of the Christian experience.

“The more I learn about Jesus, acting out his story, the more I get why so many people are into him,” Goldberg told me recently as we were walking around a track meet at the Astoria Middle School. “Godspell is about love and rebellion against the power structure.”

Kindred insights fostered the “Jesus people” movement of the late ’60s and ’70s – an offshoot of the hippie counterculture that paralleled the run of Godspell off Broadway. My father-in-law, a Seattle minister, was so inspired by the musical and coinciding movement that he produced a TV documentary that earned four local Emmys.

Jennifer and I were in elementary school when the movie of Godspell was released in 1973. We recently watched it again with our daughters, and had to stop in the middle of the first song to explain why we were crying.

“That was the first portrayal of Jesus and his followers that I could relate to as a kid,” Jennifer said. “They seemed like real Christians to me.”

I understand what she means. The baptism of the characters at the beginning of the film conveys a freedom of spirit. The uniformed actors become like flower children, escapees from the empire’s routines.

Plenty of adult churchgoers disagreed. The sight of Jesus with multi-colored trousers and clown shoes was too much for devotees who preferred him in white robes or naked on a cross. The fact that Godspell came out around the same time as Jesus Christ Superstar did not aid its acceptance by more conventional Christians.

I’ve spoken with quite a few folks who have never seen Godspell but have some vague memory that the play isn’t kosher for some reason. Goldberg told me one man asked him “isn’t that play anti-religion?”

Given the martial posturing of today’s sectarians, maybe it is. Yet the musical created by Steven Schwartz and John-Michael Tebelak is an earnest effort to share the liberating joy found in the Gospels. According to Wikipedia, Tebelak was working on the play in 1970 when he decided to attend an Easter Vigil at Pittsburgh’s St. Paul Cathedral. Wearing his usual overalls and T-shirt, he was frisked down after the service by a policeman.

“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.”

Spring is the season Jews and Christians celebrate freedom and renewal. Bob points out that our holy calendars are in synch this year, meaning the days line up to match the same sequence followed when Jesus made his final trip to celebrate the Passover in Jerusalem. In light of this fact, the cast of Godspell held a first-night seder with a Hagaddah prepared by cast member Margaret Hammitt-McDonald.

“Jews are really good at creating rituals with food,” says Goldberg. “We also love stories and the theater.”

This is a special time when cross-cultural inspiration bridges traditions. On the evening following the seder at the Astor Street Opry Company, Barack Obama became the first sitting president to hold a seder in the White House. Who knows what else might happen?

The cast of Godspell offered the following prayer at the end of their supper ritual.

“Next year, let us celebrate together in a world of freedom, justice, and peace, on a transformed Earth!”

Omeyn. Encore. Amen.

Watt Childress is a Cannon Beach bookseller who writes a regular column for the Cannon Beach Citizen. E-mail him at (wattchildress@yahoo.com).