A Jesuit Off-Broadway: Center Stage with Jesus, Judas, and Life's Big Questions
272
A Jesuit Off-Broadway: Center Stage with Jesus, Judas, and Life's Big Questions
272eBook
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Overview
Many of us have questions about the Bible: Can we believe the Bible? What was Jesus’ mission? What is sin? Does hell exist? Is anyone beyond God’s forgiveness? In A Jesuit Off-Brodway, James Martin, SJ, answers these questions about the Bible, and other big questions about life, as he serves as a theological advisor to the cast of The Last Days of Judas Iscariot.
Grab a front-row seat to Fr. Martin's six months with the LAByrinth Theater Company and see first-hand what it's like to share the faith with a largely secular group of people . . . and discover, along with Martin, that the sacred and the secular aren't always that far apart.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780829429930 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Loyola Press |
| Publication date: | 03/01/2011 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 272 |
| Sales rank: | 879,090 |
| File size: | 4 MB |
| Age Range: | 3 Months to 18 Years |
About the Author
James Martin, SJ, is associate editor of America magazine. A prolific author, writer, and editor, his books include Searching for God at Ground Zero, In Good Company, My Life with the Saints, and A Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything, and his articles have appered in The New York Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Tablet, and Commonweal. He resides in New York City.
Stephen Adly Guirgis is an American playwright, screenwriter, and actor. He is a member and co-artistic director of New York City's LAByrinth Theater Company. His plays have been produced on five continents and throughout the United States. His plays include The Little Flower of East Orange, Our Lady of 121st Street, Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train, In Arabia, We’d All Be Kings, and The Last Days of Judas Iscariot produced by LAByrinth in collaboration with The Public Theater in 2005.JAMES MARTIN, SJ, is associate editor of America magazine. A prolific author, writer, and editor, his books include My Life with the Saints, A Jesuit Off-Broadway,Searching for God at Ground Zero, and In Good Company. He is the editor of Awake My Soul and Celebrating Good Liturgy. His articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Tablet, and Commonweal. Fr. Martin resides in New York City.
Read an Excerpt
Foreword
Have you ever wanted to cross-examine a Priest? I did. Over many lunches and dinners and coffees and late-night phone calls and even-later-night calls, and then during early-morning meetings after late-night dinners and phone calls. I forcefully, aggressively, and desperately cross-examined Father Jim on anything and everything having to do with Scripture, Catholicism, The Priesthood, Jesus and Judas, Heaven and Hell, God’s Plan and the Nature of Man—and then followed up my questioning?with more questions that had little, if anything, to do with ANY of the above. I asked many questions that, perhaps, one is not supposed to ask, and, on occasion, Father Jim would reply with answers that perhaps he was not supposed to give. I tried to—and needed to—leave no stone unturned, and Father Jim, secure in his faith and his priesthood, never did anything but supply direct answers to pointed questions. And he did so kindly, thoughtfully, and with both a passion for the subject and a wealth of com-passion for me—his confused, often irate and disconsolate lapsed Catholic Interrogator. In short, he was everything I think a Priest should be: kind, caring, thoughtful, strong, unimpeachable—and up for the challenge. In short, I have no doubt that Father Jim is one of Jesus’ true soldiers. And trust me: I’m not the doubt-free type. I drown in doubt, and to the degree that that’s true, Father Jim, from our first meeting and right up to today, is slowly teaching me to swim.
—Stephen Adly Guirgis Author, The Last Days of Judas Iscariot
Prologue
Until a few months ago, what I knew about the theater—playwriting, directing, acting, dramaturgy, set design, and all the rest—wouldn’t have filled a paper cup. When the playwright Stephen Adly Guirgis and the actor Sam Rockwell contacted me to help with a new Off-Broadway play called The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, I wondered how much I could contribute to their production. On the other hand, after sixteen years as a Jesuit, I thought that I might be able to help the two learn something about what happened in first-century Palestine to the itinerant preacher and the man who betrayed him.
My journey with the cast of The Last Days of Judas Iscariot was actually a short one, beginning and ending in the space of just six months. Like many memorable trips in one’s life, it wasn’t one I had planned on making.
Act 1: Into the Deep End
October to December
Judas called first.
About Judas Very little is known about Judas. The Reverend John Meier, a professor of New Testament at Notre Dame and the author of a multivolume study on Jesus called A Marginal Jew, is one of the leading contemporary scholars on the “historical Jesus.” In the third volume of his work, entitled Companions and Competitors, Meier notes that only two basic things are known about Judas: Jesus chose him as one of the twelve apostles, and he handed Jesus over to the Jewish authorities.
“That soul up there who suffers most of all,”
As Paffenroth notes, most of the Passion plays popular throughout Europe in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries accentuated the ties between Judas and the Jewish people. The development of the most famous of these plays shows how central that identification was.
The Birth of a God-Haunted Play Stephen Adly Guirgis’s theological interests were even more wide-ranging than Sam Rockwell’s. As the playwright, he needed to know not only about Judas but also about all the events leading up to the Crucifixion, including the roles of Pontius Pilate, the Jewish leader Caiaphas the Elder, and the apostles.
The Making of a Playwright Before my first meeting with Stephen, his new play already had a long history. In a way, it had begun when Stephen was in third grade. That year, one of the Dominican sisters teaching at Corpus Christi told his class the story of Judas. Stephen was horrified. He believed in a loving God, and the idea that God had consigned Judas to a place called hell “just stopped me in my tracks.” He loved and respected the nuns in his school but wondered about what they were telling him. How could God not feel sorry for Judas?
Theological questions were indeed foremost in the playwright’s mind, and our conversations ranged from broader questions about grace, forgiveness, and despair to more detailed inquiries into the history of the individual characters in the drama.
Cunningham. I see. And you governed or procurated over Judea from twenty-six to thirty-six A.D., correct?
Pilate’s dismissive responses to Cunningham always elicited laughter from the audience. But Guirgis was interested in more than simply getting laughs or making Pilate a risible figure. Ultimately, the playwright wanted to help the audience appreciate the complicated mix of motives that led to the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth.
Who Killed Jesus?
The most notable recent effort to answer Stephen’s question is a sixteen-hundred-page, two-volume work, The Death of the Messiah, written by Raymond E. Brown, a Catholic priest and one of the leading New Testament scholars of the late twentieth century. He points out that while it is clear that some of the Jewish leaders were opposed to Jesus, it is also clear that only Rome had the power to condemn and crucify a man.
Caiaphas. Our Torah has six hundred thirteen Sacred Laws—I can’t even count how many Jesus broke or treated with wanton disregard and disdain! He broke the laws that came from the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob! He violated the word of God. He violated the Laws of Moses. He consorted with the Unclean, and women, and prostitutes. He performed Miracles on the Sabbath, He proclaimed himself Messiah! He forgave sin! Who was he to forgive sin?! Only God can do that! If that’s not crossing the line, then I don’t know what is!!
So controversial was this question of responsibility that Jeffrey DeMunn, who would play Caiaphas, said that taking on the role scared him, though he had worked as an actor for more than thirty years.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "A Jesuit Off-Broadway"
by .
Copyright © 2011 James Martin.
Excerpted by permission of Loyola Press.
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Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Dramatis Personae ix
Foreword by Stephen Adly Guirgis xi
Prologue xv
Act 1: Into the Deep End 1
About Judas 7
The Birth of a God-Haunted Play 15
The Making of a Playwright 19
Who Killed Jesus? 28
A Study in Despair 41
“I Don’t Know, Man . . .” 49
Act 2: Teasing the Mind into Active Thought 53
The LAByrinth Theater Company 54
Readings 58
“You Wanna Do This Role?” 61
The Gospel According to Phil 66
Searching for God, Jesus, and the Buddha 71
The Jesus of History 80
Living with the Saints 87
The Woman from Magdala 93
Poverty of Spirit 100
Taking the Story Seriously 106
Jesuit Theater, a Nearly Forgotten History 119
Act 3: Fully Human, Fully Divine 127
The Hope of Results 128
Who Is Jesus, Anyway? 137
Satan Appears 153
Ready for Previews? 159
A Christological Crisis 164
Act 4: The Messiah Has a Cold 167
Chastity and Friendship 170
Traditions and Superstitions 171
A Theatrical Vocation 174
Reviewing Detachment 177
Walking Mookie at Night 190
Act 5: Hearts on Fire 201
Last Full Script Ever 202
Dramatic Faith 212
Faithful Drama 217
Just a Little More Faith 222
For Further Reading 231
Talk-Backs 233
About the Author 237
Who Are the Jesuits, Anyway? 239
Bibliography 247