Queer Eye for the Fundamentalist Christian Guy

Ahhh, community theatre. I’ve been doing it for fifteen years, and it never ceases to amaze me. People with children and day-jobs (that they won’t quit, by the way), and mortgages, all coming together for the good of capital-A Art (in the form of Rodgers & Hammerstein musicals) in small towns that barely show up on a map. We all know we’re doing Podunk a valuable service, if only its philistine citizens recognized that and gave us the respect we so greatly deserve.

For instance, four years ago, I played Milt, a comedy writer, in a production of Neil Simon’s Laughter on the 23rd Floor, in the town of Monroe, Wisconsin. Never mind the fact that only forty miles north in Madison, Neil Simon is virtually unproduce-able (too quaint, they would say – too Monroe for Madison), this was a very controversial production. So controversial in fact that many of Monroe’s more active actors declined on principle to even audition for it. There were just too darn many swear words in it.

It was a fun show, and I think we did a good job of it. But our audiences didn’t think so. Even after expunging a good portion of the “fucks” and the “shits” from the script – leaving only those we felt had some artistic purpose integral to Simon’s vision (community theatre folks actually talk like this), our audiences sat stone-faced and outraged. Sure, it felt ridiculous to us that we were playing a bunch of New York City television comedy writers and throwing around Mayberry-esque words like “heck” and “golly” and “darn”, but when I unleashed the first “fuck” of the show, the need for euphemisms was immediately apparent. And each night, for two hours, we got to watch our show, and some of Neil Simon’s funniest and most heartbreaking jokes sink into the dark, unmerciful tarpits of smalltown moralism.

Not only did we get hate mail for the show, but I vividly remember one morning, while my partner James and I were having breakfast at one of the local restaurants, an older man approached our table saying he recognized me from the play he saw the previous night. This kind of recognition is one of the nifty little fringe benefits of doing community theatre, and I prepared myself to smile graciously and thank him for his complements, when he said, “Don’t do that kind of show in Monroe, anymore. We don’t need that garbage. You should be ashamed.” And for a second there, I thought the man must have had me confused with Robert Mapplethorpe or GG Allin. But he meant me. And Neil fucking Simon.

The folks in Monroe couldn’t see the forest for the “fucks”, and a play that should have been about the end of a golden era of television comedy and a group of writers struggling with their own impending obsolescence became a play about a half dozen people from Monroe using fowl language on stage.

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But lest I suggest that small towns have a monopoly on smallmindedness, fast forward to the autumn of 2003. I’ve long since left Monroe for the greener, more liberal, more challenging, more metropolitan, more diverse, educated, and politically contrarian environs of Madison, where when people talk about the two-party system, they're referring to the Democrats and the Greens. This fall, a local community theatre group called StageQ (specializing in gay & lesbian plays and playwrights) announced their 2003-4 season, and their Spring 2004 production of Terrence McNally’s 1998 play Corpus Christi.

Now, there are some words and phrases that when associated with each other have an explosive effect, like throwing a chunk of sodium into water. It blows up! And the light and glare from that explosion blinds people, so much so that they can’t see the context of it. For instance, if you were to say that a play is about Jesus, and that the Jesus figure in the play was gay, then you’ve got an explosion. Even in Madison, where most of the churches (even the Baptist Church) display little rainbow flags on their announcement boards to show how welcoming they are to gay folks like me, folks - urged on primarily by the Catholic Church - have already started protesting StageQ’s production of Corpus Christi a full six months before it is set to open.

Unfortunately, very few of those protesters have actually read the play. If they had, they might have found that Corpus Christi is an extremely reverent piece of work, a traditional passion play told through contemporary characterizations and dialogue. They might also have realized that by protesting this play, they were proving McNally’s own point in a way that he’d never really be able to dramatize on a stage. They empower this play even as they attempt to stifle it.

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Like any other passion play, Corpus Christi follows the lives of Jesus and his disciples leading up to his Crucifixion and subsequent Resurrection. The Jesus figure in the play is named Joshua, a young social outcast from Corpus Christi, Texas, derided for his athletic inability and his general “softness”. It eventually becomes clear that Joshua is gay. (Insert explosion here).

“Why gay?” some may ask. And this play asks back, “Why not gay?” And while we’re at it, why not straight, why not a woman, or a transsexual, why not black, why not Asian or Indian, or Somalian or Senegalese? Why not any of the infinite variations on the word human? If God created us in His image, than why wouldn’t He be like any one of us?

McNally explores Joshua’s humanity here as much as he explores Humanity’s divinity. Joshua does question things. He doesn’t always have the answer. His temptation is real. And sometimes he contradicts his own words. And by granting Joshua the human sexuality the Jesus no doubt had (be it hetero- or homo-), he makes Joshua more human, more tangible – and Judas’s betrayal of him even more poignant and tragic.

McNally's handling of the disciples is similarly humanizing. Each disciple introduces himself with a small humorous speech at the beginning of the show. And we learn that they too were skeptical, but ultimately their faith in Joshua won out. Bartholomew, a doctor, admits he never believed the miracles: “’Believe,’ He’d say, ‘Believe and be well.’ I’d be right behind him saying, ‘Believe, and take two of these and call me in the morning.’”

As timeless as the story is, McNally’s dialogue is very contemporary and casual, full of the kind of quipping you might hear on “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy”. But he never strays from the story and the punchlines never get in the way of the overall reverent tone of the play. Early in the play, we are told that the story has no suspense and that we’ve heard and seen it all before - we all know how it ends - and McNally keeps that promise. There are no suprising twists and turns in the plot. There's no big sexual fantasization scene (a la The Last Temptation of Christ) although there are moments of great personal and physical intimacy. Even as the protesters outside the theatre might prepare us for something wildly daring and probably offensive, McNally’s play is actually very controlled, very thoughtful – a kind of ritual statement of personal faith.

If all this sounds a little churchy to you, you’re right. And towards the end of the play, reading the the disciples' tag-team narrations leading up to Joshua’s crucifixion, I felt myself cringing and grinding my teeth, with every hair on the back of my atheist’s neck standing up on end. But ultimately, what I love about this play isn’t the gay characterization of the Christ figure, but rather McNally’s assertion through the play that Christianity should be inclusive, not exclusive. The role of faith shouldn’t be the determination of who’s “with us or against us”, but rather the proliferation of love and hope, unity and peace. No, I’m not Christian, but this is a portrait of Christianity that at least doesn’t frighten me – that I could almost agree with. And if the purpose of the Passion Play is to demonstrate Christ’s love and God’s forgiveness, then Corpus Christi is at least as effective as last year’s Sunday School Easter Pageant at the local Methodist Church, and certainly more effective than the Rev. Fred Phelps headline-grabbing demonstrations at the funerals of men and women who have died from AIDS. If you can see past the controversy, Corpus Christi may very well be the most un-ironically Christian play in post-war American Theatre.

Now, protest that, Mr. Ashcroft.