Who Are You, Jesus Christ?

Broadway is turning into a religious institution.  Currently playing are The Book of Mormon, Godspell, and (more central to the subject of this post) Jesus Christ Superstar.  I love Superstar.  It's probably one of my favorite musicals.  Not that I've ever seen it before, I just love the music, which is - as it turns out - the entire show.  Jesus Christ Superstar is part rock opera and all awesome.  If you get the chance, I strongly encourage you to listen to "Gethsemane" from the 1971 original Broadway Cast Recording; there's this one note that Jesus hits that will make your brain melt with amazement.  What's especially cool about this production is that the cast is almost entirely comprised of Canadian no-names.  The show came down from the Stratford Shakespeare Festival and it represents the festival very well.  The cast does a great job with their parts and, more importantly, you can hear every word.  Full disclosure, the actor who plays Judas has a solo album and I bought it.  His voice is amazing.  With regard to staging (and how can I go an entire blog post without talking about it?), I thought it was really well done.  A few things threw me off at first - most notably the Mad Max/Sontaran styled centurions and the fact that the set does at times seem to swallow the actors - but I really liked what I saw.  I do not know if there is a Tony Award for projection design, but the projection designer for this show deserves major recognition. "Trial & 39 Lashes" and "John 19:41" were both awe-inspiring.

But perhaps more interesting than the details of the show is the subject matter.  It is, after all, a musical about the last six days of the life of Jesus Christ... the man.  Not the son of God.  It's a very interesting proposition: what if Jesus was just a guy who had some nice things to say?  What if he wasn't the son of god?  It's not a new idea.  Thomas Jefferson took all the miracles out of the New Testament and published  The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth as a book of ethics. I think that we can mostly all agree that Jesus didn't say anything too crazy with regard to his ethics.  But you have to admit, he was also kind of morbid.  Toward the end he talked about his own death an awful lot.  In the words of Judas in the opening number: "You've begun to matter more than the things you say". To me, the story actually becomes more important if Jesus was just a guy.  A potentially delusional guy depending on whether or not he himself believed he was he son of god, but a guy none the less who was essentially lynched by the people of Judea for spreading kindness and equality.  Once you strip away the myth from the man, I my opinion, he becomes someone worth founding a religion upon...

Yes and No

It's awesome when you can drive twenty minutes between schools and go from one extreme on the spectrum of interest to the other.  It really makes you value the schools you're interested in that much more.

Since my school called a "snow day" (we haven't had any all year so we had a day to burn), my dad and I hit the road to two of the schools I'm interested in that are within driving distance: Haverford and Swarthmore in Pennsylvania.  In my opinion, they are as different as night and day.

Haverford says no.  It is incredibly difficult to double major according to the students there.  It is very difficult to find a study abroad opportunity outside of those the college has vetted (the college itself does not sponsor any abroad programs).  The students begrudgingly chain themselves to the library desks come finals week with dreams of being in Philadelphia since there is apparently not enough to keep students on campus.  If the college does not have a resource you are looking for, they will ship you off to one of the Quaker Consortium schools (Bryn Mawr, Swarthmore, and UPenn in that order of likelihood).  There are all kinds of things wrong with that.  If I wanted to go to Bryn Mawr, I would apply to Bryn Mawr; but I don't, so I won't.  I will apply to a school for the resources they offer, not for the connections to other colleges with those resources.  They are academically stringent without the resources to support it.  On the plus side, the campus is beautiful.  It's a nationally recognized arboretum.

But if you want a nationally recognized arboretum coupled with a positive experience, I would suggest you drive 20 minutes to Swarthmore College where the people say yes.  Yes, double major!  Yes, find the opportunities that best suit you!  Yes, willingly study because when you're a freshman you can have the department heads as your seminar teachers!  Yes, party on campus at events like Screw Your Roommate (set them up on a themed blind date where they have to find their complementary other based on costumes) or Pterodactyl Hunt (this is a thing)!  If Swarthmore does not have the resources you're looking for, they will bring them to you.  Sure students go off campus, but it's to visit the art museums in Philly to compliment an interest in art history or to go to Chester and help a struggling community.  Visiting Swarthmore makes you want to change the world.  Also, they have twice as many species of trees as students.  At Swarthmore, they do more than pay lip service to their Quaker roots; they embrace their students and want to nurture their interests across seemingly disparate departments.  They believe in activism and consensus decisions and sharing.

So, long story short, I loved Swarthmore; it was totally worth the visit.  Haverford? Not so much.

GATZ

Having just recovered from the theatrical experience of a lifetime, I figure I should try to explain just how truly cool The Elevator Repair Service's GATZ is.  Which might be a little futile, since tickets were sold out the day it came back to The Public Theater and it hardly needs more accolades, but I'll still make a go of it.

This is a theatrical endurance test.  My back still hurts from sitting in the Newman Theater's rather uncomfortable seats.  The audience sits down at 3 PM and the play is over at around 11 PM.  That includes two intermissions and a dinner break (I went to the B Bar & Grill, which was delicious), but that's still really freaking long.  But it is so worth it.  Set in an grimy, dingy office, the play begins with a man sitting down to his desk, discovering his computer isn't working, finding a copy of Fitzgerald's book, and beginning to read.  As he continues to read, the other people in his office begin to fall into place as the character from the novel.  As the play progresses, it seems that the text begins to take over and it becomes hard to tell who's in charge: the people populating the world of this office or Fitzgerald's meticulously chosen words.  Slowly but surely the evidence that this is an office is taken away, and by the time the narrator gets to the last chapter the files and computers that cluttered the desks have been whisked away, leaving Nick alone with the text.  Quite frankly, it's somewhat disturbing.  The light has faded to a blue gray, the sound design is gone (the technician/actor leaves after discharging his roles as various NYC people, Michalis, and the Lutheran Minister) and much of the furniture has been removed.  It's remarkably unsettling, but you can't take your eyes off the stage in much the same way that the people of the Ash Heaps are transfixed by the accident that kills Myrtle Wilson.  It is truly remarkable.  Only Fitzgerald's text remains.  And that is the only text involved in this production.  It is ostensibly a live action audiobook.  True, other things are said on stage, but they are not audible and gradually the tasks of the office stop intruding as everyone gets wrapped up in playing their parts.  The only complaint I might make about the productions regards Jordan, who takes her epithet "jaunty" very seriously which renders her performance somewhat robotic, but truly this production was remarkable.

Also, the actor who plays Nick has all 49,000 words of the text memorized.  It makes you want to cry out to the skies "What is this madness!?", right?

All the World's A Stage

I maintain that only Brits can do Shakespeare right.  This assertion was proved more right on Friday night when I made the trek down to Brooklyn to see Simon Callow in Being Shakespeare at BAM.  One-third one-man show, one-third Shakespeare survey, one-third lecture, this production is a fascinating look at who Shakespeare was in the context of his life and times using Jaques' famous "All the world's a stage" speech from As You Like It as frame work.  The text of the production was written by Jonathan Bate (preeminent biographer of Shakespeare) and the design and direction is the brain child of Tom Cairns.  The moment Callow steps on stage we are treated to a somewhat disheveled looking professor and guide through The Bard's life and words.  And it's not just the classics that everyone knows.  In addition to a fantastically realistic Falstaff, Romeo's "psychotic chum" Mercutio, the Rude Mechanicals from A Midsummer Night's Dream, and a weary Macbeth, we are introduced to some more obscure works.  Like a monologue from Sir Thomas Moore.  Don't worry, it's not part of the official cannon.  It's from one of his collaborations with other writers.  Which, as it turns out, is how he got his start.  Will Shakespeare rose from glove maker's son, to horse carriage valet for London theaters, to technician, to ensemble cast member, to script fixer, to author, to William Shakespeare.  It makes me unmeasurably happy that he was, at one point, a technician.  As he grew older, he continued to write his own plays, but also contributed a monologue or two to the works of others.  Hence, Sir Thomas Moore.  We are also introduced to what little William would have learned in school.  Which is to say Latin Grammar and Rhetoric.  Callow takes apart the "Friends, Romans, Countrymen..." speech to show the audience each rhetorical device employed by Shakespeare to convey his point.  It's super cool.  All in all, it was a fascinating look into the seven ages of William Shakespeare that I would recommend to anyone.