(no subject)

[skygiants]

Last week my friends and I watched a 1994 acoustic community-theater-fundraiser Jesus Christ Superstar production on YouTube -- an great experience notable primarily for the fact that it stars the Indigo Girls as, respectively, Jesus and Mary Magdalene; notable secondarily for the absolutely incredible costuming choices.

All of us watching were in fact in accord that we would love an in-depth oral history discussing only the costuming choices, which I have chronicled here in loving detail for my own benefit and yours.



starting out easy with Mary Magdalene, who wore this lovely robe through the entire show and looked incredibly comfortable



this Beatnik college professor man is Judas



and this is sad Disguise Judas, coming to sell Jesus out to ....



THE PHARISEES.



One of them is some kind of Alice in Wonderland chess piece, one of them is a cigar smoking nun, one of them is Claude Frollo, and the fourth I guess is Bowser?



I think the cigar smoking nun is Caiphas, who also sometimes shreds on the guitar.



I guess it's time to show Jesus herself, here pictured in cowboy fringe with Simon Zealotes, who seems to have just escaped from a lesbian bar in Weimar Republic Berlin.



Later Jesus will put on a snazzy coat emblazoned with repeating Virgin Mary motifs on it for a casual last supper with the Disciples, because she loves her mom I guess!



the whole last supper really looks like an extended 'gay friends group going to brunch' meme which I'm not upset about but I'm not entirely sure why one of them is a Viking.



I'm also not sure why Pontius Pilate appears to be costumed as a dying Victorian child.



Eventually they give him a saxophone and sunglasses as he kicks Jesus down the curb to Herod ...



who is introduced as 'the prisoner king' in an intertitle and wears a straightjacket and tiny leopard-print shorts.



At some point along the line Jesus has acquired a cup of Dunkies coffee and all of the guards keep dipping donuts in it while she attempts to ignore Herod's attempts to get into her personal space.



Herod is also constantly pursued by French maids with feather dusters.



There are also a LOT of extras roaming around, occasionally playing musical instruments, and I couldn't possibly hope to capture them all but I do want to give a special shout out to this man whom the camera focuses on for a full minute while he does his best impression of the Road to El Dorado guitar gif

Okay, Becca (you may ask) I understand that you shrieked every time Dead Victorian Child Pilate reappeared onstage but what was the performance like? Pretty good I think! Pretty good given we were told they only had two days to rehearse as a collective, anyway. Mary Indigo Girl Magdalene gave one of the most vocally interesting "I Don't Know How To Love Him"s I've ever heard, and Jesus Indigo Girl Christ Superstar knocked it out of the park on "Gethsemane." Jesus and Judas had zero sexual tension, which normally I think is a crime in a Jesus Christ Superstar, but I'll allow it when Jesus is a butch lesbian and Judas is a judgmental guy in a top hat (though this of course did make us all long for a production where Jesus and Judas were both butch lesbians) (but it appears that the guy who played Judas was the one who organized the whole thing, which perhaps is why the other Indigo Girl was Mary Magdalene instead). I was surprised when Judas didn't come back for the final number and they instead replaced him with a full funk band, but it was fun to hear the music done in a different style! All things considered, a very enjoyable performance! For the rest of my life, I will wonder why Caiaphas was a cigar-smoking nun!

Comments

[lilysea]

Yes, I massively ship Jesus/Judas,

and when I saw a live performance with Tim Minchin

I was annoyed that they didn't have sexual/romantic tension between Jesus/Judas

[skygiants]

Yes, under normal circumstances if I see a production that doesn't read as romantic I shout "COWARDS" but the Indigo Girls have found for me the one loophole! This Jesus is too much of a lesbian to be romantic with Judas and I will allow that that's legal.

[slashmarks]

Thank you for linking this. Now I know what my wife and I are going to watch tomorrow during Art And Drinking Night whether she likes it or not!

[skygiants]

I hope you guys have a FANTASTIC time

[slashmarks]

We did! I particularly enjoyed Amy Ray as Jesus's baffled horror while being manhandled by the Evil Clown Pharisees, and her general I Guess This Might As Well Happen attitude for most of the second half of the production. Seemed very plausible!

Though I have to ask, did you spot her holding the coffee cup at any point in the youtube video? Because I actually went back and looked for it during the Herod scene and couldn't find it.

[themis1]

This reads like it was staged by Richard O'Brien!

[skygiants]

Thanks to this comment I have now learned who Richard O'Brien is and am delighted to have done so!

[vass]

From your screencaps, my theory is that each of the performers were instructed to provide and wear whatever costume they most wanted to wear for the part, within their personal budgetary constraints and the two day time constraint. The pharisees talked with each other very briefly (five words max) beforehand, and nobody else discussed it at all.

Oh, and Amy Ray had that coat because she'd been waiting for the role of Jesus her ENTIRE LIFE.

[genarti]

This was also my costuming theory based on watching the whole thing! Though Amy Ray had SO MANY thematic outfits that I do also wonder if she went around borrowing from all her local friends to achieve Max Costuming.

[skygiants]

I failed to capture the fact that Herod's entourage included not just one but several French maids but someone had to coordinate them as well. Or perhaps they coordinated each other!

[loligo]

OMG, I've heard the audio recording of this performance before, but I didn't know there was video!

[skygiants]

I'm SO thrilled it was recorded for posterity

[lirazel]

Every line and picture of this made me shout with laughter. Thank you for sharing!

[skygiants]

The video finished and I immediately announced to everyone else in the zoom call "THIS IS GOING ON DREAMWIDTH"

[julian]

...wow. Thank you for this write-up, I had known vaguely this happened but never imagined it was on YouTube.

[skygiants]

Life and community preservation find a way! (apparently there was a VHS at one point that people have ripped at various points ...)

[cassildra]

i am inflicting this glory on SOMEONE eventually, or so help me

[skygiants]

I WISH YOU GODSPEED IN YOUR QUEST

[troisoiseaux]

INCREDIBLE.

(I feel like the costuming choices here might have been "supply your own"?)

[skygiants]

It feels like a combo of 'supply your own', 'raid the community theater backlot,' and 'get a vibe check from the director -- oh? no time for a vibe check? GOOD LUCK AND GO WITH GOD'

[osprey_archer]

These costumes are AMAZING. Love the black and white aesthetic the Pharisees have going on. Visually striking and on-point for their role in the musical, too! Herod's leopard-print short-shorts are certainly a choice... (Love the expression on Jesus's face as Herod is all "am I being chummy or sexually harassing you or just trying to get at your Dunkies?")

Trying to think of a good solid symbolic reason for Pontius Pilate, Dying Victorian Child (was he really super ghostly pale or is that just the lighting of that screen shot?) but right now I got nothing.

[skygiants]

It was hard to capture in a screen shot but it was VERY clear that he was specifically made up to be that pale, with big haunted circles painted underneath his eyes! Having a bad day! Possibly tuberculitic! Possibly a ghost? Pontius Pilate in fact died six years ago ....

[osprey_archer]

"the old Pontius Pilate can't come to the phone right now... Why? Because he's DEAD."

[chestnut_pod]

I am almost speechless. I'm also going to make "Jesus Indigo Girl Christ" a part of my personal profanity lexicon.

[skygiants]

Something about the beat of the scansion falls really pleasingly IMO ....

[brownbetty]

This seems like a lot!!

Wow!!

Thank goodness this was captured for posterity

[skygiants]

I'm SO GLAD, it would have been a tragedy if it was lost to the ages!

[evewithanapple]

Gerard Way is obviously not literally in this production, but I feel like they were in this production in spirit.

[skygiants]

YOU'RE SO RIGHT. (Gerard Way could revive the tradition ....)

[scribe]

Oh man watching this with y'all will be a treasured memory, I can already tell! WHAT a show.

[skygiants]

SAME AND SAME -- we've had so many Experiences but this one is going in the top tiers I think!

[petra]

You make me wish I had people in my RL who would watch this with me.

[skygiants]

This definitely seems like something to scout for!

[rushthatspeaks]

In my experience of going to brunch with this sort of friend group, generally someone is usually randomly wearing Viking horns, or equivalent. I take it as a note of realism.

[skygiants]

You know what, that's a great point! I retract my confusion about the Viking horns.

[katherine]

Gosh.

[skygiants]

It was an Experience!

[plinythemammaler]

I'm completely obsessed with Jesus'hair, virgin Mary coat, and dunkin donuts cup. The leopard print shorts on herod are canonical.

[skygiants]

The Dunkin' cup KILLED me. The ARTISTRY there. They weren't even in Massachusetts, this took place in Texas!

[regshoe]

Those are some amazingly creative costumes—thank you for sharing them :D I approve of the random Viking and Simon Zealotes's eyeliner. And I support your desire for a version with both Jesus and Judas as butch lesbians!

[skygiants]

Truly I think you could make a solid stab at a version of almost any musical in which the leads are both lesbians and I would watch it, but this one is near the top of my list now! (Always topped out of course by the lesbian Sky Masterson of my dreams.)

[rushthatspeaks]

I am pretty sure Takarazuka did that!

[ckd]

I had known that something of the sort existed because of Pop-Up Video (it was one of the trivia bits for "Closer to Fine"), but not the details and definitely not that it was available on YouTube. Thank you!

[skygiants]

You're so welcome, I hope you enjoy if you watch!

[sophia_sol]

oh........well I guess this has to go onto my to-watch list. how can I NOT watch it. even if it is not butch lesbian jesus/judas we deserve.

[sandrylene]

OMG, what? Well, I need to see this, but also thank you for all the photos so as to convey the incredible levels of WTFery in costuming, because I don't think mere descriptions would've allowed my brain to accept this sort of thing *actually* occurring. O_o