skygiants | (no subject)

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!

Threaded | Flat

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

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~~!

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

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.

Edited 2023-04-28 11:32 (UTC)

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

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

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

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

INCREDIBLE.

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

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.

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

This seems like a lot!!

Wow!!

Thank goodness this was captured for posterity

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

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

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

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.

Gosh.

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

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!

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!

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.

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

Edited 2023-05-01 21:58 (UTC)