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Apr. 27th, 2023 10:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsLast 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!
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!
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Date: 2023-04-30 04:48 pm (UTC)