Feast of Corpus Christi, June 26th, 2011
The following narrative is a first person eyewitness account of Corpus Christi, a much criticized and condemned fourteen-year old play performed at the San Pedro Playhouse at 800 Ashby Place in San Antonio on the evening of June 24th, 2011 as witnessed by Philip Sevilla, a resident of San Antonio, TX.
First and foremost, the play, Corpus Christi, is a work of fiction, a grotesque satire, heretical caricature, and profane parody of the life and death of Jesus Christ. The play as performed at the San Pedro Playhouse is a distortion of the historical record as revealed by the inspired gospel writers of the New Testament about the life of Jesus Christ whom over two billion baptized Christians worldwide worship as the incarnate Son of God, the second person of the Blessed Holy Trinity.
While similar flights of fantasy and neurotic escapes from reality are manifest in numerous artistic expressions in the areas of performing and visual arts and literature, the problem with Corpus Christi is that while presented as art, it masks an ugly ideology, scandalizes religious believers because on the face of it the production, replete with profanities, scatological and homoerotic language and behavior is not only vulgar and coarse but fundamentally blasphemous, sacrilegious, and heretical. Christian, Jewish, and Moslem religious leaders have been united in their condemnation of McNally’s play.
The playwright's homosexual fantasies are reflected in his distorted re-creation of bible passages in this production. Whatever the intentions of the playwright, Terrence McNally, the play violates community standards of decency and assaults the sensibilities and core religious beliefs of the majority of the citizenry of San Antonio.
I observed the following scenes at the San Pedro Playhouse Cellar theatre on June 24th:
· As the show begins, an actor who plays John the Baptist stands before each "apostle”, pours water on his head and says, “I baptize you and recognize your divinity as a human being. I adore you.”
· During the visit of the three wise men, Mary responds to one of the wise men who is called Room Service #1 who tell her, “Cherish and love Him”.
“What does it look like I’m doing? You have some kid chewing on your t**s and see how you like it. And I don’t need a bunch a (sic) strangers telling me I don’t know how to raise my own child.”
· Joshua/Jesus baptizes the actor who plays Judas Iscariot. He says “I baptize you and recognize your divinity as a person. I adore you.” Judas says “I like violence. I take good care of myself. Weak bodies disgust me. I’ve got a big d**k.”
· Terrence McNally’s blasphemous screenplay portrays Joshua/Jesus as a man confused about His divinity and sexuality. Joshua/Jesus does not know he is the son of God.
The dialogue between God and Joshua/Jesus:
Joshua Why Me?
God Why not You?
Joshua What? I can’t hear You.
God All men are divine.
Joshua Why are You whispering?
God That is the secret You will teach them.
Joshua What if I don’t want to share this secret with My fellow men?
God You won’t be able to keep it.
Joshua What if I don’t believe it Myself?
Joshua tells Peter: “ God is our leader. I’m just this guy like you. No better, no worse… we’re each special. We’re each ordinary. We’re each divine.”
· Joshua/Jesus has sexual encounters with Judas and Satan with open kissing displayed on stage. Joshua/Jesus are depicted as childhood friends who grew up in Corpus Christi and were romantically involved. Joshua/Jesus says: “Maybe (Judas) he would have forgotten the night we painted ‘J & J 4VR’ on the water tower and the next day nobody knew who J & J were but us.”
· Profanity, scatological and homoerotic language is used throughout the production.
F*** me!, F*** you!, Sh**!, C*** S***er!, Bl** me!, Mother F*****!, God d*** it!, are vulgarities expressed by the actors playing the apostles.
· The Last Supper which Catholics believe was the first Mass and consecration is denigrated and mocked when an actor playing Thaddeus says, “Yada-yada-yada!” Philip giggles, “Take this salt shaker. It is my life.” Peter says, “Eat this… It is my gallbladder!” after Christ's sacred words of consecration.
· During the Last Supper, when Joshua/Jesus is questioned as to which apostle will betray him, he says: “One who has shared many meals with Me. One who has lain with Me. One who has said he loves Me and knows that I love him.”
· The mother of Christ, Blessed Mother Mary and St. Peter are both portrayed by a transsexual who treats Mary as a domineering, ill-tempered mother who doesn’t know her son is the Christ. She complains that Joseph objects to her going dancing at night and she berates Joshua/Jesus because he can’t dance.
· St. Joseph's character is a drunken wife beater who tells the virgin on the night of Christ's birth that he "has needs too" and they should go out and party. He profanes God's name as he curses, "God d*** it!" addressing the Blessed Virgin Mary.
· Joshua/Jesus is propositioned by Philip, a male prostitute with AIDS, whom Joshua/Jesus rebuffs because “he has no money”. Philip brushes his buttocks against Joshua/Jesus and asks him to perform fellatio
· Joshua/Jesus performs the marriage of two apostles - Bartholomew and James. Bartholomew is played by a woman. In the ceremony, Joshua/Jesus says: “It is good when two men love as James and Bartholomew do and we recognize their union… I bless this marriage in Your name, Father. Amen. Now let’s all get very, very drunk.”
· Joshua/Jesus kisses the feet of Judas in a distorted interpretation of Christ washing the feet of his apostles
· During his passion, Joshua/Judas is called the “King of the Queers” at the scourging and crucifixion. The actor who plays Judas says, “And the soldiers took Him to their company quarters and stripped Him and bound Him to a pillar and scourged Him while others knelt and adored Him as the King of the Queers.”
· During the crucifixion scene, the profane thief says, “Hey faggot! If I were the son of God I wouldn’t be hanging here with my d**k between my legs. Save us all if you’re really Him.
· Catholic nuns are depicted as cruel and threatening. Joshua/Jesus' mother warns a nun to stay away from her son; during the scourging scene, a nun in the background is portrayed as a masochist gleefully rapping a student in the knuckles with a ruler.
Mary says to Joshua/Jesus: “You start listening to nuns, You’re going to get Yourself entirely screwed up.”
· Sexual innuendos are sprinkled throughout the scenes and most of the apostles' lines and effeminate and girlish behavior are sexually charged while emphasizing their homosexual orientation
· McNally inserts his adolescent and teenage experiences into the narrative of the play, acknowledging an unconscious self-pity and feelings of gender inferiority when pushed around by brawny football players at his fictitious Pontius Pilate High School in Corpus Christi, TX.
· McNally's muddled script flips back and forth between his childhood experiences as a sexually-confused youth and the life of youthful Joshua/Jesus. What he attempts to do is to model and reinvent Christ in the person of Joshua/Jesus, portrayed as a weak and confused homosexual. McNally's distorted vision and infantile imagination creates a new Joshua/Jesus, a man confused about his divinity and reluctant to accept his role as savior and redeemer, while his apostles are portrayed as his homosexual partners.
· In the end, John the Baptist concludes the play with the statement, "If we have offended, so be it".
This is the heart of the matter. The playwright, director, and producers of Corpus Christi have one singular purpose - to scandalize and to offend the religious sensibilities of the followers of Christ and His church and to remake the historical Jesus Christ in their image and likeness, in accord with their sexual preference.
All in all, McNally's play as performed in the production of Corpus Christi at the San Pedro Playhouse which I observed on June 24th, 2011, is a narcissistic exhibition, comparable to the vulgar and tasteless performances put on during annual "gay" parades in some cities around the country.
In an interview in 2010 published in a magazine that caters to homosexuals, McNally responds to a question about coming out: “I think something as natural as sexual attraction is not to be fought… I guess I defined God on my own terms -- terms that were comfortable to me. I attended Catholic school and the one message I got from being in Catholic school was that I was created in God's image, therefore I was okay.” 71 year-old McNally married his 46-year old same sex partner in Washington, D.C. in 2010.
Dr. Gerard J. M. Van Den Aardweg, Ph.D, is a published psychotherapist in Holland specializing in the treatment of homosexuality and marriage problems. In his book, The Battle for Normality. A Guide for (Self-) Therapy for Homosexuality, he writes:
“So many homosexuals try obsessively to reconcile the irreconcilable and imagine that they can be devout as well as homosexually active. The artificiality and self-deception of such attempts are apparent, however; they end up living as homosexuals and forgetting about Christianity or creating their own homosexuality-compatible version of Christianity to cover up their conscience.” (p. 14)
“If they convince themselves that homosexuality is morally good and beautiful, they either lose their faith or invent one of their own, which sanctions their desires.” (p. 85)
When seen and understood for what it really is, McNally's Corpus Christi is an infantile tantrum, a delusional phantasm. It raises a clenched fist at Christ and His followers, announcing that the homosexual lifestyle is reconcilable with Christianity. It sexualizes all human relationships, including the fraternal bond between Christ and His apostles who all, but one according to ancient tradition, died martyrs of the faith. McNally attempts to hijack the moral God-Man of the New Testament and remake Him as a new, more acceptable "gay" icon, a homosexual deity. If he is a baptized Christian, McNally fails in attempting to reconcile the irreconcilable.
