There was something special in the intermission air. People were wandering all over the sate--actors in clown makeup and outrageous costumes, technicians still wearing headsets, members of the audience looking excited and curious. Everyone was crowded onto the stage, drinking punch, talking together, laughing--feeling happy, alive, and a bit of magic.
Opening night had only half past, and the cast was already jubilant. They knew they had a good show--one of the first productions of GODSPELL in Southern California. But even the actors, as close-knit and enthusiastic as they were, hadn't expected this. It wasn’t just successful, though the audiences would soon be so large that extra performances would be added. It wasn't just the popularity of the play itself. It was a special combination of all the things that draw people to the live stage--make-believe, realism, hope, happiness, tragedy--but it was more. It was GODSPELL.
How do you explain John-Michael Tebelak's GODSPELL? Simply put, it's a modern musical retelling of the story of Christ and His parables, taken from the Godspell according to St. Matthew. It's neither a revival meeting, nor a pitch for Christian conversation. By using a variety of outrageous staging techniques that include pantomime, vaudeville routines, sleight-of-hand magic and a collection of beautifully written songs by Stephen Schwartz, GODSPELL's message of love and happiness denies any real sectarian boundaries that might be expected in a play about Christ and His teachings. During its incredibly successful professional run, it was applauded by all denominations--not just Christians--for it brings life and beauty to some powerful ideas: Live, don't merely survive. Love yourself and love your neighbors, friends and enemies alike. And be joyful--above all things, be joyful!
For the Riverside Polytechnic High School “Jester,” Thespian Troupe 2543, GODSPELL was a brand new show. That meant first crack at a play with a fine reputation, a play many people would be eager to see. It also meant a new production full of possibilities, problems and surprises.
GODSPELL is deceptively written. At first glance it seems a simple, unstructured, helter-skelter sort of show with plenty of good songs and funny comedy routines. Not so. The play cast and crew found that even the simplest parts of the production required design and direction as complex as any project that they had ever undertaken.
The characteristics of the roles themselves might be an example of how GODSPELL works. There are no “stars” in GODSPELL unless all the players are stars. Each member of the cast has a solo—something you don’t often find in “normal” musicals—and each takes the spotlight to recite a parable. But the GODSPELL people are not playing characters as they would in other shows. They are themselves—called by their own names and listed that way in the program.
Besides the individual demand, each player is a member of the company, an element of the one group that laughs and sings and dances across the stage—the ensemble. Since all the members are highly visible virtually all of the time, they must act as a single unit, doing the usual stage business of blocking, reacting to events, changing costumes and roles, while keeping out of each other’s way. At the risk of using a very overworked term, the constant and continuous semi-improvisation of the cast must be “organic”: natural and spontaneous, often operating as a whole and not as a group of individuals, yet somehow allowing each member to maintain a single identity as well.
Obviously this takes a good deal of detailed blocking—one of the biggest problems. Though GODSPELL must be highly directed and controlled at all times, it’s successful only when it doesn’t look that way. There must be nothing mechanical or wooden in the ensemble’s performances. If all the bouncing around on stage doesn’t seem entirely spontaneous, then a great deal of the surprise—the joy—is leached from the performance.
That sort of “look” comes through extraordinary teamwork, a kind of eleven –man partnership of cast and director that goes beyond even the normally close-knit repertory feeling that many high school theatres can achieve. When a group works together as closely as Poly’s GODSPELL cast, they do not only what they are told, but a bit more. They reinforce each other, their energy is reflected and magnified between them, and is then powerfully beamed to an audience that can sense this special relationship. It’s a kind of “partnership” that denies the simplicity of the term.
Early in rehearsals, Poly’s cast could see they had a job facing them. Actors at Poly have always been dedicated and hardworking—all things a theatrical troupe has to be. But now they knew there had to be something more. They could see quite clearly that they were a team—more than a team, really—a family. They met during both afternoons and evenings, five and sometimes six days a week, as well as meeting full class schedules. Outside the theatre, they spent more time together—at picnics, parties, study sessions. There was a special alliance that didn’t end with rehearsals, but worked and grew twenty-four hours a day. They had acted in plays before, but this was something more than a play. This was GODSPELL.
Meanwhile, the cast and crew discovered GODSPELL was a lot more complicated than they had expected—complicated and expensive. It was anticipated that productions costs for what appeared to be a fairly simple show would be lower than usual—certainly not higher. But the royalties for a newly released and highly popular script like GODSPELL are incredibly high, and in the end this proved to be a big percentage of the total production expense.
The chain-link fence which virtually is the set, was donated by a local company, in exchange for a program note. It was braced from behind by stout 2 x 4 triangles to insure its sturdiness, since the fence is run against climbed on, shaken, and bumped into during the performance. The only other fixed set pieces are the platforms on which the band plays, behind the fenced barrier. Those, as well as the sawhorses that served as table, platform, ark, and jail, were made from lumber already in stock. Traffic signs were suspended at random over the set. These, too, were donated by a large construction company based in Riverside.
The costumes were assembled from pieces of clothing already “in stock,” as well as the local second-hand store wares. With the exception of Jesus’ and Judas’ costumes, the designs were original creations. Still, no easy chore. They had to be look begged, borrowed and stolen, made from pieces ranging from flannel work shirts to ballet tights. It had to appear as if the GODSPELL cast had found them in barrels and jumped into them for a lark, without rhyme or reason. But, this clash had to be somehow complementary. Not only did each costume have to “hang together” by itself, but there could be no combinations of clothing or colors that were so gaudy they would distract the audience’s attention. The contemporary clown suits of GODSPELL, like the direction of movement, handling of props and singing of songs, has to be controlled chaos: it has to look easy and careless, no matter how difficult to design.
The major expenses came from two areas: microphones and programs. The first was thought a necessary evil, but as it turned out, no evil at all. For an incredible sum of money, Poly rented cordless mikes from an electronics firm in Los Angeles. These are large club-shaped affairs, almost the length of the forearm, but fairly lightweight. They transmitted the voice to a small receiver that was manned by a crew member sitting just below the apron. It turned out to be an excellent idea. Not only for volume, but for volume, but for dynamics. The cast found it could use the mikes for more than just amplification, and when the time came to do booming “voices from heaven,” or to make a sure a particular comment or recitation was heard above the general hubbub, the microphones were also put to use. In the end, it was agreed that the cordless mikes, expensive as they were, had been a good investment.
Dave Odell, an art major at nearby California State University, Fullerton, and I(an English major there) were both veterans of Poly’s theatre program. Like many former students, Dave and I kept close ties with the department and with Rossi. Curious about the new show, we came back to see an early rehearsal of GODSPELL, and even then we could feel something special happening. We volunteered to work on some aspect of the show and were assigned program design.
Even as rehearsals were just beginning, Dave and I were taking time between college classes and part-time jobs to haggle over designs, printers, and budget. As soon as the costumes were completed, we took rolls of photographs, enlarged and developed them(with help.) Personally, the project was a labor of love. Technically, it was a problem of paper shortages, printing errors and last-minute changes. And we complicated the problem ourselves. With a creative sweep, we decided to put a pop-up in the center of the program, a specially-cut photo of the cast that would literally jump out of the book and stand up, like cutouts in children’s books and greeting cards.
But the program could only embellish an already successful production. People who hadn’t seen a “high school show” for years lined up for blocks to see GODSPELL and begged for more tickets to come back again. Total strangers rushed backstage to congratulate the cast, hugging them, refusing to leave until each actor had signed their programs.
The unprecedented crowds caused the GODSPELL run extend into Saturday matinees and extra Friday and Saturday night shows for the week following the scheduled run. It could have played longer, but graduation caught up with the show.
What made GODSPELL so popular? Poly had done other equally beautiful and professional productions. But in those days, even when performances had been held in a makeshift theatre-in-the-round that held only 125 people, there were opening nights where the cast nearly outnumbered the audience.
GODSPELL was a matter of joy, of beauty, and of slight magic. Without eleven special people—Steve, Peggy, Dough, Mark, Lin, Penny, Chris, Jim, Renee, Melanie, and Richard Rossi—there would have been no GODSPELL at Poly. And without the play, those eleven people—and two thousand patrons who saw this GODSPELL—all would have been a great deal poorer.
BRAD MUNSON is a student at University of California in Santa Barbara and a member of the Riverside Poly Veteran Thespian Program. His work on past Poly productions includes THE LION IN WINTER and THE BOY FRIEND, and he was seen as Linus in YOU’RE A GOOD MAN, CHARLIE BROWN. This lively report on GODSPELL marks Munson’s professional debut as a magazine freelancer.