If a work’s success is measured by its ability to remain relevant, inspire others, and create dialogue, Terrence McNally’s play Corpus Christi is successful indeed.
The play — especially its nontraditionally cast production by Los Angeles theater group 108 Productions — is the subject of a new documentary, Corpus Christi: Playing With Redemption, and the force behind the I Am Love Campaign, an effort to end religion-based bias against LGBT people and advance understanding between LGBT and faith communities.
“The LGBT community is on this incredible verge of total equality within this country,” says James Brandon, who with Nic Arnzen is codirector and coproducer of the documentary and cofounder of I Am Love. “It feels like right now this community is on the verge of total acceptance. But religious dogma seems to be the block for many people.”
The campaign is dedicated to bringing down that block, which loomed even larger when Corpus Christi made its world premiere at the Manhattan Theatre Club in New York City in 1998. McNally’s play depicts Jesus, here called Joshua, and his followers as gay men in 1950s Texas. The acclaimed playwright, a four-time Tony-winner, now says he was actually surprised it was controversial.
“I really thought that it would be seen as a play, a serious play, a meditation on spirituality,” he says. But it became the target of protests and threats, and the theater canceled and then reinstated the production. “The controversy in New York, I felt, was a very false controversy,” McNally says, ginned up by antigay Catholic activist and gadfly William Donahue. Donahue, he says, spread rumors that the play contained nudity and explicit sex — which it does not and never did — and then claimed to have pressured McNally into excising those elements.
Since then, the play has had numerous regional productions, and the one documented in the film put a distinctive stamp on the show. This production originated in 2006 at the Metropolitan Community Church in the Valley, a largely LGBT congregation located in L.A.’s North Hollywood neighborhood.
