Is Godspell Still Relevant? Yes!

By Carol de Giere
Author of The Godspell Experience

Godspell may have a freewheeling vibe, revealing its late 1960s origins, but it has been popular worldwide for over five decades. The show’s unique blend of parable teachings, joyous music, and clown-inspired ensemble performances call up the timeless power of harmony and innocence.

Godspell Origins

The musical was the brainchild of John-Michael Tebelak, a theater lover who came of age in the 1960s. As an aspiring director, he was open to improvisation and other non-traditional styles while he was a student in Carnegie Mellon University’s drama program. He helped create an experimental musical with fellow students over the summer of 1968. Then in 1970, when he was ready to work on a project for his master’s degree at CMU, he decided to create and direct a new musical he would first call The Godspell.

With Tebelak’s concepts, parables, hymn lyrics set to a friend’s pop music, and improvisation by student cast members, the initial 1970 version of the show was quickly hailed as being worthy of further development. After the collegiate production, a revised version was staged off-off-Broadway at New York City’s experimental theatre La MaMa. That’s where a young composer named Stephen Schwartz came to see the final performance. The show attracted producers who wanted a new score, which they asked Schwartz to create.

The final version of Godspell, with Stephen Schwartz’s music and new lyrics, opened at off-Broadway’s Cherry Lane Theatre on May 17, 1971. It quickly reached megahit status, with productions running around the world. (See my book The Godspell Experience for the whole fascinating story.)

Godspell, Creative Community, and Love

One reason the musical continues to touch us is that each performing group develops a creative community as they rehearse the show and find their own ways to enact the story of the Good Samaritan, the Prodigal Son, and other moments.

Don’t be surprised if you feel like the performers want to share their inventive moments with you. Most shows function within four walls—the sides and back of the stage plus an imaginary “fourth wall” between the performers and the audience—but Godspell is designed to break that fourth wall. Actors sometimes face and sing to the theatergoers or walk through the aisles. They expand their sense of community into the audience while singing about love.

In Stephen Schwartz’s words, the essence of Godspell is that “a group of disparate people slowly become a community built around one charismatic individual (Jesus), who then leaves them, and they have to carry on as a community without him.”

Another reason the show often touches adults is that it chips away at cynicism developed from facing societal challenges. Stephen Nathan, the original actor playing Jesus, suggests, “Godspell was really all based on play, the innocence of children who see the world uncorrupted—that is how the whole piece evolved.”

However the show is described, it offers a timeless message of kindness, tolerance, and love.

Carol de Giere is the author of The Godspell Experience: Inside a Transformative Musical, and the career biography Defying Gravity: The Creative Career of Stephen Schwartz, from Godspell to Wicked. Visit https://caroldegiere.com/

For Godspell licensing information see Godspell licensing.

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ABOUT THE MOVIE: Delight in Godspell’s lively songs performed around New York City. Watch cast members splash their version of a baptism in the Bethesda Fountain in Central Park while singing “Prepare Ye.” They sing “All for the Best” on top of one of the not-yet-finished World Trade Center towers. The movie uses historic indoor locations, including the Cherry Lane Theatre where the off-Broadway musical first opened in May 1971, and the Andrew Carnegie Mansion for “Turn Back O’ Man.” Stephen Schwartz wrote the first version of his popular song “Beautiful City” for this film.

CAST: Victor Garber, Katie Hanley, Lynne Thigpen, David Haskell, Merrell Jackson, Joanne Jonas, Robin Lamont, Gilmer McCormick, Jeffrey Mylett, Jerry Sroka, John-Michael Tebelak (voice)

Amazon.com – Godspell Movie on Blu-ray

The Godspell Movie Origins: From Ideas to the Top of the World

Godspell fans have a chance to learn of the making of the movie, as explored in a 21-page chapter in the book The Godspell Experience. (Be sure to read the Foreword by Stephen Schwartz in which he shares his personal recollections.) For those who haven’t yet picked up the book, here are a couple of the behind-the-scenes stories about the movie development.

Ideas for the Godspell Movie

Godspell hadn’t been playing for long after its opening in 1971 before dreams of a movie adaptation rose for the producers. Producer Edgar Lansbury realized that the intimacy of theater couldn’t be translated to the film medium, and therefore the movie makers needed a unique concept. “That’s the challenge any film has when you’re making a film out of a play,” he says. “You have to find the language, metaphor or whatever to keep the idea.” It didn’t seem likely that having three cameras focused on stage actors would do the trick.

The creators of the stage musical had their own ideas. John-Michael Tebelak, who had conceived the show, hoped for a film with a lot of variety in format. Composer Stephen Schwartz, who wrote the score, was clear about what he didn’t want to see on the silver screen: something like On a Clear Day You Can See Forever. For Godspell, he very much wanted to overcome some of the challenges inherent in having people singing in real life settings.

At a meeting with Tebelak and director David Greene, he suggested that the world of Godspell had to somehow be made fantastical. “I thought it was important for the experience to be magical and not real,” Schwartz comments. Tebelak had previously developed the notion of an abandoned playground with the cyclone fence boundary. It was Schwartz’s idea to extend this into New York City and somehow create an empty city as a backdrop. If they could film it so that none of the millions of inhabitants and visitors were visible, he felt it would be strikingly different. “It wouldn’t be a normal day-to-day world, and therefore, people could sing.”

The Godspell Movie Score

During the planning phase, Schwartz came up with a new song, “Beautiful City,” in part to replace “We Beseech Thee” that director David Greene wanted to cut in the film version. Before any shooting could take place, the songs had to be recorded. Music director Stephen Reinhardt remembers that Stephen Schwartz wanted the soundtrack to be great. “Now that Godspell was going to be a movie, it was going to be a really big kind of recording event, and so we did it at A & R studios with one of the top engineers in the city at that time.”

To ensure the best accompaniment under studio time pressures, Schwartz had Paul Shaffer flown in from the Toronto production because he and Reinhardt had been so impressed with his keyboard ability. It was Shaffer’s first trip to New York City, a place where he’d end up a celebrity performer for David Letterman and other shows. Shaffer recalls about Godspell, “He brought me in for a couple of things specifically. One was what I was doing with ‘Bless the Lord.’ I was kind of funking it up even more, and he liked that.” Schwartz also knew that Shaffer could play a Hammond B3 organ and invited him to improvise. “I happened to love that instrument,” Shaffer states. “He just said play a solo here,” and it ran while the end credits rolled.

“Beautiful City” was new for everyone. Victor Garber told one interviewer, “I was very excited about ‘Beautiful City,’ but recording the soundtrack was the most fun for me anyway. I was used to singing in a studio, and I felt comfortable there. And Stephen was so sure of what he wanted, and so smart.”

Filming: Inspiring Laughter and Memories

When shooting began in August 1972, the actors didn’t have a copy of the shooting script. They were simply told which parable or scene they would be doing the next day. They were all so experienced with the musical that they didn’t need much rehearsal. They would show up in the morning ready to improvise, explore the possibilities in the location, and then start the shoot.

Jerry Sroka was grateful that David Greene created a working space for the actors, helping them feel comfortable performing even with the hubbub around them as the crew set up shots. “He created an environment that was safe to try anything,” Sroka comments. The actors almost made a game of getting their director to laugh. “He would just fall out of his chair laughing at what we did,” says Sroka. “If David was happy, I was okay.”

The dance movement was a combination of direction from Greene, choreography by Sammy Bayes inspired by the stage show, and comments from cast member and dancer Joanne Jonas.

One of the most dramatic filming experiences was on top of one of the nearly completed World Trade Center towers. Lynne Thigpen once explained how much she enjoyed the experience. “It hadn’t been opened yet. It was just a new building. There were all these people in clown costumes standing on the top, dancing around and carrying on. Of course, we couldn’t resist facing the Empire State Building and waving in our clown outfits. There were a couple of people who didn’t like heights. I like heights so it was really amazing. We got there very, very early in the morning, before sunrise, so the sun was coming up. You could see the East River and the tributaries and watch everything go gold. It was quite extraordinary.”

As it happens, the concept of using an empty New York City as a backdrop meant that cinematographer Richard Heimann preserved some of the city’s heritage on film. Armchair travelers who like seeing New York on film can enjoy so much of what is beautiful in the city. The “All for the Best” scene at the World Trade Center serves as a visually stunning memento for the towers before they were felled on September 11, 2001.

Film commentator Andrew Martin characterizes the movie as successful in the long run. “Turner Classic Movies shows it every Easter morning. It retains a cult following for a lot of different reasons. I think Victor Garber may have something to do with that. I think children tend to really like the movie because it’s a relatable story; it doesn’t feel like you have to sit through Bible class – it’s just a fun, fun thing. Also there’s a time capsule aspect to it because it’s very early 1970s. It’s an effective film and it holds up.”

See the book The Godspell Experience for many more stories about how the movie was made and about the talented cast members: Victor Garber, Katie Hanley, David Haskell, Merrell Jackson, Robin Lamont, Joanne Jonas, Gilmer McCormick, Jeffrey Mylett, Jerry Sroka, and Lynne Thigpen.

This article is copyrighted by Carol de Giere, April 1, 2015.

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Actors who originate roles in new musicals may help shape the character, but most of them are working with a written script. Godspell’s actors, on the other hand, were rehearsing with parables and Bible phrases that were brought in by the show’s conceiver and director, John-Michael Tebelak. The methods of working with the material essentially emerged by way of an improvisational process. They shaped various spiritual lessons into a stylized piece of musical theater under Tebelak’s guidance. Whether they played charades, came up with a Three Stooges type of response, or found some other way to communicate an idea, it was largely invented during rehearsals.

PHOTO: Stephen Nathan, Robin Lamont, Sonia Manzano and others in Godspell, 1971. Photo by Kenn Duncan.

For the first two of New York productions (an off-off Broadway version that transferred to Off-Broadway), actor Stephen Nathan played Jesus. He recalls many hours of improvisatory acting that yielded some lines that became set in the show. John-Michael Tebelak helped whittle down the pieces. “Shaping it was primarily a job of trimming things back, with the help of John-Michael’s perspective on it,” says Nathan.

Of course it was Tebelak’s idea to draw from the profound source material in the first place: phrases and parables primarily from Matthew and Luke.
Read the full story of the making of Godspell in The Godspell Experience.

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