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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When the new musical Godspell opened officially on May 17, 1971, no one knew what might happen. Audiences had been loving it during previews, but the critics who would release their reports later that night might deter new audiences from attending. Would the adventurous show survive? From the standpoint of the cast and creators, the risk was worth taking, even though it was unnerving.

Finishing the Show

In early May, the ten-member original Godspell cast continued to craft and rehearse their show, realizing there was still much to do: songs to practice from the new Stephen Schwartz score, dances to invent, and creative bits to finalize as they switched from improvisation to a repeatable, structured musical. Twenty-three-year-old Schwartz had taken over much of the rehearsal time for song performance and staging.

Their official director John-Michael Tebelak guided some of the proceedings but didn’t dictate what had to be done. As a case in point, Tebelak had explained that the dances should be goofy rather than slick—with his mantra being “keep it childlike.” Since the actors still needed steps to use during the songs, fellow performer Joanne Jonas and music director Stephen Reinhardt, who were both trained dancers, gladly helped choreograph some specific moves.

Tebelak had conceived the show only months earlier. The first version had opened at Carnegie Mellon University’s Studio Theatre as part of his master’s degree project, but with lyrics mostly from an old Episcopal hymnal sung to a pop/rock score by one of Tebelak’s friends. The show then transferred for a short production at the experimental theatre, Café La MaMa, in Manhattan’s East Village, where it was taken on by commercial producers for a run at the Cherry Lane Theatre, a 99-seat house tucked into a quiet corner of Greenwich Village.

Producers Joseph Beruh and Edgar Lansbury had previously been brought into Stephen Schwartz’s agent’s office to hear songs from his work-in-progress, Pippin. They remembered him when they needed a professionally created score for Godspell. Because the new version was to begin rehearsals in mid-April, Schwartz had to finish an entire score in five weeks—which he managed to do except for the addition of “Learn Your Lessons Well” written and added about a week before the opening.

One major issue discovered in the last weeks was that the show was running too long. Peggy Gordon remembers loving their efforts on the Parable of Talents, but the group realized it must be cut. Meanwhile, Gilmer McCormick struggled to memorize “Learn Your Lessons Well,” the cast rehearsed in their costumes, and the theater was made ready for an audience.

Schwartz often describes his experience of those days by referencing the 1939 movie, Babes in Arms, with Judy Garland, Mickie Rooney, and a cast of their young peers, who put on their own show. The kids-putting-on-a-show-in-a-barn feeling was something he loved and would always miss in his future musical collaborations.

There’s another experience that stands out in his mind, and he describes it in his Foreword to the book The Godspell Experience: Inside a Transformative Musical. “Right before previews began, since anxiety was now mounting a bit, one of the producers, Joe Beruh, took me out to dinner, to help calm me down. I will never forget what he said to me that night. I can still see where we were sitting and hear his voice. He told me that, having seen what we had in rehearsal, he was confident that we were going to be all right with the show. But then he spoke more quietly and leaned into me a little, and said, ‘But if you really do your jobs now during previews, if you really get this together, you’re not going to believe what’s going to happen.’ Those are probably the most prescient words I’ve ever heard from a producer.”

Opening Night

For the opening itself, actors in their tiny dressing rooms prepared for their appearance. Joanne Jonas recalls, “I heard ‘curtains!’ and I remember goosebumps going all up and down my arms. We were in gray sweatshirts and we were going out to pull down the Par lights and do the ‘Prologue.’ I remember looking out. The house was dark except for a few exit lights – and I could see it was totally full. At that point the nerves just left, and I went ‘It’s now, and it’s going to happen, and it’s really great.’ I kind of heard that inside.” The show began, it proceeded mostly as expected, and then they reached the ending during which the cast carries actor Stephen Nathan playing Jesus on their shoulders down the aisle to the back. Jonas continues, “I remember carrying him out at the very end and hearing ‘This is the beginning’ kind of thing. It was a profound moment. Then everyone was standing up and shouting. This small room was on fire.”

Although New York Times critic Clive Barnes found some things to like, he closed his remarks by saying, “…there may well be those who will find freshness and originality here where I could discover only a naïve but fey frivolity.” But with help from the publicists, producers, audiences, and some glowing reviews, Godspell went on to become an international hit and a still-beloved musical fifty years later.

Find many more details about the show’s development, songs, and meaning in The Godspell Experience: Inside a Transformative Musical.

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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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