Tale #31: A Lead with Fewer Lines

There were times when the middle school students I worked with astounded me with their high level of maturity. Then there were times when I realized those same middle schoolers were completely full of it.

In the fall of 2017, I directed my first youth production with a cast made up of 3rd – 8th graders. By that time I had directed for teenagers with Bring It On and West Side Story and co-directed for adults with Billy Elliot. The theater was looking for a simpler musical production that didn’t have a lot of massive set pieces or elaborate costumes. We settled on Godspell Jr. It is a great ensemble show with multiple solo opportunities.

I wanted the production to be bright and youthful. My concept was that a travelling group of performers would go into a school and teach children the stories of the lord. I was inspired by the Young Americans who had recently visited a local school in Madison. The “performers” ensemble all wore tie-dye t-shirts and then the kids in the ensemble were broken up into color groups. We had red, blue, yellow, green, and purple. To represent the baptism, I had the performer ensemble each hold buckets filled with rainbow stickers. They would go to the kids in the ensemble and give them a rainbow sticker to represent that they had been baptised.

My husband enjoyed how progressive my giant buckets of rainbow stickers were.

There are only three named characters in the script: Jesus, Judas, and John the Baptist. All three characters need to sing exceptionally well, but Jesus and Judas being the official “leads” need to have exceptional acting skills as well.

On the day of auditions, there were two young men that could both sing and act well not only for their age, but in a general sense. I knew that they would be Jesus and Judas. I just wasn’t sure which one would be which.

After their final round of callbacks, we held the two boys back and asked them which of the two parts they felt more strongly connected to. Who do you connect more to, Jesus or Judas? I know these are big questions for middle school age children right here. We’d get real philosophical.

The boys gave incredibly mature and thoughtful responses for which part they felt would be a better fit. One connected more with Jesus and one connected more with Judas. I thought it worked great, and that is what we went with. We had our Jesus and Judas.

These boys were definitely still middle school boys. There’d be days where I’d be sitting at my little folding table watching a group rehearse and I’d hear this weird grunting sound. I’d turn around and these two boys would be holding planks to see which one could last longer. You can only expect so much maturity when working with middle schoolers.

The script of Godspell ends with the crucifixion of Jesus. Now obviously, given that it is middle schoolers and a junior version of the show, we went with a much more abstract depiction of this moment than a production of Jesus Christ Superstar if you will.

The moment where Judas betrays Jesus is a big moment. Therefore, to rehearse it, I just had the two boys work on their own before bringing in any other cast members to watch. I had Jesus confront Judas and then Judas try to find alternative paths than what he had to do. But he was blocked by invisible walls. There was only one path he could take. I represented this with miming by having Judas try to walk right but be stopped, then left, then forward, all to be stopped by something he couldn’t see.

Well, let’s just say Judas was having trouble with this concept. He struggled to display anger, fear, frustration, it wasn’t going well. I asked him why he felt so uncomfortable playing this role (considering he had given me such an eloquent answer as to how he could play Judas with the anger, fear, and frustration).

He looked me square in the face and said, “I just wanted a lead and this one had fewer lines.”

I was shocked both by his candidness and the humor of his response. I just told him that this is what he signed on for, so he had to see it through.

Both young men did fantastic in their roles and the show was a ton of fun to produce.

We did get in trouble though for all of the rainbow stickers left stuck in weird places around the high school performing arts center.