‘Corpus Christi’ controversy continues at another college
April 5, 2010
John Otte at Tarleton State University might have started a new college
trend. For a class project he prepared an excerpt from the Terrence McNally
play “Corpus Christi,” which presents Jesus as gay.
Now Gallaudet University in Washington D.C. is presenting the play with some
additional twists to rankle the radical right who protested the Texas
production into cancellation for safety reasons. (A presentation of Otte’s
class production in the Metroplex in a larger venue is still pending).
The show was just recently added to the theater department’s schedule.
While Otte’s production was simply a class project and presentation was not
open to the public, the Gallaudet presentation is theater department
presentation. The D.C. production will be performed three times. At
Tarleton, the play was slated for one performance.
Gallaudet University is a school for the deaf. So in this production Jesus
will be deaf and gay. And that added “imperfection” of hearing impairment in
this presentation is sure to rile the homophobes who don’t believe that
Jesus embraced anyone other than married, suburban heterosexuals.
The protesters in D.C. are at work again but the university is standing by
its production.
So by threatening violence against a student in a directing class in a small
school 70 miles southwest of Fort Worth, the right-wing haters in
Stephenville have turned this relatively unknown and rarely performed play
into a must-produce phenomenon for any theater company or college group that
wants to prove its independence and avant garde credentials.
A story on Christian Newswire says, ” The lewd production was recently
canceled at Tarleton State University in Texas due to peaceful protest.”
By peaceful, I assume they mean the threats of violence that were phoned or
emailed to everyone from the president of the school for not knowing every
student’s homework assignment to Dallas Voice for reporting on the play.
I’m looking forward even more to bringing Otte and company to Dallas.
— David Taffet