Part retreat, part seminar, part master-class, Jim Martin’s account of his role as ‘theologial advisor’ for a play about Jesus and Judas is ultimately a spellbinding story of faith, friendship, and the deepest mysteries of the heart. Like a great drama, its impact lingers long after the curtain has fallen.
This memoir is a superb exercise of the Catholic imagination, delighting in the profound connections between sacred and secular. James Martin is both Virgil and Dante, not only guiding us through an engaging drama, but also recounting how he himself was changed by the experience. And is that not the goal of all theater—and the Christian life?
Father Martin’s account of his experiences as an advisor to the off-Broadway production of The Last Days of Judas Isacariot is not only riveting, it is also theologically important: No one who reads this book can come away thinking that Christianity is just a set of dry rules and regulations. Father Martin helps us see that we all play our parts in a great and complex cosmic drama, about the goodness of creation, the pain of sin and brokenness, and the power of God's redemptive love.
The estimable Jim Martin compresses a short course in New Testament criticism along with a glimpse into Ignatian spirituality while creating a model for making friends in this fast paced account of his experiences as a Jesuit consultant for an off Broadway play about Judas. In the narrative, Martin shows us how he almost inadvertently morphed from consultant into an unofficial chaplain. This book is a vivid lesson about how the Christian life can be led when it is lived out in the midst of the real (and imagined) world.
Extraordinary revelations on theology, the priesthood, and the theater. Bravo!
– Martin Sheen
By Mark Pattison
Catholic News Service
Aug-23-2007
Jesuit recalls his time as script doctor for New York play on Judas
WASHINGTON (CNS) — Jesuit Father James Martin would never be accused of slumming around the Stage Door Canteen, much less a backstage entrance to New York City’s dozens of theaters.
Still, he found himself in a theater role—as script doctor for a play about Judas Iscariot that had a healthy off-Broadway run more than two years ago.
Father Martin has recounted the experience in A Jesuit Off-Broadway: Center Stage With Jesus, Judas, and Life’s Big Questions, published by Loyola Press and scheduled for release Sept. 1.
In the process, Father Martin said he had one revelation: Actors are people, too.
“Sam Rockwell, an actor who I’d already known, was the first person to contact me and (said) that (actor) Philip Seymour Hoffman was going to be the director. So I was excited to be part of that,” said Father Martin, an associate editor for America, a weekly magazine published by the Jesuits.
As he spent more time with the actors, the priest said, he went “from being tongue-tied to being relaxed and comfortable ... to being friends with them. As a writer, I frequently meet writers who are notable Catholics. You regard them with a sense of awe, but over time you see they’re approachable.”
During rehearsals, Father Martin told Catholic News Service in an Aug. 13 telephone interview, Hoffman had to excuse himself several times because he had “a shoot” in Toronto for a movie.
“He never bragged about being a movie actor, or talked about the film he was doing,” Father Martin said of Hoffman. The movie turned out to be Capote, which won Hoffman an Oscar for best actor.
To the cast and crew in New York, the play was the thing: The Last Days of Judas Iscariot examined the motives behind Judas’ betrayal of Jesus and the anguish that led Judas to suicide.
“I was very surprised at how quickly, at the table readings, the conversations turned into incredibly deep subject matter. The questions — Can we really believe the Bible? Did Jesus really resurrect from the dead? Can we really believe in God’s forgiveness? — were the stories we were reflecting ... the same kinds of things people meditate on in their personal prayer, no matter what walk of life they’re in,” Father Martin said.
“The cast and the creative team I was involved with really represented a microcosm of spirituality in America,” he added. “You had lapsed Catholics, you had a Buddhist or two, you had a few atheists, you had a person or two who was not sure where they were, you had a woman who was in a cult for a while, you had a fellow who was Armenian Orthodox. To me, this group represented the state of affairs in Christianity. It just seemed very real to me."
What was real for the cast were the struggles they had in staging the show night after night. Father Martin recounts in A Jesuit Off-Broadway how cast members told him that, unlike the typical play, they found The Last Days of Judas Iscariot harder to do with each passing performance.
“It was the subject material that was so tense. You’re talking about Jesus and Judas and peace and forgiveness and prayer and grace,” Father Martin told CNS.
“It’s bound to take a tremendous toll,” he added. “As one of the actors said in the book, ‘It’s like when you preach and you have a really intense experience of the Spirit in your preaching.‘ It takes a lot out of you. Also, they moved deeper and deeper into the story each night. ... It was seriously draining for a lot of actors.”
One bump in the road the cast encountered continually was the location of Jesus’ first miracle. It was the wedding at Cana, but everyone connected with the show wanted to pronounce it Canaan, where Abraham of the Old Testament lived with his wife and family.
At a subsequent Los Angeles production of the play, Father Martin said, “one of the directors had told me afterward that had he not read an advance copy of my book, it would have been Canaan in their story.”
Father Martin said that, to help launch the book, principals connected with the off-Broadway version of the show — including Hoffman — were going to read their own quotes from the book in a series of dramatic readings.
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Booklist
Advanced Review – Uncorrected Proof
Issue: September 1, 2007
A Jesuit Off-Broadway: Center Stage with Jesus, Judas, and Life's Big Questions.
Martin, James (Author)
Sep 2007. 272 p. Loyola Univ., hardcover, $22.95. (0829425829). 812.
Martin begins his fascinating account of the making of Stephen Adly Guirgis’ play The Last Days of
Judas Iscariot, from conception to closing night, by admitting he began not knowing much about the
theater. Guirgis recruited him in October 2004 to provide some background about Jesus and life in firstcentury
Palestine. At the time, Guirgis was knee-deep in the play, which was soon to be produced off-Broadway at the acclaimed Public Theater.
During the next few months, Martin got enmeshed in the
collaborative process, providing information and moral support to Guirgis, befriending the actors, and
engaging director Philip Seymour Hoffman in thorny theological discussions—all the while taking notes
about the changes play, ensemble, and he were going through.
His fly-on-the-wall account offers cleareyed
insight into contemporary American theater such as only a passionate outsider could provide. Martin,
an ordained Jesuit priest after all, leavens the discussion with his research into biblical history and the
various current controversies swirling around all accounts of Jesus, his followers, and his era.
— Jack Helbig
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