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[0:08] Lauren Van Hemert: This is the Beltline to Broadway podcast.

[0:12] Lauren Van Hemert: I'm Lauren Van Hemert, your host, and on this episode, we are celebrating the 50th anniversary of Godspell.

[0:29] Lauren Van Hemert: On May 17th, 1971, a small musical inspired by a series of parables, most of which are based on the Gospel of Matthew, opened off Broadway at the Cherry Lane Theater.

[0:43] Lauren Van Hemert: Since then, Godspell was adapted into a 1973 film, produced a radio hit "Day by Day" in the summer of 1972, and has been performed all over the world.

[0:57] Lauren Van Hemert: To commemorate the 50th anniversary of this iconic show, I had the chance to chat with some of the original Off-Broadway cast members for a live chat.

[1:08] Lauren Van Hemert: And you'll get to hear from them at the end of this podcast.

[1:11] Lauren Van Hemert: But first, let's take a look at the show and its significance through the eyes of theater historian Carol Degier, who wrote the book, The Godspell Experience.

[1:24] Lauren Van Hemert: In her book, Carol introduces us to a young director in search of a story for his master's thesis project and describes the Easter service at which he found his inspiration.

[1:39] Lauren Van Hemert: Well, as many people know, the name associated with the show is John Michael Tebelec.

[1:44] Lauren Van Hemert: He explained to Dramatics Magazine, I think it was 1975, an old priest came out and mumbled into a microphone, and people mumbled things back, and then everybody got up and left.

[1:56] Lauren Van Hemert: Instead of healing the burden or resurrecting the Christ, it seemed that those people had pushed him back into the tomb.

[2:03] Lauren Van Hemert: They had refused to let him come out that day, referring to the Easter service.

[2:09] Lauren Van Hemert: And then, as it turns out, Tebelec always wore overalls.

[2:13] Lauren Van Hemert: And when he was leaving the service, there were some policemen there, and they actually frisked him for drugs, thinking maybe he was hiding out in the church or was a homeless person just gaining the shelter of the church.

[2:29] Lauren Van Hemert: And he just the whole experience was so kind of antithetical to what he thought Easter should be.

[2:36] Lauren Van Hemert: So that's when he really resolved, okay, for this big project that I'm gonna do, I want to do something from Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

[2:45] Lauren Van Hemert: And he ended up using most of the parables from Matthew and also Luke.

[2:49] Lauren Van Hemert: He also read this book by Harvey Cox called The Feast of Fools to kind of justify how he could do this academically.

[2:58] Lauren Van Hemert: And using the idea that you could use a clown character to represent this deep important material.

[3:10] Lauren Van Hemert: It's important to know that it's not meant to make fun of the material in the Gospels, but is there to bring, to animate it in a way that will make it more enjoyable for the audience.

[3:27] Lauren Van Hemert: So armed with an idea to bring joy and play to the Jesus story, Tebelec brought a script draft of what was then called Godspell to his faculty advisor at Carnegie Mellon University for approval.

[3:41] Lauren Van Hemert: The advisor rejected the idea for Tebelec's Master's thesis project, but Tebelec found an ally in one of his professors, Leon Katz, who helped get the project approved.

[3:52] Lauren Van Hemert: In the fall of 1970, Tebelec began recruiting undergraduate acting students to work on his project, including Sonia Manzano, Robin Lamont, and David Haskell.

[4:04] Lauren Van Hemert: They did the first production as part of Tebelec's master's thesis.

[4:08] Lauren Van Hemert: So that was at Carnegie Mellon in a small studio theater that holds about 50 people.

[4:15] Lauren Van Hemert: And they didn't know what they had.

[4:18] Lauren Van Hemert: He took hymns, episcopal hymns, and used those lyrics and had his friend write corresponding rock music.

[4:27] Lauren Van Hemert: And he had brought that to the rehearsals, and the cast had to figure out kind of what to do with it.

[4:36] Lauren Van Hemert: At one point, he brought in grease paint, like would be used for exaggerated makeup for clowns.

[4:45] Lauren Van Hemert: And that the cast got used to the idea of becoming more playful when they were putting on the makeup.

[4:53] Lauren Van Hemert: So they really helped generate the ideas.

[4:57] Lauren Van Hemert: There's something about play and innocence that takes us to a level where we can get out of our jaded thinking and kind of let go of the stress of the boundaries of our normal life.

[5:13] Lauren Van Hemert: And that's the way to let this show in.

[5:17] Lauren Van Hemert: So after the surprising response to Godspell at Carnegie Mellon, Tebelec convinced Ellen Stewart, the first lady of American Avant Garde Theater and the founder of what was then known as Cafe La MaMa in New York to fit Godspell into the theater's show schedule.

[5:35] Lauren Van Hemert: They had about $300 to cover all production costs and move the sets and costume pieces to New York.

[5:41] Lauren Van Hemert: Sonia Manzano, Robin Lamont, and David Haskell petitioned Carnegie Mellon to take a leave from school to do the show at La Mama.

[5:50] Lauren Van Hemert: And that's about the time when another Carnegie Mellon alum, Stephen Schwartz, enters the picture.

[5:56] Lauren Van Hemert: Stephen came the day after his birthday.

[5:59] Lauren Van Hemert: He got a phone call about the show on his birthday, which would have been in March 6th, 1971.

[6:05] Lauren Van Hemert: He was invited by the producers to come in and see the show because the producers had heard his demos that he played live at his agent's office for Pippin, and they liked his music, but they weren't ready to produce Pippin.

[6:23] Lauren Van Hemert: So when they had seen the rough version of Godspell, they thought, okay, this is okay, but it really needs a new score if we were possibly going to make it a commercial production.

[6:34] Lauren Van Hemert: So they called in Stephen and said, well, watch this and see if you could make a new musical out of it.

[6:41] Lauren Van Hemert: And he did, and he found it messy but joyful and seemed to be worth doing.

[6:47] Lauren Van Hemert: He decided this whole thing needs to have a shape.

[6:51] Lauren Van Hemert: It needs to have more of a structure of a musical.

[6:54] Lauren Van Hemert: And even though there's a lot of the whole first part of the show is not structured on the surface, it's one parable after another and interspersed with songs.

[7:06] Lauren Van Hemert: There's an underlying structure, which is that each character is evolving through time and their response to Jesus.

[7:15] Lauren Van Hemert: They're becoming more and more cognizant of what he's trying to teach.

[7:20] Lauren Van Hemert: And they're also generating a community.

[7:23] Lauren Van Hemert: So what Stephen wanted to do, one of the things he wanted to do with the songs is to shape them so that unlike the previous songs, which had been mostly ensemble pieces where everyone sang, each song would have its own actor lead the piece, and then the chorus, the rest of the singers would come in.

[7:46] Lauren Van Hemert: And so the song would build over time.

[7:49] Lauren Van Hemert: And also then each actor in their own song is representing that moment when they're kind of joining into the community when they have that aha that, oh, I sort of get what Jesus is teaching, and here I'm gonna sing about it.

[8:05] Lauren Van Hemert: So just that little amount of influence created a kind of structure for the show.

[8:13] Lauren Van Hemert: And then one other contribution, of course, was from Peggy Gordon and Jay Hamburger, who wrote the song "By My Side."

[8:21] Lauren Van Hemert: That had been in the La Mama production, and Stephen had decided to keep that song in the show.

[8:28] Lauren Van Hemert: So they were also involved in the ongoing productions.

[8:33] Lauren Van Hemert: The show wouldn't have just been an experiment without Stephen.

[8:37] Lauren Van Hemert: Stephen really made it into a musical.

[8:39] Lauren Van Hemert: Carol conducted extensive interviews with several of Godspell's original cast members for the biography, Define Gravity.

[8:49] Lauren Van Hemert: She says there was something very special about interviewing the Godspell cast members because they all had such a creative, collaborative, and positive experience working on the show.

[9:01] Lauren Van Hemert: And in fact, that was part of the catalyst that led Carol to write The Godspell Experience.

[9:08] Lauren Van Hemert: There was something about these Godspell people that I don't know, they were just open and they were friendly people, and they had such a great experience doing the show.

[9:21] Lauren Van Hemert: When the actors work together on Godspell, and then the audience comes, it's like we get the benefit of what the actors have generated during their rehearsal process, and they usually have such a good time.

[9:35] Lauren Van Hemert: And one of the reasons is that Godspell is a show that has a script, but there are certain ways that any actor is able to make a contribution to it.

[9:45] Lauren Van Hemert: You know, how are we going to illustrate this one?

[9:48] Lauren Van Hemert: What kind of antics am I gonna do?

[9:50] Lauren Van Hemert: What kind of comedy can I bring to it?

[9:52] Lauren Van Hemert: There's something about using your own creativity that really adds and enhances, and people are playing off each other, and that was all part of the design of the show.

[10:02] Lauren Van Hemert: That was what John Michael wanted.

[10:04] Lauren Van Hemert: He wanted the actors to have that fun.

[10:06] Lauren Van Hemert: And from that fun, then they can really express that on the show.

[10:11] Lauren Van Hemert: And when I was interviewing the actors, I felt that they were still representing that joy that they had.

[10:18] Lauren Van Hemert: Fifty years later, after the opening of the Cherry Lane Theater production, the original cast members still express that joy and love for this show and each other that Carol is describing.

[10:34] Lauren Van Hemert: Here are some highlights from my discussion with Peggy Gordon, Robin Lamont, Sonia Manzano, Gilmer McCormick, Stephen Nathan, and the original music director, Stephen Reinhardt.

[10:50] Peggy Gordon: I am Peggy. I was the Peggy Clown. I created my own clown. I started with the show at La Mama with John Michael and then Cherry Lane and Promenade and blah blah blah blah blah.

[11:01] Gilmer McCormick: I'm Gilmer. I was also the original cast, not at Carnegie, but at Cafe La MaMa.

[11:07] Gilmer McCormick: And Stephen, yeah.

[11:09] Gilmer McCormick: I was working with Steve on called me after about a month.

[11:14] Sonia Manzano: I got the show called Godspell, I've just written I want you to play piano. So that's how I came into it.

[11:27] Stephen Nathan: I'm Stephen Nathan, and I played the Stephen Clown, who also happened to be Jesus. I was there for La Mama or the Cherry Lane, the promenade, and I also did it for a while in San Francisco.

[11:58] Robin Lamont: Um, yeah, pretty much. I mean, I'm Robin Lamont, along with Sonia and David Haskell. We were part of the original, original, original cast at Carnegie Mellon University. And I went on to do the Broadway production and LA production and the film.

[12:20] Robin Lamont: And pew. Joanne. I had the pleasure of meeting Steven Schwartz in Summer Stock. And this was the year before Godspell was, um, before he wrote the music, um, his music to Godspell. And then about, I don't know, maybe about six months later, he called and said, "Wanna come and do this off-Broadway show? I'm writing a song, I know your voice. It's kind of Laura Neroesque. It's called Bless the Lord. And I need you to sing it for this cast." The rest is history.

[12:51] Stephen Nathan: We've mentioned John Michael Tabelank. Stephen Schwartz describes him as he was kind of a big guy, but he was shy, gregarious, and a gentle soul. What are your recollections of him?

[13:07] Robin Lamont: I, Gilmer and I, we had known him from school, and he was just he was. He was a gentle, gregarious, um. And he just got together a group of us and said, "We're gonna go and start a theater." And that's how he approached everything. He would just go, "Let's go do this" without giving it any thought whatsoever. But in the best possible way. It was like his heart always led him. And yeah, and that's what gave birth to Godspell, that sort of thoughtless, spontaneous love of the theater that he had that infected all of us when we worked with him.

[13:53] Stephen Nathan: He was brilliant. He was conceptually brilliant, but he was very, very dense. And you had to have worked with him at least once. And then it's like our first night at La Mama, and he explained what he wanted to do. We went, "Godspell," because we had all worked with him already. And we understood his language.

[14:10] Robin Lamont: Other than outside of the music, there are so many elements that really just have become identified with the show. The use of clowns, the use of makeup. The makeup was an artifice, it was like a costume, and Jesus then puts the makeup on us in the very beginning, and then at the Last Supper, when he removes the makeup, it's a bearing of the soul, and it's also a way of saying the games are over now. You're not clowns, you're just people now. We got down to the essence of who we are as human beings, yeah, you know what we all share. All the artifice was gone, you know, these personalities that were very careful and cultivated, um, we were just for show now. Now we were stripped down to what connects us all. I think that was the ultimate message of the show.

[15:15] Robin Lamont: In a discussion I have with John Michael a long time ago, he had pictured Godspell as the first of three plays, and the second play was these clowns who no longer have the makeup on. He was gonna take it from the book of Acts, and then the third part of the trilogy was the book of Revelation, and of course, he never lived to write all this, but I think Godspell, the way he saw it, was the first of a trilogy.

[15:47] Stephen Nathan: She's right, that's exactly what I'm saying. The second one was called Gatherings, and it was our clowns without the makeup, the evolved souls who go out and preach the gospel.

[16:01] Robin Lamont: The choreography, the makeup, and the costumes, the costumes of that Stephen. Every picture I've ever seen of Godspell, it kind of has this iconic picture of you in the superhero outfit. Um, let's talk about the costumes for a second because there wasn't a very big costuming budget. I brought my shoes from New York to San Francisco. That's how low the budget was.

[16:30] Stephen Nathan: Susie, can we say it again? Because 19 years old, she was brilliant.

[16:34] Robin Lamont: Yeah, they were great. Again, it was the artifice, it was who we thought we were, who we wanted to be. I think the only one that stayed totally consistent was Jesus, you know, Jesus and Judas. Remember John Michael saying in the early rehearsals, "If you could spend a day with Jesus, knowing that he can see through you and love you completely, what kind of a person would you be?"

[17:04] Stephen Nathan: I would be like a little girl. I'd want to crawl up onto his lap, hence my little kind of girl outfit.

[17:13] Robin Lamont: Didn't Susie too like Carnegie Mellon put little gags in our pockets in our costumes? She would put like a party favor. And you reach in your pocket and have a little whistle, and then you'd use it in the parable.

[17:30] Stephen Nathan: We talked about how the show changed from Cafe La MaMa to Stephen Schwartz coming in, um, reworking the score, and then opening at the Cherry Lane. What do you all remember about hearing those new songs, hearing the new score when the show was getting ready to go into rehearsal?

[17:52] Robin Lamont: I remember John Michael calling me and telling me to come down to his apartment. He had just gotten the songs. I mean, just remarkable. And as everyone has said, in four weeks. And when you knew that the songs were there for you, it just meant a lot.

[18:34] Stephen Nathan: Steve, how hard or what do you remember about teaching the score to the cast during that rehearsal process for the Cherry Lane production?

[18:47] Robin Lamont: This is a true story. Steve was inside working on the piano, and one by one, he sent people out to me to learn their prologue part a cappella. And so I was outside teaching people on the sidewalk. That will give you an idea of how resourceful we had to be and the time that we had.

[19:15] Stephen Nathan: Um, on Spotify for the entire week. Um, how what was it like having people respond to this song? I mean, even now, this is such an iconic song from the show. And how has the song changed for you through all these different evolutions or incarnations of the show?

[19:39] Robin Lamont: I don't think it's changed for me. Um, it's where my theatrical and performance life lives is in that song. Stephen Schwartz says that Godspell is essentially about strangers coming together and becoming a community. Talk to me about community and what that means for all of you now, looking back in this experience 50 years later.

[20:05] Stephen Nathan: I always felt that that was the prime reason to do the show. Uh, and it's what we had to learn during the rehearsal process. John Michael's angel and devil was this mind which was constantly in the middle of a hurricane. And sometimes all we had to rely on was each other because we didn't know what he was talking about. Sometimes that was hard, but it always got us to the right place. Seeing your way through his mind, which was our task, yeah, was eye-opening.

[20:48] Robin Lamont: There's a great parallel in the New Testament to this. Most of the time the apostles didn't know what Jesus was talking about. They had no idea. So one day he just sent them out on their own, just like you all had to get up there on your own. And it's then that they began to understand what he was talking about. The message, it's still there. It's still in anyone who does it. It's just an amazing piece. It'll never go away.

[21:14] Lauren Van Hemert: There was so much more that this original cast shared with me during our live chat. I'll put a link in the episode notes so you can watch the entire video. If you want to find out more about the history of Godspell, I would encourage you to pick up a copy of Carol de Giere's book, The Godspell Experience, or check out Peggy Gordon's YouTube channel to watch some archival videos with the original cast. Until next time, I'll see you at the theater.