“The shell must be broken before the
bird can fly.” ~~Jennifer Worth, The Midwife: A
Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times
Hi all,
Sorry for another weird newsletter. Firstly, I'm still
decompressing from all that writing so just wanted to do a
debrief of sorts before I move onto the next story. And
then I had a seizure this morning. So that doesn't go
really well with writing newsletters. I had some of this
written beforehand but will try to finish it. I may have
to come back and edit later in the week.
God bless,
Jenni
Decompressing with Some
Story Q and A
Do you think the changes St. G's has made to their production
of Jesus Christ Superstar would be
acceptable in real life?
I started thinking about this in the wake of the "Scamilton" and The
Unofficial Bridgerton Musical controversies. I believe
in artists' rights and the need to protect intellectual
property. So, in real life, I'm not sure one could put on a
production of JCS like the St. G's one without it causing some
issues. But... I think within the context of the stories,
it's all morally ethical because it's being done at the behest of
the title character. And even pretending Joshua wasn't Jesus
Christ, I think his identity as a Jewish man would entitle him to
challenge some elements of the production as it's usually put
forth. JCS has been accused of anti-Semitism in the past and
while I don't experience it in that way, I can see how it could
provide fodder to a person who has already bought into
anti-Semitism. I think the main issue is that the high
priests are universally depicted as scheming to bring about Jesus'
death when that's not supported by the Bible or tradition (Hi,
Nicodemus. Hi, Joseph.) Further, while virtually all
the characters are Jewish, the only ones given Jewish iconography
are the high priests aka the problematic ones. So, to me, it
seems infinitely reasonable to do a production that stresses 1.
not all the high priests were looking to kill Jesus and 2. Jesus
and the apostles were Jewish, too. I think it would be a bad
look for the creators of the show to balk at those changes when
they have made millions of dollars off the story of a Middle
Eastern Jewish man.
The other big change is giving the song "Pilate's Dream" to
Claudia Pilate who, if she appears at all, is a non-vocal role in
JCS. I don't think that would really be a problem since
gender shifts are fairly frequent in musicals. The narrator
in Joseph is sometimes male, sometimes female. The
same can be said of the Leading Player in Pippin. I
even saw a production once where John/Judas in Godspell
was played by a woman. I believe the most recent revival of
Company did a lot of swapping, too. So if completely
changing the gender of a character is a fairly established
practice, I would think splitting a role between male and female
actors would be acceptable... especially when the source material
gives the eponymous dream to a woman. Even if the creators
didn't love it, I could see where them speaking out against said
change could bring them unwanted backlash. I mean it's not a
great look when you write a musical with only one female part and
then gripe about a second female being given one little song when
you bent the source material and wrongly gave it to a man, anyway.
The change I do think would maybe be a little questionable is
adding the Resurrection because it does really change the tone of
the musical. I might even raise my eye brows a bit if I saw
that in real life. At the same time, I don't think it's
really fair to make a musical off of the central story of a major
religion and then get mad when members of that religion decide to
finish the story. Hamilton was never about a
religious figure so injecting more religion into it than is
already there feels really wrong to me. I think that's
substantially different than writing a musical about someone loads
of people think is God and then getting irked that they want to
portray said character as God.
But, again, within the confines of the story and their reality
that Joshua is telling his own story through this musical... I
would defer to him over TPTB behind the musical. Even taking
the God element out, I'm just gonna say that if a couple of white
guys made a bunch of money off of the story of a Middle Eastern
Jewish man and said man was like "I don't like that you edited
these parts out thus changing major aspects of my life, I'm
changing it back" and the creators didn't say "Sure, sounds
good. Sorry about that"... I would probably boycott
them.
How exactly do principalities work? It seemed like there
was only one per a society but maybe not?
While the concept of principalities is not new, I'm not really
drawing on any sources for my particular interpretation of
them. But I think I would say that if you met one
principality... well, you met one principality. In the
stories there is a hierarchy which I'm only just now getting
into. But also hierarchy is maybe not the best word since I
think two angels could be principalities tied to a place without
one being more powerful than another. For example, I assume
there is a principality of North America. But they are not
necessarily more powerful than Wahkan (principality of the Sioux
Nation) even though he's only assigned to a portion of people in
North America. A bit more a of a true hierarchy was touched
on in "The Lost Sheep" in which Hahana, the principality of
Aotearoa, was the supervisor of Edgar, the principality of a
particular Māori iwi. But that wouldn't always be the
case.
I did decide that principalities tied to entire ancient nations
and land masses are Watchers. But principalities tied to
newer societies and groups may not necessarily be. They
could be younger. You may have noticed that no one has yet
been designated as the principality of Dyeland/Asteriana.
When that happens, it will definitely be a non-Watcher. In
the grand scheme of things, Asteriana is neither ancient nor does
it have a large population so I don't think it requires someone
with memories of Creation. So what's the deal with an angel becoming human?
Yeah... can't say I planned to do that. But it just seemed
right. And, the more I thought about it, putting Edgar in
that position could help resolve an issue I've been dealing with
ever since Andrew and JenniAnn really leaned into the anam cara
thing. I don't want to get into it too much just yet but
while I've not outright said it in a story yet, my headcanon right
now is that angel/human anam caras are in a Renaissance period and
will still be rare but more common. In that case, I would
think it would make sense to have someone who specialized in
helping people in those relationships... and who better than
someone who has been an angel, a demon even, and a human?
This newsletter is dedicated to John Dye and
everyone who worked on TBAA which I think did a good job of
representing people with disabilities. I just don't think
I give them credit for that enough so wanted to say it now.
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Productions. They are not being used to seek
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