Enough Anger to Crucify? Superstar at Pine Rivers

PRIMA (Pine Rivers Musical Association) in Brisbane’s north are staging Jesus Christ Superstar during April 2012, close on the heels of Easter, the story of which the Rock Opera reinterprets.

How do thirty-five Pine Rivers residents find a way to commit a man to death?

PRIMA director Melissa Beilby explains what she said to her Jesus Christ Superstar cast.

‘The crowd is supposed to turn on Jesus. They hated him. They despised him. They turn and make Pontius Pilate kill an innocent man. Sure, my displeasure to make the cast give me their best and angriest faces, noisiest shouts was mine alone. I don’t think they realised how far they needed to go to make it convincing.

‘I told them to think of a situation that angered them the most and to scare me with it. Do you know how hard it is to get the right kind of anger?’

Michael Forman, playing one of the Priests in the show who conspire against Christ said, ‘I saw everyone nodding as though we understood what she said, myself included. We’ve all felt angry at some point in our life. I didn’t know how angry I was supposed to be for her. I’ve never seen her like that before.’

‘She wanted us to draw from areas we rarely use. She closed the doors and windows and asked us to turn our mobile phones off. She stood silently in front of us and waited for all to be quiet. We expected a joke or something. Instead, we got something quite different.’

Beilby defended her statement.

‘I needed for them to tap into raw emotion—a place beyond normal civility. I wasn’t getting it and I needed more.’

Forman agreed, ‘We weren’t at the point where anyone hated us. We needed more. Melissa gave us a summary—it hurt. I can’t repeat what she said…except it made a profound difference to our delivery of the piece. It altered everything. It gave us permission to send an innocent man to death.

 ‘Melissa said what she needed to,’ Forman explained. ‘Our job was never to doddle around with the morals of the show. Ours was to act out our parts and send the audience on a magnificent journey.’

The cast of Superstar features Richard Muller as Jesus, Mel Evans as Mary, Lawrie Esmond as Caiaphas, Pierre Nicol as Pontius Pilate and Malcolm Christian as Judas.

Superstar has plays performances over two weeks, on April 20, 21, 22, 25, 27 & 28 at Holy Spirit School, 102 Sparkes Road, Bray Park.
Bookings: www.prima.org.au

Photographer: Tim Miller

More Reading

Community Theatre Seasons 2012 - www.stagewhispers.com.au/community-theatre/community-theatre-seasons-2012

More Community Theatre - www.stagewhispers.com.au/community-theatre