John Legend's Jesus Christ Superstar

To start out I am a cisgendered white female which impacts my thoughts on representation. I do not claim to speak for others or in any way minimize other peoples lived experiences.

I found that the multicultural cast for tonight's Jesus Christ Superstar featuring John Legend impacted how I saw and related to the whole story of Jesus.

In the song above the line “do you care about your race, we must keep in our place” stood out for me. Given the multicultural casting of the show, this production hit home for me in a way that the story of Jesus often does not. This casting made this story feel very relevant and real and something that might have occurred historically. 

Judas and Jesus' views on the next steps for their movement reminded me of the types of debates that occur in the Black Panther Universe. 

• How do you bring about change? 
• Can you have a too charismatic of a leader? 
• What methods should be used? 
• Should you stand tall or keep your head low?
• Is it better to fight or live another day?

Another line which stood our was “They will crush us if we go too far” and "remember Jesus I want us to live" which is especially poignant in a day and age where Black Men/Black Women/Other POC/LGBTQA individuals are killed by systems/police/everyday citizens. Where it is all too true if you stick your head up at all (like simply having a taillight out) you have a markedly less chance of surviving. 

Later the religious leaders sing about how Jesus must die but when I listened to the lyrics I realized they make good points even if their conclusions are wrong. Jesus was whipping people into a frenzy while they were under an oppressive regime. By the standards of the day, Jesus would have been just begging for the Romans to come in and punish everyone. Again throwing Jesus under the bus was the wrong choice but I can understand being afraid for your community. 

I realized that I find it is hard to imagine a world where the traditional image of Jesus as a cisgendered white dude (and this is not historically accurate he would have been middle eastern but most portrayals to this day still make him a white dude) would be crucified. Whereas it is easy to imagine a POC being crucified because today on an almost daily basis POC’s are crucified.

It is also hard for me to imagine a white dude who would be able to truly understand the challenges and hardship of other less privileged identifications. As a white woman, I will admit I don’t truly understand how challenging intersectionality can be. But I will also say that "The temple" feels like reality. POC are pushed down until they stand up and say no more and then they are expected to "heal everyone". They are thanked for saving us from poor election results but we don't vote differently. They are told to stand tall and be a good example no matter what we throw at them. 

So I still don't know what I feel or know about Jesus as a character or historical figure or the Christianity he spawned. But this version of the story using a multicultural cast made me feel like his story could be mine. And this is coming from a cisgendered white female so I can only imagine how powerful images such as this could be for individuals in communities of POC. The power of seeing your self on the stage/screen, seeing yourself within the story.