WWJD was written as Anna Lewis’ Master’s thesis in Creative Writing. The following is the seventh part of the accompanying essay, which we will be reprinting in serialized form in the days leading up to our production of WWJD. Earlier entries are posted here:
Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV
Part V
Part VI
The second author I tried to emulate as I wrote my play was J.D. Salinger. In Franny and Zooey, Salinger introduces Jesus as an influence in his novel but doesn’t give him any of his own lines. The characters refer often to who Jesus is and what he would do, but the only account of interaction with Jesus comes to the reader third hand. Franny relates a story her brother told her:
You know what he swore up and down to me? He told me last night that he once had a glass of ginger ale with Jesus in the kitchen when he was eight years old[…] He said he was – this is exactly what he said - he said he was sitting at the table in the kitchen, all by himself, drinking a glass of ginger ale and eating saltines and reading ‘Dombey and Son’, and all of a sudden Jesus sat down in the other chair and asked if he could have a small glass of ginger ale. A small glass, mind you – that’s exactly what he said. (Salinger 190-191)
What, I ask, is more delightful than the idea of Jesus sharing some saltines and ginger ale with an eight-year-old kid? Nothing. It’s delightful, it’s funny, and it’s captivating. In fact, it is so perfect I let Jesus have some ginger ale in my play as well.
Other than being charming, Jesus having a small snack with a kid represents no moral message. There is no lesson Jesus is teaching here, at least none obvious to the reader. His appearance in the book is ambiguous. This is not to say the story itself is amoral. On the contrary, the plot centers around a girl trapped in an ethical
meltdown and her struggle through it, along with her brother’s struggle to understand her, make up the whole story. The key here is that the moral struggle, which is very real in the story, is not resolved by Jesus. He delivers no platitudes, no advice, no Judea-wisdom. In fact, all he does is eat someone else’s saltines. The
struggle and resolution are human. Jesus is a presence (a haunt) but not an active player in the conflict. This eliminates the trite solution of having Jesus come and deliver a happily-ever-after. In Franny and Zooey the characters are forced to confront the problem themselves.
I tried to do this in my play as well. In WWJD Jesus is surrounded by human problems, but the only constructive thing he does is build paper cranes. He seems benevolent, but remains powerless in the face of human conflict. In this way, he emulates Salinger’s Jesus. He is present as a force but refuses or is unable to provide the answers the characters ask for.
***
If I have been successful in distancing my symbolic Jesus from my doctrinal Jesus I am now faced with a new problem, the same problem that Salinger and Peterson are faced with. (It makes me happy to make myself a part of their group.) By creating an atypical Jesus I easily ostracize myself from my audience. In fact, the dilemma is greater for me as a playwright than it is for Salinger and Peterson because instead of allowing my audience the freedom to imagine Jesus in their heads as a novel writer would, I put Jesus right in front of their eyes…and then I strip him of many of his conventions.
It’s true, as Ong stated, that the audience and I have an unspoken agreement that they will become a fiction to access my work, but this is a tenuous agreement. They came to the show and were told they would see Jesus but suddenly this purported Jesus is doing the moonwalk. The audience agreed to meet me halfway, but if they feel I am not doing my share to meet them, they will quickly walk out.
It’s not necessarily a matter of alienating a conservative or overly sensitive audience either. Consider Peterson’s words again: “You cannot give a fair reading to literature that you think in its deepest intent aims to subvert our spiritual bearings.” Is it possible to show an audience a form of Jesus without intending to subvert their
religious bearings on some level?
My intent in writing this play was not to build faith; nor was it to destroy faith. However, if I said I did not want my audience to reevaluate the relationship of man to faith and divinity, I would be lying. Isn’t that subversion? I show them Jesus washing dishes and I want them to think about the paradox of the Son of God with a sponge: Isn’t that subversion?
***
So the greatest dilemma in writing my play was to keep my audience from walking out on me. I want to emphasize again, that I am not talking merely about a conservative, Christian audience. Knowing my audience is imaginary makes it much larger that. It’s not only that I don’t want my audience to feel I’ve betrayed their beloved image of Jesus, but I also don’t want them to think that I have turned him into the saccharine-sweet, happy-ending-maker that will be predictable to
them. My audience is the ideal other and this other is willing to be reasonably open-minded and reasonably critical. My Jesus, though created for the college apartment he visits, must not cause my audience to retract their trust from me. I’ve employed two specific methods to maintain my audience. The first is no surprise; I have tried to make my play a comedy. This is expected. After all, both Peterson and Salinger’s accounts of Jesus have a certain amount of humor in them. The humor allows Jesus to step outside the conventional box, but recognizes that this is a departure from the normal by allowing the audience to laugh at his atypical behavior.
It also separates Jesus from what the audience may have expected him to be. For example, when Jesus skateboards across the room, he skateboards right across conventional expectations of himself. Jesus only walks or sometimes rides a white ass. Placing him on a skateboard is over-the-top enough to inform the audience that this is a fictional character rather than a Christian symbol.
The second method I employ is eliminating any of Jesus’s dialogue. Jesus doesn’t say a word in the whole play. Ironically, after distancing the audience from Jesus as a doctrinal figure and making him seem a true character, silencing Jesus allows the audience to apply their own perceptions of Jesus to the staged Jesus. Whenever
Jesus communicates, the audience cannot hear him. They are required to hear the interpretation of what he says given by the other characters, none of whom is reliable. This allows the audience a certain amount of freedom in ascribing meaning to the stage Jesus. Instead of having to reconcile the stage Jesus’s words and tone with their own imagined deity, they are allowed to interpret his actions as they may. Even on the stage, different characters interpret what they purportedly hear Jesus say differently. This allows the audience to do the same.
To Be Concluded…
Click here to read “Writing About Jesus: An Epilogue.”
WWJD plays at the Provo Theatre (105 E. 100 N.) March 24-28 and April 8-11
Photo courtesy of Christian Cragun