Casting Judas: Interracial Intimacy in Jesus Christ Superstar by Larissa A
Title Page Casting Judas: Interracial Intimacy in Jesus Christ Superstar by Larissa A. Irizarry B.A., Washington Adventist University, 2016 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of The Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts & Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts University of Pittsburgh 2019 Committee Membership Page UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH DIETRICH SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES This thesis was presented by Larissa A. Irizarry It was defended on March 29, 2019 and approved by James Cassaro, Professor, Music Dan Wang, Assistant Professor, Music Committee Chair: Olivia Bloechl, Professor, Music ii Copyright © by Larissa A. Irizarry 2019 iii Abstract Casting Judas: Interracial Intimacy in Jesus Christ Superstar Larissa A. Irizarry, MA University of Pittsburgh, 2019 Jesus Christ Superstar (JCS) by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice first debuted as a staged musical in 1971, and was turned into a film production in 1973. In 2000 Gale Edwards and Nick Morris directed a second film adaptation. On Easter Sunday 2018, JCS, directed by David Levaux and Alex Rudzinki, was broadcasted on NBC as a live musical television special. Each of these three productions incorporates different configurations of interracial intimacy among the characters of Judas, Jesus, and Mary. These different characterizations and configurations of race construction produce differing commentaries on race and interracial relations. Despite the emergent scholarship of critical race theory in theater and film studies, there is surprisingly little literature on the configurations of interracial intimacies in JCS. In this thesis, I draw on critical race theory and gender studies to explore how race inflects representations of intimacy in JCS, focusing on the characterization of Judas across these productions.
[Show full text]