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To Hold As T'were the Mirror up to Hate: Terrence Mcnally's Response to the Christian Right in Corpus Christi

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To Hold As T'were the Mirror up to Hate: Terrence Mcnally's Response to the Christian Right in Corpus Christi Georgia State University ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University English Dissertations Department of English 8-6-2007 To Hold as T'were the Mirror Up to Hate: Terrence McNally's Response to the Christian Right in Corpus Christi Richard Kimberly Sisson Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/english_diss Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Sisson, Richard Kimberly, "To Hold as T'were the Mirror Up to Hate: Terrence McNally's Response to the Christian Right in Corpus Christi." Dissertation, Georgia State University, 2007. https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/english_diss/20 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of English at ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. It has been accepted for inclusion in English Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. TO HOLD AS T’WERE THE MIRROR UP TO HATE: TERRENCE MCNALLY’S RESPONSE TO THE CHRISTIAN RIGHT IN CORPUS CHRISTI by RICHARD KIMBERLY SISSON Under the direction of Matthew C. Roudané ABSTRACT In 1998, the Manhattan Theatre Club’s staging of Terrence McNally’s play Corpus Christi ignited protest and virulent condemnation from various religious and politically conservative groups which eventually led to the cancellation of the play’s production. This led to a barrage of criticism from the national theatre, gay, and civil rights communities and free speech advocates, including the ACLU and PEN, which issued a press releases about the cancellation that decried censorship and acquiescence by the theatre to neo-conservative religiously political groups. As swiftly as the cancellation, the Manhattan Theatre Club reversed its decision and the show resumed its rehearsal schedule. Although the critical reception of the play was mostly negative, the political controversy surrounding its production testifies to the fact that a contemporary play in America dealing with both religious and gay themes is still economically risky, radical politically, and worthy of critical rhetorical analysis. This work aims to fill that gap by providing an in-depth investigation of the tangled rhetorical history of Corpus Christi. First providing an account of the controversy surrounding the 1998 production of Corpus Christi, this work then gives a historical and cultural analysis of McNally’s career and corpus of work leading up to the play’s contentious staging. Second, a full account of the play’s critical reception is given through a close analysis of the rhetorical responses to the work from the Christian Right and the more secular community that supported the play’s production. Third, the American Christian Right’s vitriolic rhetorical response to the play is indicted as homophobic hate speech. Fourth, how McNally’s play repudiates the rhetorical violence perpetrated by the Right against gays is revealed. Finally, the last two chapters examine how the rhetoric of the play speaks directly to its queer audience. Chapter five reveals the rhetorical and meta-theatrical conversion strategies employed by McNally in Corpus Christi to proselytize his expansive message of Christ to his gay audience. Ending the work, chapter six examines McNally’s rhetorical reclamation of the Christ figure from the Right as a means of sacralizing homosexuality as a religious identity and homosexual love and sex as a spiritual act. INDEX WORDS: Terrence McNally, Corpus Christi, homophobia, hate speech, Christian Right, transgressive rhetoric, spiritual reclamation, gay spirituality TO HOLD AS T’WERE THE MIRROR UP TO HATE: TERRENCE MCNALLY’S RESPONSE TO THE CHRISTIAN RIGHT IN CORPUS CHRISTI by RICHARD KIMBERLY SISSON A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the College of Arts and Sciences Georgia State University 2007 Copyright by Richard Kimberly Sisson 2007 TO HOLD AS T’WERE THE MIRROR UP TO HATE: TERRENCE MCNALLY’S RESPONSE TO THE CHRISTIAN RIGHT IN CORPUS CHRISTI by RICHARD KIMBERLY SISSON Major Professor: Matthew Roudané Committee: George Pullman Thomas McHaney Electronic Version Approved: Office of Graduate Studies College of Arts and Sciences Georgia State University August 2007 iv To Brenda Sisson Scott Pluckhahn Thomas McHaney Stuart Noel Ellen Barker For your love, support, and encouragement v TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iv CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION……………………………………………………… 1 2 CHAPTER 1: An introduction—the Controversy Surrounding the 7 Production of Terrence McNally’s Corpus Christi ……………………. 3 CHAPTER 2: From Secular Support on the Left to Fundamentalist 26 Furor on the Right—the Cultural and Critical Reception of Corpus Christi…………………………………………………………………………… 4 CHAPTER 3: Religio-Conservative Hate Speech—the American 49 Christian Right’s Vitriolic Response to Corpus Christi………………….. 5 CHAPTER 4: Reclaiming the Gospel Truth—How Corpus Christi 81 Repudiates the American Christian Right’s Homophobic Rhetorical Violence against Gays………………………………………………….. 6 CHAPTER 5: Strategies of Conversion—McNally’s Proselytizing a 115 Queer Christian Message to His Audiences in Corpus Christi………….. 7 CHAPTER 6: Salvation Through Sex—McNally’s Homosexual 153 Identification with Christ in Corpus Christi …………………………… 8 CONCLUSION………………………………………………………… 175 BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………………… 186 1 Introduction In October, 1998, the Manhattan Theatre Club’s staging of Terrence McNally’s play Corpus Christi ignited protest and virulent condemnation from various religious and politically conservative groups led by the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, a national organization dedicated to defending “the rights of Catholics to participate in American public life without defamation or discrimination” (Kroll 1). The controversy began when, months before its scheduled premiere, the play’s postulation of a gay Christ- like character named Joshua and his gay disciples became public in the press. Never having read the script, the leader of the archly conservative Catholic League, William Donohue, proclaimed the play blasphemous and “offensive to Catholics and all Christians” (Bronski 1). After receiving anonymous violent threats to “fire bomb the theater, kill the staff, and ‘exterminate’ Terrence McNally’’ (Bronski 1), the Manhattan Theatre Club and others involved in the production hastily cancelled the play. This led to a barrage of criticism from the national theatre, gay, and civil rights communities and free speech advocates, including the ACLU and PEN, which issued a press releases about the cancellation that decried censorship and acquiescence by the theatre to neo-conservative religious factions (Statement of Support1-3). As swiftly as the cancellation, the Manhattan Theatre Club reversed its decision and the show resumed its rehearsal schedule. As opening night neared, protestors from both sides of the censorship issue took to the streets and the theatre cautiously rented metal detectors to counter the continuing threats of violence. After the first week of performance, most critics dismissed the play as “unworthy of serious consideration” 2 (Off-Broadway 1) and media interest about the play in the national press dwindled and quickly disappeared. Although the critical reception of the play was mostly negative, the political controversy surrounding its production testifies to the fact that a contemporary play in America dealing with both religious and gay themes is still economically risky, radical politically, and worthy of critical rhetorical analysis. Ironically, Corpus Christi opened the same day Matthew Shepard was beaten, hung from a fence, and left to meet a slow, agonizing death in the Wyoming desert simply because he was gay. That Shepard’s brutal murder was a hate crime is unfortunately not the last or latest reminder that homophobic bigotry kills in America. Racial, sexual, gender, and ethnic violence persist as institutionalized mechanisms of oppression. And for gay men, the prime source of animosity directed against them can be found in the voices of religious conservatives who speak about homosexuality from a standpoint of hate, violence, and intolerance rather than with the Christian message of love, compassion, and acceptance. McNally’s bold queering of Jesus persuasively identifies Christ as a historically marginalized victim of a hate crime and forces those of the religious Right to squarely confront the incongruity of their hate-filled messages. The blatant symbolism in Corpus Christi allows McNally to make his hermeneutical usurpation of a Christ figure and Biblical narrative an artistic seizure of spiritual property and cultural privilege heretonow having belonged to those institutionalized religious groups claiming sole authority to all interpretation and representation of Christ’s messages. Corpus Christi conforms to a traditional American genre of political theater in which the individual speech of the artist and artistic freedom are tested. The controversy 3 aroused as a result of its planned production seems quite similar to other efforts by American playwrights to challenge censorship by political, religious, or other groups acting to suppress any expression of art that does not conform to narrow standards. In McNally’s case, the challenge exposed the religious Right in its ongoing political campaign to repress any artistic manifestation of gay society in America; but there is a substantial and very important difference in how this recent
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