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Dr Dominic Symonds

Profile

Dominic Symonds is a co-Director of the Centre for Music Theatre at the University of Portsmouth, where he is Senior Lecturer in Drama.

He is a member of the Music Theatre Working Group of the IFTR and a Writer Associate of Mercury Musical Developments. He is also a professional director, with credits as diverse as the London cult fringe hit Dragula and the first ever production of The Magic Flute in the Republic of Moldova.

He holds a PhD from London University. Along with colleague George Burrows he is editor of the academic journal Studies in Musical Theatre (Intellect).

ABSTRACT

"You've begun to matter more than the things you say": religion and the de-censorship of the British stage.

The abolition of the Lord Chamberlain's powers of censorship in 1968 had a provocative impact on the British stage. Much of the focus on this landmark event has centred on the more permissive attitude it afforded issues of sexuality. However, other areas of interest were also deeply affected, not least the sanctity of Christian rhetoric that is recognised as a central meta-narrative in Western society. This study will address how developments in Europe and America around this period caused a general relaxing of censorial authority, and how in the wake of this the treatment of the Passion and particularly the depiction of Christ was to image Jesus as human rather than divine. This development, from the Alexandrian to the Antiochene narrative marks a turning point in 20th century midrash, and is evidenced in a number of key texts from the period. The musical Jesus Christ Superstar appeared on Broadway in 1971, and in the West End in 1973, and its empathy with Judas, its portrayal of superstar idolatry to Christ and its use of the counter-cultural language of rock have all played a part in the way that subsequent treatments of the passion have been represented. In such a way, the show represents a quite radical disturbance of existing ideology. This is particularly interesting since the progenitors of this liberal and challenging text, Tim Rice, Andrew Lloyd Webber (and on film, Melvyn Bragg) have since become such bastions of conservative, establishment culture.This article will observe the way that JCS offered a renegotiation of the religious meta-narrative.