Jerry Springer, The Opera

[Madeline]

LAKEWOOD, Ohio -- In a brawl fit for "The Jerry Springer Show," America's culture wars have come to Lakewood. We have a ringside seat.

In this corner, a popular and acclaimed musical satire where opera singers spout nearly 300 profanities, Klansmen tap-dance, the whore-mongers are transgender and Jesus takes on a Satan-Adam-Eve tag team.

In the other corner, a website that preaches the United States would be better off if we all believed reports by three children that the Virgin Mary appeared in a field in Portugal in 1917.

And in the crossfire of this confrontation of values is the Beck Center for the Arts, where "Jerry Springer: The Opera" and America Needs Fatima will slug it out next month.
The first 18,000 punches have already been thrown.

That's the number of indignant, virtually identical e-mails sent from the Christian website to the Cleveland area's westernmost professional theater, Beck officials said.

Unfazed, the Beck Center says the show will go on as planned, just as it has in U.S. cities from Boston to Des Moines, Iowa.

America Needs Fatima -- named for the Portuguese town where the Virgin Mary is said to have appeared -- promised to picket the Beck, just as it did in Boston and Des Moines.
The Beck Center says: Fine, the First Amendment applies to all Americans, go right ahead, we don't mind the free publicity.

This is the latest in a series of campaigns by evangelical Christians -- particularly conservative Roman Catholics -- against "Jerry Springer: The Opera." Similar protests against a 2005 British broadcast of the London production helped derail a planned Broadway transfer.

In a larger context, "Jerry Springer: The Opera" is the latest battle between fundamentalist Christians and secular artists in a conflict that has raged, off and on, for centuries.

In the 1640s, Puritans destroyed London's theaters, not restored until 1660. The American culture wars of the 1980s began over photos by Robert Mapplethorpe and Andres Serrano.

You click an icon and fill in a name, and a pre-written e-mail -- or as many of them as someone wants to create with more clicks -- is on its way to a pre-programmed address. This is known on the Internet as "Astroturfing," or creating a synthetic "grassroots" campaign.

No formal ties exist between America Needs Fatima and the Catholic Church, Diocese of Cleveland spokesman Robert Tayek said.

Robert Ritchie, director of America Needs Fatima, says he has never seen the musical, heard a recording or read the libretto. "I don't need to take poison to know that it kills," Ritchie said from his office in Spring Grove, Pa.

How does Ritchie know the musical is poison if he hasn't seen it, Beck Center artistic director Scott Spence asked in a separate interview.

"How do you know that George Washington lived if you never saw him?" Ritchie said in his interview. "Somebody saw him and left reports. We know, through reporting, that the quotes in the play are blasphemous."

Ritchie came up with a quote from the second act of "Jerry Springer: The Opera" to illustrate: "Jesus is introduced as 'the hypocrite son of the fascist tyrant on high.' "
That line comes in a sequence during which the Springer character has a dream (after being shot) that the guests on his show have morphed into members of the Christian pantheon.

Back to Spence, who will direct "Jerry Springer: The Opera" at the Beck Feb. 17-March 27: "That line is Satan's, and even in 'Jerry Springer: The Opera,' Satan is the bad guy. That's in line with church doctrine."

Spence -- who said the play is a satire about the values of a country that make a television show like "Jerry Springer" popular and not an attack on any faith -- brought up another scene he said is mistaken for blasphemy.

"Jesus says he's 'a little bit gay,' " Spence said. "But I take that to mean that he's also a little bit Puerto Rican, a little bit male, a little bit female. That, too, is in line with the beliefs of most Christians: We are all part of the body of Christ."

Ritchie shot back: "If you're telling me this play was made to teach the Catechism ..."
Ritchie went on, as does the debate.

Meanwhile, Beck Center officials said they knew this battle was coming. But they decided "Jerry Springer: The Opera" had a place in its mix of edgy contemporary work and popular musicals -- including December's "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat," based on a Bible story.

The Beck's advertising for "Jerry Springer: The Opera" contains this tagline: "WARNING! This production is not recommended for children and contains material that may offend some people."

But Beck officials said they are more concerned about profanity and sexuality than religion.

"My 92-year-old mother loved our production of 'Evil Dead: The Musical,' " said Beck Center President Lucinda Einhouse. "But I'm not going to take her to this, and it's not because she's Catholic."

cleveland.com

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7V2Zmbx5Y0"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7V2Zmbx5Y0[/ame]

I have so many questions, LOL. Anyone here seen this?