In !Hero, The Rock Opera, the Jesus of the Gospels is transformed into a dreadlock-wearing street preacher for the hip-hop generation.
By SHARON TUBBS
Published October 25, 2003
So there's this black man with dreadlocks in New York City. A real charmer, this guy. He gives a speech in Central Park, and people swoon as he mouths off about love and peace. He has even persuaded a few to quit their jobs and follow him.
He typically hangs out with blue-collar folks, adding to his growing street cred. One of his biggest fans is a former prostitute.
He's like a star, more inspirational than the pope and Oprah combined. Throngs grab at his clothes, beg him to visit a drug addict or a kid shot in a drive-by. They think he can heal them and change their bad habits.
Police say he's a sham.
So do people who knew him growing up. They remember when he was born in a small steel town in Pennsylvania, a city called Bethlehem.
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Did the Bethlehem thing give it away?
That's one of a few clues that the musical !Hero, The Rock Opera is a story about the life of Jesus.
This is a modern Jesus, who descends from his heavenly throne and drops in on New York City, a gritty world of "playas," hip-hop and rock, corrupt police and fear. He's not called Jesus. He's Hero. And he's hip. He sings rap, rock and R&B.
The musical is the latest effort to make Christianity compatible with modern living. The biblical Jesus, surrounded by fishers, tax collectors and Pharisees, is a savior some find difficult to relate to. The thinking is that he must be fashioned anew, along with the traditions and rituals Christians have accepted for years.
Slowly, the hymns have given way to Christian rap, pop, rock, country and jazz. Christian fiction and romance novels line shelves at bookstores. The Bible got a facelift this year when Transit Books released a glossy magazine version of the New Testament, Revolve.
Was the cool black Jesus far behind?
It has been done before. Amateur theater groups and black churches have cast Jesus and his disciples in urban settings as their congregations have tried to relate to a deity most commonly pictured as blond and blue-eyed.
Eddie DeGarmo, president of EMI Christian Music Publishing, polished the concept and backed it with a media campaign. DeGarmo co-wrote the musical and commissioned author Stephen R. Lawhead and his son, Ross, to write a trilogy of Hero novels and comic books. The first novel, City of Dreams (Navpress, $12.99), was released last month, along with a two-disc CD of the play's music.
A 19-city tour begins Nov. 1 in Wabash, Ind., and ends Nov. 23 in San Antonio, Texas. It comes to Palmetto's Manatee Civic Center on Nov. 5 and to Calvary Assembly in Winter Park on Nov. 6.
DeGarmo said the mediums he uses - the CD, the play, the novels and comic books - are just different versions of the same story, not unlike the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke.
Hero is played by Michael Tait, a Christian rock singer best-known as part of the Grammy-winning group dc talk. Mark Stuart, lead singer for Dove award winner Audio Adrenaline, plays Petrov, the biblical Peter. And Grammy winner Rebecca St. James is Maggie (Mary Magdalene). Christian singers and rappers Grits, T-Bone, John Cooper of Skillet and Matt Hammitt of Sanctus Real round out the racially diverse cast and CD project.
The story is of a young man who was born in Bethlehem, Pa. He ends up in Brooklyn, where he performs miracles, to the chagrin of the International Confederation of Nations, the world government that takes the place of biblical Rome. The powers that be are intimidated by Hero's growing popularity and his message of love and hope.
Before its first performance, !Hero is being compared with Andrew Lloyd Webber's Jesus Christ Superstar. Weber's 1970s rock opera chronicled the last seven days of Jesus' life through the eyes of his betrayer, Judas. The musical was daring for its time.
DeGarmo said !Hero pushes the envelope further.
"I feel like that, in my way, I've stayed, in some respects, more true to the intent of the story but have probably become more outlandish in the way that I've displayed it," he said.
Remember the five loaves of bread and two fish that Jesus used to feed the 5,000?
Hero does the same the same thing in Times Square with a couple of hot dogs and pretzels.
The story of Jairus is a bit different, too. In the Bible, Jairus is a synagogue ruler who begs Jesus to save his daughter. The savior raises her from the dead.
In DeGarmo's version, a drug dealer's daughter gets shot in a drive-by shooting. Her father, played by rapper T-Bone, pleads with Hero in an Eminem-sounding voice: My baby's dying in the street, bleedin', barely breathin', about to die, Hero! Caught up, shot up over these drugs by some thugs, Hero . . .
Hero strides through Harlem, touches the girl, and she awakens from the dead.
The true message of the Gospel had been glossed over with Easter eggs and such, DeGarmo said. People today don't understand that as a Jew, Jesus was ostracized. Most laughed at his message of love, even his own people in Nazareth. He was shunned and ridiculed.
This, DeGarmo said, is why he wanted Tait to play Hero. DeGarmo is white, but he said he can see parallels between the lives of black people today and Jews in Jesus' time.
"They were a people that had come out of bondage," DeGarmo said of the Jews. "They were a people that were downtrodden in their own society, and I feel like the African-American folks have come through some of those things that parallel that. It's just like God to reach down and pick the person that would be the least likely to rise up . . . and I just thought it was very appropriate to depict Christ as an African-American in !Hero."
Tait didn't hesitate to take the role.
"As a little boy growing up in the inner city of Washington, D.C., being the son of a pastor, at my dad's church and other churches around the city, I'd always see these pictures of this blond-haired, blue-eyed Jesus," he said.
As he got older, Tait studied the Bible and realized that Jesus likely was not white, and he probably wasn't black, either.
"The truth is, he probably looked more like a terrorist, if you really break it down," Tait said. "I mean Jewish, Middle Eastern, dark, woolly hair. But the fact is, it's provocative."
One of his goals in playing Hero, Tait said, is to show that Jesus' appearance doesn't matter. Tait said some have questioned his role, saying Jesus was not black.
"I just find it funny how we argue that, and it's like, he wasn't white, either," Tait said. "God created all men and women in his image, so when I look around the world and I see the different races and colors and creeds, God's image is multicolored. It's a rainbow. He's the true rainbow-coalition founder."
DeGarmo said he wants the project to invoke discussion. Petrov, who represents Peter, is wearing a Confederate flag on his chest when he meets Jesus.
"I think it will invigorate people to get involved in the real Gospel story," DeGarmo said, explaining that the biblical Peter might be described as prejudiced today.
"You read where he and Paul would get into dialogue and Peter did not want to reach out to the gentiles because he thought he was above that because he was Jewish," DeGarmo said. "And Paul would say, "Hey, man, we're here for all people.' "
DeGarmo has stayed away from the controversy that surrounds Mel Gibson's movie The Passion of Christ. In !Hero, the savior's opponents are not depicted as people of a specific culture. They are pegged as government officials and "street urchins" who don't believe what Hero preaches and think he and his followers are a danger to life as they know it.
"The Jewish people were the ones penned and named the accusers and the ostracizers, but the thing is, gentiles did also, lay people," Tait said. "It was everybody, you know, it wasn't just the Jews who crucified the guy. It was everybody."
Tait, 36, said he has felt racism in recent times. Three years ago, he stopped to get some water at a convenience store in Tracy City, Tenn., a small town near Chattanooga.
"Where you boys from?" a man in the store asked.
I'm from Washington, D.C., Tait told him. His friends, from Oregon. They were on a rock-climbing trip.
"Well, we don't allow your kind around here," the man said to Tait, the only African-American in the group.
It was getting dark outside, so Tait was running out of time, the man went on. If he didn't leave town soon, he'd be hanged.
Tait and his friends got in his SUV and left. "I wasn't as much afraid as I was angry, and I cooled my anger off. What they wanted from me was a response. I said, "Michael don't respond,' " Tait said.
How did Jesus feel when his opponents treated him that way?
"I can't imagine," Tait said. "The world was against him, his own people. The Bible says, "He came unto his own and his own received him not.' So that right there would devastate me. I would think, if I were him, "I created you people, and you're going to come up in my face with this? What's up with that?' "
At a glance
!Hero, The Rock Opera will be performed at 7:30 p.m. Nov. 5 at the Manatee Civic Center, intersection of U.S. 301/41 and Haben Boulevard, Palmetto, and 7:30 p.m. Nov. 6 at Calvary Assembly, 1199 Clay St., Winter Park. Tickets start at $20, some group rates available; Manatee Civic Center box office 941 722-3244, ext. 244, or www.manateeconventioncenter.com Event Ministries toll-free 1-888-859-8877 or www.eventministries.com Ticketmaster, at outlets, by phone at (727) 898-2100 and (813) 287-8844, and www.ticketmaster.com Some local Christian bookstores are also selling tickets.
