. The Passion Play There are a few childhood memo…

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The Passion Play

There are a few childhood memories that I can recall in vivid visual detail, some involving events that took place over two or more days. One is the assassination of President Kennedy when I was in kindergarten. Another is when I was Jesus Christ in third grade.

Sister Maria, straight off the boat from Ireland, looked like a female Bono in a winged headdress. She was a tough nun, given to bouncing kids’ heads off blackboards over bad math. I had her in third grade at St. Rose of Lima Catholic School, a small institution connected with one of those 1950s-vintage suburban church-cum-cold storage facilities. The whole thing was her idea.

She assigned us a class project. We were to write, produce, and perform our own Easter play–a pretty tall order for third graders. It was also a rare foray into the realm of creativity and imagination for the 1960s Catholic grade school curriculum. It’s not like we had an open playing field, however. The play had to be about Holy Week. No Easter bunny nonsense. It was also brilliantly designed so that Sister Maria didn’t have to lift a finger—unless, of course, she was provoked.

The writing fell to John D’Elia, John Pellechia, and me. The three of us worked on the script in my bedroom over the garage after school. We took the dialogue and stage directions straight from the Bible. We also handled the casting. Pellechia, the alpha male, was automatically cast as Jesus. He had second thoughts, however, over the costume–he had planned to wear his mother’s nightgown. The idea of getting kissed by Judas clinched it. He switched to a Roman guard, putting me in the catbird seat. (I planned to wear a sheet.)

We worked two or three afternoons on the script, keeping it tight with the Catechism. Our mothers were astonished at our productivity.

On play day, the classroom was our stage. Action took place along all four walls with the audience sitting at desks dispersed about the room. I led Tommy Young and several of my other disciples to a spot in the Garden of Gethsemane, which was right up front against the blackboard. They fell asleep. I prayed. I soon suffered the ignominy of a kiss from Frank Forte in the role of Judas as Pellechia and his crew made their move.

Then the gauntlet began as I was led around the room. Andrea Tartaglia as Veronica held a handkerchief up to my third-grader face, pulling it away to display a rather nicely drawn picture of the bearded Christ. It even showed the crown of thorns that had been suck on my head, I believe by Pellechia. I fell the correct number of times with a little help, finally, from the big blonde kid named Steve as Simon. I can see his face, but I can’t remember his last name. He was a really quiet kid.

And, yes, they “nailed” me to a white cardboard cross up against the coat closet. I remember now that the sheet I wore was dyed purple–my mother helped me dye it in the utility sink by the washing machine. I had a white rope for a belt. Things got a little melodramatic toward the end of this scene, as I rolled my eyes Heavenward asking, “Why have you forsaken me?”— a popular act in my repertoire to this day.

We would probably have followed through with the whole stone roll at the tomb thing. Somehow that part has been blacked out from memory. But I can still see the audience–the eighth grade class. Just them. One performance, no parents, maybe a few nuns. I don’t even think Father Tuozzo bothered to come. The big kids were amazed at how well we did. One of the eighth grade boys, who may have had a brother or sister in the play, actually shouted out to Sister Maria at the end, “How come the parents can’t see this?” He was dispatched to the supply closet where the principal, Sister Carmelita, worked him over with a metal ruler for being, as Sister Maria put it, “as bold as brass.”

My mother, as I recall, wanted to hold Sister Maria under the dye in the utility sink. Mrs. D’Elia and Mrs Pellechia would have wanted a piece of that action as well. Can you imagine not letting the parents see this play? The next year, mine took me out of St. Rose and put me into the system. That same year Sister Maria ran off with a masochistic priest—this Maria turned out to be a problem that the Corps could not solve.

And she had shown such promise.

Have a Good Friday,
Vanx
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Top: SuperChrist by Joachim Probst (b/w photo of oil painting)

First Grade Communion, St. Rose of Lima, 1965. Front row, second boy from left–John D’Elia; Second row, second boy from left–Vanx; Second row, fourth boy from left–Frank Forte; Sixth row, fourth boy from left–John Pellechia; White dress–Andrea Tartaglia. Top row center nun–Sister Carmelita. Top row far right nun–Sister Thadeus, whom I loved.