 |
| No items matching your keywords were found. |
Has anyone seen a female Judas in Jesus Christ Superstar?
If so, have you got a link to video/audio of it? My theatre group might be casting Judas as a female role...
The directors were thinking of it, and I just wanted to see if a female Judas would work out. Thanks for the answers so far!
I've never seen it done - and there's one big reason that I can see for NOT casting a female Judas: you'd have to transpose almost all the songs that Judas sings. They're too low for 99% of females to sing at the same pitch as a male Judas would, and if you try to sing them up the octave (so as written - Judas is written in the treble clef and sung an octave lower than it's written) then they're getting very, very high - a soprano would manage it, but then you lose the "belting" quality which the songs absolutely need - no female, not even someone like Idina Menzel who has an extraordinary belt, can belt up as high as you would need to - we're talking top As and Bs here. This means that your poor musical director is going to have to transpose a huge portion of the show and rewrite all the orchestral parts as well. Andrew Lloyd Webber wrote the part with a specific sound in mind, and for a female to achieve that the show would need to be significantly altered. And just so you know, I'm not against cross-gendered casting - I MD'ed a production of "Chess" where we cast a female Arbiter - but that was very much easier as it's a lower role so a decent mezzo can sing it an octave up with no issues.
Jesus Christ Superstar (1973) - Everything's Alright