Notes from Forum Theatre

We got our second response to our call out to the cast members of The Last Days of Judas Iscariot. Cesar Guadamuz, who plays The Bailiff and Simon the Zealot offered us these thoughts.

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Up until the age of 12 or so, I constantly lived in fear of the fact that if I ever questioned the existence of hell, that, in itself would buy a pass straight to damnation. There was very little room for doubt in my upbringing. Not that my parents oppressed my insatiable and constant need to ask how and why when it came to the topic of religion, but that they too wholly believed, or had the unshakable faith that there had to be a Hell, simply because there had to be a God. No doubt about it.

So when it came time to deconstruct Christianity and organized faith, as I had sought to do through a semester of God Deconstructed (or something to that effect) in my second year of college, I had nothing but a willingness to believe or disbelieve the answers I was so hoping to find to all the questions I had collected.

What I found was this: There is a reason why it is called Faith.

When my mother’s mother passed away suddenly and without warning, she turned to daily prayers to afford her the strength to close a chapter in her life and move on. When my father underwent a very risky operation, our prayers, I’m convinced, gave him the power to rehabilitate and move on. Throughout my life, I had often turned to the words I had so ingrained in me, those communions, devotions and supplications to find the solace, courage and direction to “deal and move on”.

It was during that rigorous examination of the Bible, complete with essays and exams, that I began to understand what it meant to have faith and why it has been so important in the life of my family. Only then was I able to answer my questions as to God’s existence and approach the idea of Hell, as a spiritual representation of what it meant to be in Hell, to be going through Hell, to be put through Hell. No longer did my fear exist because I understood, or perhaps I adopted, after a period of often tedious introspection, that Hell was a human state of helplessness, of absolute fear, of utter loneliness, a state completely devoid of Hope.

I’ll be quick to say, when asked in discussion, that I am Catholic. But ask me if I attend Mass or go to Communion or even Confession, and I will also tell you that I do not participate. Yet, I do have any less faith because of it.

Personally, to me, faith represents a reason to be alive, a desire to “pull through” and to overcome. My belief in the power of prayer and the Saints and God and Hell is a place where my faith can live, grow, be challenged and supported. My faith, which so happens, because of my upbringing, to be identified with the tenets of Catholicism, is as personal, as real and as important to me as any other ideas and opinions I possess. My faith gives me a place in this world and brings a worth to my life.

Having said all this, I’m not going to argue that the idea of Satan and Hell still manages to scare me every once in while. But now that I’ve been able to work out my faith, to basically adopt a belief, I can approach the possibility of a “Hell” with more strength and with less mystery.

When I first started work on this piece, I quickly latched on to the idea of Judas in Hell, a physical place. As we are nearing opening night, I’ve come to understand, or once again accept personally, that Judas’ Hell in a way, is his own, within him.

I would like to say that in my life, I’ve had no criticism of Atheism, of non-Christian religions, of those who’ve taken from different religious doctrines. We all share this Faith, I believe, this Will.

I think Judas has the power to break out of Hell. I have Hope that he can. I think he has the power to find within him the Faith to undo it.