Godspell: History and Key Facts

Godspell is a musical in two acts with music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz and a book by John-Michael Tebelak. The show is structured as a series of parables, primarily based on the Gospel of Matthew, interspersed with music mostly set to lyrics from traditional hymns, with the passion of Christ appearing briefly near the end.

Godspell began as a project by drama students at Carnegie Mellon University and then moved to the off-off-Broadway theater La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club in the East Village of Manhattan. The show was rescored for an off-Broadway production, which opened on May 17, 1971, and became a long-running success. Many productions have followed worldwide, including a 2011 Broadway revival. An abbreviated one-act version of the musical designed for performers aged 18 and under also exists, titled Godspell Junior.

Several cast albums have been released over the years. "Day by Day", from the original cast album, reached #13 on the pop singles chart Billboard Hot 100 in the summer of 1972 and #7 in Canada's RPM 100 Singles chart.

Source and attribution

Text excerpted from Godspell by Wikipedia contributors, available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0. The extract is abridged and formatting has been adjusted; the adapted text on this page is shared under the same licence. Revision history.