New Repertory Theatre has received around a dozen e-mails denouncing its plans to present “The Testament of Mary,’’ a half-dozen telephone calls, and another half-dozen letters, according to a theater spokesman. “The Testament of Mary’’ also drew protests during its brief run on Broadway in 2013, when protesters stood across the street from the Walter Kerr Theatre. I think that’s a legitimate artistic thing to do.’’ “Toibin is looking to take the figure of Mary and really explore her in her human dimensions, as fully as he can, using his imagination to do that, so we can more fully understand the possibilities of who she was and what she represents. Petosa strongly defended the play, which he is directing.
Mary describes the Apostles as a “group of misfits,’’ and she recalls an episode when Jesus had risen to prominence and she was warned that the Romans “will come looking for all his followers,’’ to which she replied: “I am not one of his followers.’’ In the play Mary admits that she fled the site of the crucifixion before Jesus died, after many hours of watching him suffer, saying: “I did it to save myself. It is a complex portrait of a very human Mary, but several sections have raised hackles among devout believers. In “The Testament of Mary,’’ the title character looks back in love and anguish on the life of Jesus, including the events that led up to his crucifixion. America Needs Fatima, which also protested a 2009 production of “Jerry Springer: The Opera’’ by Boston’s SpeakEasy Stage Company, is affiliated with a nonprofit organization called the American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property.
“I have attempted to create a work of art based on a figure who, for many reasons, haunts my dreams.”Ī representative of America Needs Fatima said the organization’s director, Robert Ritchie, was too busy preparing for Friday’s antiabortion March for Life in Washington, D.C., to be interviewed Thursday. “I have no interest whatsoever in mockery or blasphemy,’’ Toibin added.
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