Playwright Lloyd Suh Talks About a Rebel Finding His Cause: Jesus in India

The cast of Jesus in India

​We are all familiar with the story of Jesus Christ. But what about his lost years? Lloyd Suh, the author of American Hwangap, about a Korean father's 60th birthday celebration, is back at the Magic Theatre with Jesus in India, exploring Jesus' teenage years, when he runs away from home with his friend, Abigail of Galilee, to the East to explore who he is and who he wants to become. The play continues through Feb. 19. Suh talked with us recently about prequels, destiny and the universality of coming of age stories.

Why did you choose to write a play about Jesus? Was that something that fascinated you as a kid or a teenager?
No, probably about 10 years ago I had heard the theory that Jesus had spent part of his lost years in what we now know as Tibet. It occurred to me as being an interesting project it was something that just kind of stuck in my mind and at the time, it didn't even necessarily register as, "Oh, that's a play I want to write." And until just a few years ago, I didn't have any thought about what I would do with it. It connected with some other things I was thinking about. There's this trend in storytelling where we look back at where our big cultural signposts come from like these Batman movies that start from the beginning of Batman, and I thought there was something interesting about this prequel idea - looking at who a person is before they are who they are. That became kind of a way in, trying to know who you are and if who you are is related to some notion of a profound spiritual destiny and what that would do to a teenager who knows that's his destiny, but doesn't know how to do it yet.

Did Jesus seem like a rebel to you?
I would say a rebel who does not yet know his cause. Like most 18-year-olds because it's such a transitory time, they have to rebel against something to become the next thing they're going to be. It's the process of not being a teenager anymore, I suppose. Even looking at the gospels, the way in which he's anti-establishment. It's a coming of age story, basically. We kind of know where this story ends. At the beginning, it's exciting the ways in which he's the opposite of that. At the beginning of the play, he's young and kind of raw and like any 18-year-old, he's kind of full of emotion and questioning. You know, the opposite of holy is profane, so just playing off of that.

What was fun about working on this play?
Kind of everything. I love working on plays. I think it's a great job. Every aspect of it is incredibly fun, and every aspect is incredibly hard. It's a new kind of play for me, so that's always fun when I'm working in territory that's not familiar to me - the fact that it's rooted in a historical era, and as far as style goes, I didn't want to write something that's like a documentary. I didn't want to write a historical account. I think it's not only less interesting, but it's kind of a losing battle because so little is known about what actually happened during that period of his life. I also hooked into the idea of a parable because that's so prevalent in the way Jesus speaks to illustrate what he communicates to people. When they speak about the world they live in it is about what happened in those early years, but the costume and the music and the idiom is a kind of contemporary teenage speak. So I was working in a newform for me stylistically with some live music. Even just writing about somebody with whom so many people have such a personal relationship with is new to me.

You have said that this play is universal. How so?
One thing very important to me was to not make it about religion as a theme, but the spine of the story is coming of age, which I think is a universal story structure. There are a lot of religions discussed in the play. There's Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism and the very beginnings of Christianity. I try very hard not to come from a point of view that says any of them are true or false because the story itself doesn't have a point of view about that.

Jesus in India runs through Feb. 19 at the Magic Theater, Fort Mason, Bldg. D (Marina at Buchanan), S.F. Admission is $20-$30.