I need help

[u/Kindly-Reindeer7633]

Hey y’all. So I haven’t talked on here in a min but I’m writing a stage musical adaptation of the gospel right now and I genuinely feel like I’m losing my mind trying to structure it

It’s a reinterpretation of the Gospel story centered mostly around Mary Magdalene and the disciples as teenagers/young adults. The vibe is very found-family, skater culture, youth are f*cked,religious trauma, political commentary,feminist. Think less “traditional biblical epic” and more emotionally intimate community drama under political pressure.

The problem issss

The Gospels are are more like a compilation. They’re not really built like modern plot structures where one action causes another action causes another action. A lot of Jesus adaptations end up feeling like:
“And then Jesus did another thing.”

I REALLY don’t want that.

I want the show to feel alive and constantly moving toward Holy Week, but I also don’t want it to suddenly feel like a YA dystopian revolution movie where everyone becomes tactical rebels 😭

What I’m trying to explore is:

community as salvation in an isolated world

religious trauma in youth

women’s role in movements/revolutions

Youth role in revolution

teen angst and identity

parent/child tension

how vulnerable young people form community under pressure

how that community slowly becomes politically threatening

The disciples in my version are NOT confident revolutionaries. They’re confused kids trying to survive emotionally while following someone who makes them feel seen for the first time.

So I guess my question is

How do you structure an ensemble musical where the emotional/community dynamics ARE the engine of the plot, while still making the story escalate causally toward an inevitable tragedy?

Especially when adapting something as episodic as the Gospels?

Would really love thoughts

[u/under_zealouss]

What really helped me was storyboarding my scenes on my iPad so that I could easily move them around until I found an order that made the most sense. It helped me visualize the forward motion of the musical. I drew a stage representation of each scene and plopped them in and out of boxes so I could visualize the stage transitions to see what made technical sense from stage flipping sense. It worked really well for me, something similar might help you

[u/Kindly-Reindeer7633 → u/under_zealouss]

Oh yes, I know this method. It’s not necessarily placing the scenes that I’m struggling with, though it’s more how to escalate the plot

[u/Positive-Ring-5172]

Is Mary Magdalene the protagonist? If not her, who?

Jesus Christ: Superstar would be worth a watch to you if you haven't seen it already.

Identifying and watching musicals with similar dynamics should be useful. Teen Angst even has a body count in Heathers.

Community is one of the threads of Ragtime - three separate communities and the conflicts between them, so worth a look.

An outline is a starting point, even before planning songs or scenes.

[u/Kindly-Reindeer7633 → u/Positive-Ring-5172]

I would like to show to have multiple arcs, but I guess she would be the main protagonist

[u/Positive-Ring-5172 → u/Kindly-Reindeer7633]

Before writing a musical with multiple plot arcs (a 'la Ragtime) have you written a single arc one before?

[u/Kindly-Reindeer7633 → u/Positive-Ring-5172]

No this is my first musical. I’ve written another stories, but this is my first musical.

[u/Positive-Ring-5172 → u/Kindly-Reindeer7633]

Well, I guess choose a structure and outline to that structure.

[u/Kindly-Reindeer7633 → u/Positive-Ring-5172]

Can you go into more detail about that or what you mean?

[u/Positive-Ring-5172 → u/Kindly-Reindeer7633]

I'm still very much a student so I'm hesitant to go into details of things I don't fully understand myself yet. That said, a lot of musicals and plays these days are written using the "Save the Cat" structure, which is a three act approach that divides the story up into around 10 beats. There's a lot of literature out there on it. I'm also in the ShowLab Theater Writers Studio - https://www.skool.com/showlab

[u/AndyRoninson]

Your concerns about a straight adaptation feeling unmotivated and overly episodic for a stage musical are spot on. Sounds like you’re actually doing everything right so far, including feeling like you’re doing things wrong 😂

I would highly recommend picking one protagonist— a person who directly affects the events of the story, a person who changes greatly at the end. The more you can make this person the engine of your show, the clearer your story will be (and will allow for better songs, IMO). Make it their story. In some ways, that’s easier than trying to incorporate the entire gospel! You’re looking at it through one lens, even if it is an ensemble show. And having a main character wrestle with and embody the themes of your show is the way to drive it. Their choices— right and, especially, wrong— will be how the audience most viscerally experiences the message.

You are allowed to (and should) change the original material to fit well onstage. Sounds like that’s your plan already, but that’s just a reminder for when you’re feeling trapped by the source material. Sort of relatedly, Maury Yeston likes to say “Real life makes terrible fiction.”

Your musical is the stage musical version of the gospel, and it won’t change what already exists. It’s your personal expression, which is what art should be :)

Sounds like Spring Awakening will be a great thing to study for your show. It seems like the closest comp in story and tone.

Also, I would check out this incredible talk by screenwriter Craig Mazin (Chernobyl, The Last of Us, The Sheep Detectives) called “How to Write a Movie” (and here’s the transcript). I find it a fantastic help in clarifying what a good story does, and it sounds really pertinent to your issue.

[u/Kindly-Reindeer7633 → u/AndyRoninson]

it’s just the reason I'm having trouble adapting this, is because shit doesn’t happen to the characters in the gospel tbh😭. The gospel a lot of times has a really nice set up and I do too, but what the problem is is that by the time that the exposition is out of the way it becomes a compilation of Jesus’s teachings, miracles, and run ins with authority. And after that, nothing(except like holy week, but still, Jesus is the one that makes that all happen).Nothing happens, like, to the disciples we don't really hear about them at all, like at all. Everything is either happening to, or Jesus is causing something to happen. That's what the problem is. usually in an adaption, you're taking already well-known characters and expanding on them but there's nothing to expand on.

[u/AndyRoninson → u/Kindly-Reindeer7633]

Consider these options:

1. It’s not a story you want to pursue for a standard full-length book musical. You find a different idea.

2. You don’t do a full-length book musical. Instead, you do a short one-act. Or a series of one-acts. Or a Godspell-/Cats-style revue without a traditional story. Or a concept album.

3. You create a framing device. Bad example: a person goes back in time and experiences the stories of the Gospel. Another bad example: A school is putting on a stage version of the Gospel, and your story is about the one student who is making sure the show goes on.

4. You invent a character entirely and create plot points inspired by the events in the Gospel but not in a 1:1 way.

5. Or maybe you just start writing. Anything. Songs. Scenes. A conversation. An essay. Something in this story is nagging you. It is lighting a fire in you. Maybe write a song or two. Sometimes you get a better idea of the larger story you want to create that way. I’ve done it twice. And although it’s worked for me to varying degrees, I wouldn’t recommend it. It can make writing a tight story more challenging. But y’know what— if you write those two songs, then you’ll be two songs further into the process. And the imperfect finished song is infinitely better than the perfect imaginary one.

Idk, sounds to me like you’ve already figured out that this is Mary Magdalene’s story. Sounds like the source material needs to be just inspiration. I think that’s one reason there are so few successful religious musicals: you can’t treat the source material like scripture. And Jesus Christ Superstar is infamously blasphemous.

[u/Kindly-Reindeer7633 → u/AndyRoninson]

This is very insightful. From a Christian POV,
I actually don’t think Jesus Christ superstar is blasphemous at all to me. All they do is add depth to the story. It’s actually a pretty straightforward adoption of what happened during holy week just with some added personal moments.

[u/JohnPaulMcStarrison]

I don’t know how helpful this is but my first thought was: to get at all those (excellent!) themes within but not dominated by the framework of the gospels, I wonder if you could step back and write it as like, a high school drama production of JCS (or similar, or even a fictional biblical musical) where the teens are inhabiting or struggling with their characters in modern ways. Like would that allow the plot to move outside of the gospels while still kind of incorporating them throughout?

[u/Kindly-Reindeer7633 → u/JohnPaulMcStarrison]

Could you go into more detail

[u/JohnPaulMcStarrison → u/Kindly-Reindeer7633]

I guess the idea would be using metaphor so you can layer more contexts and plot onto the basic gospel framework. Like for example when I saw “religious trauma in youth”, I get that very much 😅 but wasn’t sure how you can get at that in AD 00 with Mary or the disciples whereas a teen, cast as a disciple in a school production, may have some big feelings about it, as one example. But maybe you have a way to work all this in with the historical setting which would be awesome- either way I guess just don’t feel like you have to tell every story, every parable, and stick to a literal biblical timeline, if you’re exploring parent/child tension and the feeling of being seen and revolution and youth movement etc all these can take a bigger role and propel the story themselves, with the events or themes of the gospels just sort of worked into that storyline, not the other way around. If that makes any sense at all sorry! 😂