Queen Jesus comes to Sheffield

Sheffield and District Unitarian Churches have invited Jo Clifford, acclaimed Scottish playwright and performer, to bring her one-woman show “The Gospel According to Jesus, Queen of Heaven” to Unitarian Chapels in Doncaster and Sheffield.

Performances at the Doncaster Unitarian & Free Christian Church on Friday 4th October, and at Upper Chapel in Sheffield on Saturday 5th October.

The playwright, Jo Clifford writes this about her play:

Someone was telling me about their experience of coming to see this play when it opened in 2009. They’d had to make their way in through a crowd of protesters, all furious at what they perceived as an affront to the Christian faith. “And yet”, they said, “the play itself was extraordinarily peaceful”. Some years later, I had a bishop in the audience for the very first time. Afterwards he said: “I was expecting something very challenging and upsetting to me. But instead I found… I found it was just very Christian”.

The pastor of my church saw the play and told me it was a work of devotion. Which it what it actually is. She was the first to invite me to perform in a church; since then I and performers all over the world have performed the piece in churches and cathedrals in England, Scotland, Norway, Germany, and Brazil.

With this play I never meant to create offence. I had just re-read the Gospels in my late fifties and was so moved by the love and respect Jesus shows to all those suffering from prejudice and oppression. That’s what I wanted to share when I imagined Jesus coming back to earth in the present day in the form of a trans woman like me.

His love extends to everybody; and that’s what I wanted to convey. After all the outrage around those first performances, it was such a joy last year to perform the play in whole and in part in Greyfriars Kirk and St Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral in Edinburgh and in Manchester Cathedral and the Abbey in Iona.

Audiences everywhere seem to appreciate its message of peace; and its gentle reminder of Jesus telling us that we need to learn to love one another… and need to learn to love ourselves.

https://www.queenjesusproductions.com/