You might have heard how the Parker & Stone smash hit musical “The Book of Mormon” has converted at least one theatre-goer to that most modern of religions. It goes the other way, too. Back in 1971 when Jesus Christ, Superstar debuted on Boradway, it became popular for inner city clergy to go see a performance. Some good padres and seminary students went multiple times, possibly because something like Rent might raise questions, even if it wasn’t yet released. Always safe for the befrocked to stay away from anything too gay, which is exceedingly simple to do when it comes to musical theatre. Mostly, this didn’t cause problems.

Superstar caused some serious ripples in the Lower East Side Blessed Flaming Heart Seminary, where one acolyte was found hanging out of a closet, screaming and self-flagellating to the powerful Judas song, Heaven on Their Minds. Rather then suppress this outpouring of passion, the head of the order, Marcel de Ponte, decided to start a class where the students could process their feelings. Marcel was a practical man. If he hadn’t done something radical, he might have lost the entire third year to the debauchery of the stage. He called the class “Forte Daze and Tights.” Marcel hated puns and wordplay, given that there was none in the Good Book, not even about how there were two Good Books, or the obvious part about Loaves and Fishes, but he knew his audience and these thirty young men were in dire need of some theatrical exorcism.

The young men were divided into troupes of five. They were told that at the end of the season, which was to be six months long, the winners would get sequinned stars on their doors with their names instead of the usual plain rectangles. This caused great excitement.

The first weeks were devoted to research and basic costume design. All thirty of the lads sourced materials for suffer in your jocks underwear, which they hand-wove and stitched from hessian, leather, and horse hair seat stuffing they found in a movie theatre demolition site. Next they donned heavy robes over the top of this and wandered New York City without eating or drinking for forty days and forty nights. Only three students took this rule literally, and a statue to their devotion can be found in the rear courtyard of the Seminary.

These three young men were all in the troupe called, aptly, Ernest Benge and Wife, Betty. Down to a duo the remaining members chose to record their musical in black and white. “he made me Whole” was the strongest song, a powerful piece about a delicatessen owner who made the survivors pastrami on whole wheat bagels, and helped them see that the rules were meant to be taken metaphorically, unlike those in the Bible. Marcel loved this one immensely, depite being a cheese and pickles on rye kind of guy. The wife and husband duo was greatly approved all-round as being very clearly Not Gay.

Might as well go around clockwise from there, and talk about the rest of the survovors of that original thirty.

The Treble Aires spent most of the forty days in Brooklyn. As they went after Ernest Benge, and had only lost two members, and those to the delights of jazz dens, they felt they had to outdo them by going for even more unquestionably straight and have two wives, even though the song they wrote was nothing out-of-the ordinary, being about hallucinating the face of Jesus in some French toast after five days of not-eating. Jesus’ face here sums up the judge’s reaction to such bland fare.

“If God is dead who’s this living in my soul?” required two actual excorisms and resulted in homicide charges for the Christian Family singers. They got off when it went to trial a year later because it could not be established who had killed the other students and tried to trade their hair and underwear for tickets to Superstar

No deaths here. This lot all went on to have successful careers in the church through their resourcefulness and ability to give sound advice such as here. None of them would speak of what they did for the forty days, but they showed far less interest in musical theatre at the end of them and far more in photogaphy and film.

Three lost here, all from accidents in the sewer system: an alligator, a rat the size of a terrier, and an abandoned pizza. The recording is full of lurid desriptions, which can be seen by the wear where Marcel has shoved it deep under a couch, he hoped never to be heard again. Alligators! Really, he said, being a man not to believe in lurid tales of giant animals and strange happenings.

Lastly, the winners. Hangon, troupes of five… HEY there’s one extra!, you say. Yep. This is why they won. Not only did they survive, they gained a convert and their recording celebrates that event in every one of the thirty five tracks. Their six sequinned stars went on to decorate the Seminary Christams Tree after they left. Each year they come out, the sequinned stars, and are hung on the tree amidst the tinsel though all are long gone, and forgotten.

BUT THAT DOESN’T ADD UP! You say. So, where’s the missing one? Yes. The Christian Family Singers. Remember? Two exorcisms.