#should i tag jcs jsjsjs. idk

[fitzrove]

!! We always talk about "euromusicals" as a cohesive concept, but too often, that just ends up meaning "the most ruthlessly commercialised musicals from the top 3 biggest and most well-known European countries". and that's WRONG actually because omg have y'all seen what is going on in lithuania ajsjsjjdd

1972 - the rock opera

After seeing the Kaunas Elisabeth production (which I liked), I was tipped off that there's an original musical featuring many of the same performers produced by the same theatre. The name ("Roko opera 1972") basically translates to "1972 - a rock opera". And it's probably one of the most meta historical shows I've ever seen!!

In 1972, a 19-year-old student named Romas Kalanta burned himself to death in protest against the Soviet regime in front of the Kaunas State Musical Theatre, which is where this musical was staged 50 years later. (He chose the spot because it's where the establishment of the Lithuanian SSR/Lithuania's de facto annexation by the USSR had been declared in 1940). His self-immolation sparked two days of mass protests also known as the Kaunas Spring, which were eventually squashed by the KGB and the local milicija (police) forces. So in 2022, for the 50th anniversary, they made a rock opera about that.

The most remarkable thing about this show, to me, is the complex intertextuality in it. For context: I was pretty surprised to learn this, but in the 1970s, LPs and even a staged concert production of Jesus Christ Superstar were a huge thing in Lithuania. In fact, the first-ever JCS production in Europe was the (unauthorised) Lithuanian concert, and the show continues to be very popular there to this day. The Soviet regime was super against countercultural Western influences like rock music so the LPs were technically not legal to own, but that didn't stop people from distributing and copying them lmao. The 1972 rock opera's main characters are a group of young counterculture hippies, and one of the first major scenes is them hyping up the JCS LP they've managed to obtain, only for a teacher to catch wind of it and break it because she's afraid they'll get into trouble about it.

And that's not all!!! The LP being a symbol of the youth counterculture as a whole isn't the only thing - the rock opera itself has so many parallels to JCS. The protagonist is basically a Jesus allegory (in the prologue, a character brings it up, saying that "he died for us". also, he was both religious and a rock guy IRL - had long hair, played guitar, stated in a school essay that he wanted to become a Catholic priest which got him into trouble with authorities...), there's a Judas character (he betrays his friends to the KGB for 30 roubles, and one of the KGB officers specifically references Judas while talking to him...) who ends up deeply regretting his actions, and a Gethsemane scene (right before the protagonist's death; the friend group covertly 'takes back' a church that has been turned into a factory to baptise a baby and do a spontaneous wedding, which is forbidden under the SSR's forcible secularisation/anti-religion policies. The Judas character's betrayal gets found out and they realise the KGB is coming -> the protagonist looks into the heavens and screams about how nothing is sacred and nothing good is possible to achieve, fake church, fake baptism, fake wedding...). The show also comments on stuff like the oppression of Jews under the regime. AND towards the end of the show there's literally a projection image of a burning cross sjjs.

So overall, the narrative device of this show is that it's Jesus Christ Superstar 1970s Lithuania AU, but also there's a literal JCS recording on stage sjsjj. It's actually really interesting overall - I started thinking about how Lithuania is statistically quite a bit more religious than the other Nordic and Baltic countries (which can be very secular), and that that's probably partly connected to the historical interconnections between religion (= the Catholic church, specifically) and opposition to the authoritarian regime. And religion and rock music being part of that opposition/resistance makes it extremely fitting to commemorate it with a JCS-style rock opera with actual JCS references jsjsj. And just the fact that when people leave the theatre after the show, they will walk out directly onto the square where the historical self-immolation happened... (This also makes the opening number/prologue really interesting - in that, almost everyone in the modern era acts dismissive of a man haunted by the past trying to remind them of what happened in 1972, walking past him and dismissing him as a drunk. So it really kind of sets the audience up to acknowledge their historical responsibility to remember and take note of what happened.)

Also, as just one more layer, one of the lead actors, Jeronimas Milius (guy in the prologue), has been in JCS productions before jsjsjs, and even took part in an ALW "searching for the next Jesus" type talent show lmao.