Thomas Merton said, To be a saint means to be myself. It’s not about doing enough or too little. It’s not about man-made concepts of good and evil. It’s not about joining a team or a church or choosing sides or learning a prayer. I also think that religion gets a bad rap in this country and that non-maniac-type people who are religious or spiritual have a responsibility to stand up, be counted, and gently encourage others to consider matters of faith and to define for themselves what their responsibilities are and what it means to try to be good. And I think a connection to the Spiritual is essential to us as individuals and to the world as a whole. I do know that I am in continuous need of the Spiritual and that I usually go to great lengths to avoid it. Perhaps it’s true that the best way to move forward is to go back, and so, in writing this play, I went back. I don’t want to know too much about why I write plays or why I wrote this play in particular. And knowing or believing that God existed but avoiding him probably instilled in me a lot of shame and guilt. I did believe that God existed-I still do-but that was about it.

In fact, I had no sense of who or what God was. From then on-unless I was in trouble-I was in no hurry to seek out God. What I do remember is that I stopped believing the story, and that not believing-or not wanting to believe-made me feel a lot of things that didn’t feel good. I can’t remember if I went home and asked my mom about it. I can’t remember if I raised my hand and asked questions. It didn’t make sense to me, it frightened me, and it seemed to fly in the face of the notion of the all-loving and all-merciful God that the very good and loving nuns at the Corpus Christi School on 121st Street were teaching me about. When I was a kid, the story of Judas troubled me a lot. I grew up Catholic, so the story of the play is told within those parameters. And then-and I honestly have no idea why-I said, 'Put me down as The Last Days of Judas Iscariot.' And then I hung up the phone. They said, How about we just put you down on the schedule as ‘Untitled Guirgis Project’? I said, Okay. They said, Should we just put you down as ‘I don’t know’? I said, I don’t know. One year, they called and asked me, What are you bringing up this summer? I said, I don’t know.

We go away every summer to workshop new material and to fall in love again.

Last trial of judas iscariot