'Judas' focuses on forgiveness, faith

• By ROBIN MILLER
• arts writer
• Published: Nov 30, 2008 - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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Scott Woltz hasn’t given it much thought until now.

Until someone poses the question. And it was only fate that someone would.

Judas? At Christmas?

“Gosh,” he said.

“You know, it really didn’t occur to me.”

And it’s understandable. Woltz is juggling the jobs of director and lead character in the LSU Department of Theatre’s production of The Last Days of Judas Iscariot.

The play is an MFA production, featuring the theater department’s master of fine arts students in all the roles except one, which will be played by an undergraduate.

The play opens Tuesday, Dec. 2, in Hatcher Hall Theatre on the LSU campus. It will continue to Dec. 7.

“And people should get there early,” Woltz said.

He’s not being overconfident in making this statement. It’s just that productions at LSU Hatcher Hall have been selling out early during the fall season with lines forming at the box office at least an hour before the play begins.

And this is the last play in the theater department’s fall line-up.

“So, it might be good to get there early,” Woltz said.

And once inside, audiences will play witness to the darkly comic, imagined world between Heaven and Hell. The story was written by Stephen Adly Guirgis. It premiered March 2, 2005, off Broadway in The Public Theatre.