The Last Days of Judas Iscariot: A Play

by Stephen Adly Guirgis

If my son is in Hell, then there is no Heaven—because if my son sits in Hell, there is no God.

JUDGE LITTLEFIELD: I cite my foot in your ass, Cunningham!

Hegel: Within every idea—thesis—is contained its contradiction—antithesis—and out of that struggle is created—synthesis. Synthesis, Your Honor! The Union of Opposites—their interdependence and their inevitable clash producing what’s next—what must be revealed: God’s Perfect Love versus God’s Rightful Justice equals what, Your Honor?

On the third day, I remembered how Jesus had said that God has the biggest love for the least of his creatures—and Judas was the leastest creature I had ever seen.

JUDGE LITTLEFIELD (re: the writ): Cunningham, I do not like it when lawyers go over my head. CUNNINGHAM: You gave me no choice. EL-FAYOUMY: Objection, Your Honor!!! As human beings, we always have choice! Motion to strike!

CUNNINGHAM: Your Honor, this petition is signed by God! JUDGE LITTLEFIELD: Yeah, but it ain’t signed by your client, now, is it? CUNNINGHAM: My client is catatonic, he’s incapable of signing. JUDGE LITTLEFIELD: If he’s catatonic, then how do you know he wants an appeal in the first place? CUNNINGHAM: Who couldn’t want to appeal “eternal damnation”?

“Despair … is the ultimate development of a pride so great and so stiff-necked that it selects the absolute misery of damnation rather than accept happiness from the hands of God and thereby acknowledge that He is above us and that we are not capable of fulfilling our destiny by ourselves.”

Without question. Man’s instinct for self-preservation is his most supple and reflexive muscle. When that muscle fails, it is because his mind has failed. A decision to take one’s own life can only be precipitated by a failure of the mind—an irrational rebellion against man’s most basic instinct—to endure and live. Therefore, yes—the victim of suicide must be precertified as, indeed, psychotic.

SIGMUND FREUD: I would say this: Number One, you cannot conjure or “bring about” mental illness. Number Two, any God who punishes the mentally ill is not worth worshipping. And, Number Three: “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”—the person who could have prevented this tragedy was Jesus, not Judas. He chose not to.

There Comes a Time When the World Stops Rewarding Potential—and when that time came for you, you threw yourself the world’s biggest pity party and dedicated the rest of your short, pathetic, inconsequential life to finding fault everywhere fuckin’ else but in the return gaze of your own cosmetically altered reflection. Okay?

There’s a concept, Cunningham, called Playing the Cards You Are Dealt—One can either accept that concept or one can slowly lose one’s mind, heart, and soul. I’d like to be more helpful to you here, but really, that’s what it all comes down to.

JUDAS: You forgave Peter and bullshit Thomas—you knocked Paul of Tarsus off a horse—you raised Lazarus from the fuckin’ dead—but me? Me? Your “heart”? … What about me??!! What about me, Jesus?! Huh?! You just, you just—I made a mistake! And if that was wrong, then you should have told me! And if a broken heart wasn’t sufficient reason to hang, THEN YOU SHOULD HAVE TOLD ME THAT, TOO! JESUS: Don’t you think … that if I knew that it would have changed your mind … that I would have?

JUDAS: Why … didn’t you make me good enough … so that you could’ve loved me?

“God may reduce you on Judgement Day to tears of shame, reciting by heart the poems you would have written, had your life been good” … She was my poem, Mister Iscariot. Her and the kids. But mostly … her … You cashed in Silver, Mister Iscariot, but me? Me, I threw away Gold … That’s a fact. That’s a natural fact.