These chapters of John are going to be tough to render as a series of plays, because it’s almost entirely just Jesus talking. This particular installment was no trouble at all, however, because of all the dramatic undercurrents to this simple supper. Prior to this play in which Jesus tells the disciples he’s leaving, but only to prepare a place for them, he revealed to the group that one of them was going to betray him. Furthermore, he revealed to John (and only to John, apparently) that Judas was going to be the traitor, but in the play I’ll write about that, I’m going to have Jesus tell John not to reveal that knowledge to anybody else until all the events have occurred. (Which he does not in fact do, so I think it’s plausible to assume Jesus placed some such gag order on him.) Finally, Jesus also revealed privately to Peter that Peter was going to deny him three times, which may have led Peter to believe he was the traitor Jesus told the group about.
The result is more confusion than ever among the disciples, though it’s also in this play that I begin to have certain individuals start to grasp bits of what’s really about to happen. The disciples in the gospels seem so uniformly clueless for so long, but in reality, people usually progress at different rates. And so, beginning with this play, the awful truth of Loss will begin to touch them, one by one.