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"God Didn't Want This to Happen": Mundane Martyrdom andBlasphemous Theatre in For the Love of God: The Book of Gary
Salusky, Spencer
Salusky, Spencer
Abstract
This thesis analyzes and documents the creation of For the Love of God: The Book of Gary, ablasphemous, explicitly queer theatrical work that stages “mundane martyrdom” through Garyand the Celestial Wrestling Network (CWN), where pain is monetized, ranked, and broadcasted.The project argues that contemporary culture, shaped by Christian-inflected moral frameworksand capitalist ideals, repeatedly treats suffering as currency: proof of sincerity, a ticket toredemption, and spectacle for consumption. Central to that argument is a sustained metaphorbetween professional wrestling and divine authorship. Wrestling’s prewritten outcomes, its holysocial contract (kayfabe), and its producer-driven “booking” become a concrete model for how a“divine script” can demand bodily sacrifice while disguising domination as meaningful narrative.The thesis further frames the project as an inquiry into the “unstageable,” both as an aestheticinheritance and as an ethical problem. In dialogue with artists such as Sarah Kane, it treatsimpossibility not as a dare or an alibi, but as content insisting on a form capable of bearing it.“Unstageable” moments therefore become a design and process question: what structures,collaborators, and techniques are required to keep violent fiction fictive, and what must theatrebecome in order to speak what conventional realism cannot. Formally, the thesis mirrors andsubverts Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey (Departure/Initiation/Return) to expose how sacrificialmyth structures both storytelling and artistic labor. Ultimately, it proposes a “finite practice”: anethic of rehearsal and performance that insists on limits and refuses to reproduce the economyof suffering the play critiques.
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2025-12-11
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http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/
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2030-12-11
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Theatre and Performance