Katie Hanley, By My Side: Godspell

Godspell (1970) is a powerful musical, though it is somewhat overshadowed, I think, by the more controversial (but excellent) Jesus Christ Superstar which opened in New York City the year before.

It started as a college project performed by students at Carnegie Mellon University and moved to La Mama in Greenwich Village. It was then re-scored for an off-Broadway production that open in the Cherry Lane Theatre (New York City's oldest, continuously running off-Broadway theater). Godspell moved from the Cherry Lane Theater to the larger Promenade Theater on August 10, 1971, where it became one of the longest-running off-Broadway musicals, before moving to Broadway in June 1976, where it ended its run in September 1977 after an additional 527 performances, for a total of more than 2,600.

Starting a sequence of powerful and moving scenes that continue until the end of the film, Katie Hanley (who, simply, does a wonderful job throughout the film), in this scene comes to "Jesus" with love and strength at the start of his darkest hour, when he understands what's going to happen to him: