KENNESAW, Ga. | Oct 21, 2026

A provocative, darkly comic play challenges students and audiences to grapple with questions that have no easy answers.

What makes someone irredeemable? Who deserves forgiveness? And what happens when the pursuit of justice leaves no room for grace? 

These are among the questions at the heart of The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, the acclaimed play by Stephen Adly Guirgis coming to Kennesaw State University’s Department of Theatre and Performance Studies. Blending courtroom drama, biting satire, profanity and irreverent humor, the play reimagines the case of one of history’s most maligned figures: Judas Iscariot, the disciple whose betrayal of Jesus has defined his legacy for centuries. 

But rather than deliver a verdict on Judas’s fate, the play puts the very idea of judgment on trial. 

For director Jacqueline Springfield, that tension makes the production especially relevant. In the play’s imagined purgatory, a neighborhood called Hope has deteriorated from a place of contemplation into one where litigation has become the order of the day. The shift, Springfield says, offers a pointed reflection on a broader human tendency to punish before seeking to understand.

“We’ve moved away from giving each other grace,” Springfield says, describing a world in which it has become increasingly easy to condemn someone without considering their perspective. 

Although the play draws on biblical history and religious doctrine, Springfield sees its questions as fundamentally human. Its examination of culpability, free will and redemption extends beyond any one belief system, inviting audiences to consider how they decide who is worthy of compassion — and what it means to extend grace to someone who has done wrong. 

“This play works well for our needs in TPS,” Springfield said, “because it invites rigorous engagement with philosophy, theology, psychology and ethics, allowing for a deep well of dramaturgical exploration.”  

For KSU students, bringing a work of this complexity to the stage is about more than mastering challenging dialogue or developing compelling characters. It is an opportunity to practice the kind of artistic inquiry that resists convention and challenges easy assumptions. 

Grace Kelso, the production’s assistant director and dramaturg, says one of the cast’s biggest challenges has been resisting the urge to resolve the questions Guirgis raises. 

The play asks audiences to consider responsibility, goodness, faith and the circumstances that shape human behavior. Yet it offers no single answer to settle those debates. 

“The biggest thing that I know that we want audiences to take away from this play is asking questions that don’t necessarily have an answer,” Kelso says. 

That uncertainty is central to the experience. Rather than directing audiences toward a predetermined conclusion, the production creates space for performers and spectators alike to interpret the story through their own experiences, beliefs and understanding of the world. 

For emerging artists, that process is part of learning to approach complex material with intellectual curiosity and artistic integrity. It requires them to examine competing perspectives, question their assumptions and make thoughtful choices without reducing a complicated story to a simple moral. 
“The reality is that there does not need to be one answer to everything,” Kelso says. 

Springfield has made that inquiry a deliberate part of the rehearsal process. She surprised the cast and crew with a live zoom call with Guirgis himself. The production’s dramaturgy team has also helped students investigate the historical figures and religious traditions referenced in the script, with cast members working in groups to research characters and present their findings early in rehearsals. That foundation gives actors a deeper understanding of the world of the play and informs their character development. 

First staged Off-Broadway in 2005, The Last Days of Judas Iscariot established itself as a notable work in contemporary American theatre. Its original production was directed by Philip Seymour Hoffman, and the play was included among the year’s best by Time and Entertainment Weekly. Guirgis, whose later play Between Riverside and Crazy won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, is known for dialogue that combines sharp humor with searching questions about morality, class and human behavior. 

Ultimately, The Last Days of Judas Iscariot offers no easy resolution to the tension between accountability and compassion. Instead, it asks audiences to confront that tension — and to consider how their own beliefs shape the judgments they make about others. 

For KSU Theatre students, that is part of the value of bringing challenging work to the stage: not simply learning to tell a story, but learning to engage with its complexities, make room for multiple perspectives and trust audiences to think for themselves. 

The verdict, as Guirgis’s play makes clear, is not always the most important part of the case. Sometimes, the questions are what matter most.