The Naked Playwrights Transgender Jesus

SFBayTimes.com – By Jacob Anderson-Minshall

“The basic premise is that Jesus was FTM,” says award-winning playwright Tobias K. Davis, describing his one-act play, Crossing, which retells the story of Christ’s crucifixion with this transgender twist. “His struggles and persecution and crucifixion were motivated not only by his teachings and how they threatened the Roman Empire, but by his gender, and how it threatened the rigid binary society.”

Davis lives in his hometown, Northampton, Mass., where he graduated from Smith College. It was during his senior year there that Davis collaborated with classmate Claire Avitabile in creating and directing The Naked I: Monologues From Beyond the Binary (“a transgendered take on The Vagina Monologues”), which won first place in the 2003 Five-College Denis H. Johnston Playwriting Competition.