If you grew up queer and Catholic, you know the specific brand of psychic whiplash I’m talking about. One minute, you’re ten years old in a Lima classroom, singing “Let’s be thankful to the Lord” with all the earnestness of a child who just wants to be loved. The next, your teacher drops the guitar and starts a frantic lecture on the “evils of masturbation.”
Suddenly, the divine love you were just singing about feels a lot like a CCTV camera.
That was my childhood in Peru: a heady mix of religious ecstasy and the crushing realisation that my love for Sailor Moon and my mother’s high heels made me a candidate for eternal fire. I spent years trying to negotiate with that invisible judge in the sky. I tried to be “normal” enough to earn the love I was told was unconditional, yet felt entirely conditional on my erasing my own identity.
This is the holy mess at the heart of JEEZUS!, the musical comedy I’m bringing to London with my company, Alpaqa, and my fiancé, Guido.
In the show, we meet Jesús (pronounced Hey-soos). He’s an altar boy with a strict army father, kneeling before a towering image of the Lord of the Miracles: Peru’s iconic dark-skinned Christ. But the longer he stares at that sacred, suffering body, the weirder things get. The devotion turns… well, let’s call it inconveniently horny.
What follows is a spiral from piety to carnival. We’re talking reggaeton tracks about US military intervention, telenovela ballads, and a version of Christ who hits the dance floor with rolling hips and a halo of thorns.
Why the sacrilege? Because authoritarian systems, whether they are religious institutions or the military dictatorships I grew up under in 90s Lima, depend on reverence. They need you to believe that certain symbols are untouchable. The moment you start twerking under a crucifix, the power dynamic shifts. You aren’t just a sinner; you’re a creator. You’re taking the iconography used to shame you and turning it into a disco ball.
Today, we see the same old rigid moral policing creeping back into the mainstream. They want us small, ashamed, and quiet. They want us to believe that pleasure is frivolous. But we’re here to tell you that in a world trying to legislate our bodies out of existence, joy is a riot. JEEZUS! isn’t just a parody. It’s a reclamation. It’s about two queer immigrant bodies on stage, shaking what their mamas (and the Church) gave them, proving that love is indeed more powerful than a guilt-trip. We’re taking the holy and making it horny, not to be cheap, but to be free.
So, if you’re looking for a reason to believe again, come find us. Let’s twerk under the crucifix and win the holy war.
For further information: https://newdiorama.com/whats-on/jeezus
JEEZUS! Runs from 21 April to 9 May 2026 at New Diorama Theatre, 15 – 16 Triton Street, Regent’s Place, London NW1 3BF, United Kingdom.
