Key members of Team StarKid will be involved in a two-week run of The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, by American playwright Stephen Adly Guirgis. The production’s executive producers Julia Albain and Corey Lubowich have launched a Kickstarter to help fund the show.

Judas Iscariot is not a StarKid production – in fact, the Kickstarter pitch does not once mention the word “StarKid” – but fans of the group are familiar with the fact that it was one of the plays put on by members of Team StarKid at the University of Michigan. Aside from their self-written parody plays, the group of acting students who became StarKid were involved in performances of many existing classic and modern works, and The Last Days of Judas Iscariot is one that has always interested the StarKid fandom, due to a behind-the-scenes video that fans found posted online.

The original source of this video was deleted, but a copy was re-uploaded by fans.

Julia Albain, who directed the show in 2008 and will be directing this 2013 run if the $36,000 project is funded, describes the inspiration for putting on Judas again:

From the day the show closed we’ve talked about doing it again. Many of us have stayed closely in touch and continued to work together over the years, but somehow we always found ourselves talking about “Judas”.

Now, five years later, I found myself feeling stuck. I couldn’t remember why I’d pursued this career in the first place or why it mattered. As I began talking to others I realized many of us were in the same place in our lives; sitting on this thin line between wanting to give up but feeling like we really needed to dig in.

Like-minded members of the original production include Joey Richter, Brian Rosenthal and Lauren Lopez, who describes the initial run of The Last Days of Judas Iscariot as “an alive thing” and the moment when acting truly clicked for her. These three StarKid alums are all confirmed as actors and producers in the new run of Judas.

You can read more about the creation of The Last Days of Judas Iscariot on the show’s Kickstarter page, or you can watch their pitch video below:

The Judas team hope to made their Kickstarter backers feel a true part of the process by “drawing back the curtain” on the production elements of the show:

We’ll be doing vlogs and updates, sharing photos, and inviting you to experience everything that we experience: the highs and lows of producing independently, the struggles of financing and scheduling, but also the thrills of coming together as a team of artists to reset and remind ourselves of why all of this actually does matter, and why we want to keep doing it.

We also hope to turn all of this footage and coverage into a documentary that represents it’s own piece of work- the story of not just how we went about revisiting and rediscovering this show, but also why.

They also are in the process of trying to obtain the rights to livestream the show to an Internet audience, or possibly record a performance, so that every backer will be able to watch the production in some form. However, the Kickstarter has already raised $10,000 with no solid confirmation of digital access and only a few exclusive packages containing tickets to the live show, so it seems that fans of the Judas team are happy to support just for the sake of supporting.

The Last Days of Judas Iscariot is a courtroom drama, set in purgatory, about the fate of Judas Iscariot – whether he should be sent to hell. The original production premiered Off-Broadway in 2005 and was directed by Philip Seymour Hoffman. The University of Michigan’s 2008 production starred Darren Criss as Judas.

The show is slated to run at Stage 773 in Chicago for 18 performances, from August 23 to September 8, 2013. The team behind Judas will be conducting a livestream on their website at 8:30 p.m. Central Time this evening, if you would like to know more about the production.

What are your thoughts on this production of The Last Days of Judas Iscariot? Will you back this Kickstarter or tune in for the livestream tonight?