The Flying Spaghetti Monster Holiday Pageant

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"The Flying Spaghetti Monster Holiday Pageant" is a one-act comedy written by Jeremy Gable. The show tells the history of Internet religious icon Flying Spaghetti Monster, and is the first known stage show about the subject to be approved by FSM founder Bobby Henderson.^[1]

The play centers around a troupe of small town folk in Kansas performing an amateur pageant as part of an ongoing weekly series exploring Intelligent design. The play-within-a-play employs two pirate narrators to trace Flying Spaghetti Monster's history from the beginning of time to present day. Throughout the play, a member of the Kansas school board offers commentary and criticism while sitting in the audience.

The script is partially based on the writings of Bobby Henderson, who is also featured as a prominent character in the play. The show was conceived, written and produced with Henderson's full permission.

The play received its world premiere in December 2006 at the Hunger Artists Theatre in Fullerton, CA.^[2] It was considered for the Pulitzer Prize for drama, but did not receive the award.

[edit] Plot summary

Opening in a Kansas classroom, where the pictures of dozens of religious leaders hang on the walls, Ms. Fism enters, dressed like a pirate. She announces that for this week's presentation on Intelligent Design, they will be presenting a pageant that examines the history of the world's fastest-growing religion: Flying Spaghetti Monsterism. Ms. Fism also nervously welcomes two members of the Kansas State Board of Education, Kathy and her husband Max.

The mayor of the Kansas town, Mayor Ragbottom, plays a young boy who is led by two pirate narrators (Bonnie and Shamus) through the history of FSMism, which starts at the beginning of time (in which the Flying Spaghetti Monster establishes ground rules with his first living creation, a midget) to the formation of the Eight I'd-Really-Rather-You-Didn'ts (a spoof of the Ten Commandments) and to a personal story about pirate extinction.

The trip through history ends in the present-day, when a lonely Borders employee named Bobby Henderson is visited by the Flying Spaghetti Monster, and decides to write a letter to the Kansas State Board of Education denouncing the teaching of Intelligent Design in public schools. He makes a visit to the Board of Education, where he delivers a speech that ends up sounding very familiar to Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. After his letter is rejected and Intelligent Design is passed, Bobby and the rest of the cast members join in a rousing chorus of singing "The Kansas School Board sucks".

An enraged Kathy stops the show, claiming it to be sacrilegious and in poor taste. She uses the Flying Spaghetti Monster's name in vain, daring Him to strike her down if she's wrong. The lights suddenly go out, and when they turn back on, where Kathy was standing there is only a plate of spaghetti. The cast cheers as Ms. Fism asks the audience to return next week for their presentation on Kabbalah entitled "If It's Good Enough For Madonna..."