Jesus Christ and John, 1900 performance of the Oberammergau Passion Play.
is a
passion play performed since 1634 as a tradition by the inhabitants of the village of
Oberammergau,
Bavaria,
Germany.
Oberammergau Passion Play 2010
About half the inhabitants of Oberammergau are expected to take part in the once-a-decade Passion Play in the year 2010.
This means that over 2,000 villagers will bring the story of Jesus of Nazareth to life for the audiences that flock in from around the world. The play starts with Jesus entering Jerusalem, continues with His Death on the Cross and finishes with the Resurrection. As ever, this is an extraordinary community enterprise.
The 2010 season sees a new production directed by Christian Stückl, director at Munich's noted
Volkstheater. He is supported by the artistic team that along with him staged the 2000 Passion Play: deputy director and dramatic adviser Otto Huber, set and costume designer Stefan Hageneier and music director Marxus Zwink and conductor Michael Bocklet - all from Oberammergau.
Performances begin at 14:30 and, with a three-hour interval, ends at 22:30; performances are scheduled between mid-May and early October 2010.
Evolution of the Passion Play Theatre
Oberammergau's original parish church proved to be far too small for performances of the Passion Play, so it was decided to hold the Play in the graveyard of the church, before the graves of the villagers who had died in the plague.
The fame of the Play must have spread quickly to the surrounding towns and villages for as early as 1674, records show that seats were to be provided for the audience.
Over the following years sets and stage mechanics were added to the simple wooden stage structure. By the middle of the 18th century it was obvious that the graveyard was also too small and a new venue was found on a field close by; however, the stage had to be specially built every year of the Play.
The first permanent stage seems to have been built in 1815 to a design by the then-local parish priest. In 1830 he was asked to help build a new, larger stage on the site of the present theatre. When it rained the audience got wet: umbrellas would have obscured the view of people sitting behind them.
However, in 1890 a new, purpose-built theatre was built and, apart from some of the scenes on the side of the stage, it would have looked much as it does today. It was ready in time for the 1900 performance, with the six-arched hall capable of holding over 4000 spectators.
The theatre was enlarged in time for the 1930 and 1934 seasons and whilst it was considered ugly and uncomfortable it was praised for its superb acoustics and sight of the stage.
Following the 1990 production both the interior and façade of the theatre were renovated and the stage mechanics modernised.
It has now been transformed - new more comfortable seating has been installed along with under-floor heating; cloakrooms have been extended; the foyer made accessible for wheelchair users; exhibition areas added; safety and toilet facilities improved.
Today the theatre can seat an audience of over 4700.
The economic impact of the Passion Play upon Oberammergau cannot be underestimated, as witness the local expression
"Die Passion zahlt" ("The Passion Play will pay for it") in explaining how the Oberammergau community financed construction of a new community swimming pool, community centre, and other civic improvements.
Origins
The town's residents vowed that if
God were to spare them from the effects of the
bubonic plague ravaging the region, they would perform a play every ten years thereafter for all time depicting the life and death of
Jesus. The
death rate among adults rose from one in October 1632 to twenty in the month of March 1633. The adult death rate slowly subsided to one in the month of July 1633. The villagers believed they were spared after they kept their part of the vow when the play was first performed in 1634. The most recent performances took place in 2000 and the next will be a season of 102 performances on dates from Saturday, May 15 until Sunday, October 3, 2010.
The play, now performed repeatedly over the course of five months during the last year of each decade, involves over 2,000 performers, musicians, and stage technicians, all residents of the village. The play comprises spoken dramatic text, musical and choral accompaniment and
tableaux vivants, which are scenes from the
Old Testament depicted for the audience by motionless actors accompanied by verbal description. These scenes are the basis for the typology, the interrelationship between the Old and
New Testaments, of the play. They include a scene of
King Ahasuerus rejecting
Vashti in favor of
Esther, the brothers selling
Joseph into slavery in
Egypt, and
Moses raising up the
bronze serpent in the wilderness. Each scene precedes that section of the play that is considered to be prefigured by the scene. The three
tableaux mentioned are presented to the audience as prefiguring Christianity
superseding Judaism,
Judas selling information on the location of Jesus, and the
crucifixion.
It can be said that the evolution of the
Passion Play was about the same as that of the
Easter Play, originating in the ritual of the Latin Church, which prescribes, among other things, that the Gospel on
Good Friday should be sung in parts divided among various persons.
Length and frequency
The Oberammergau play has a running time of approximately seven
hours, with a meal break provided. Audiences come from all over the world, often on package tours, the first instituted in 1870. Admission fees were first charged in 1790. Since 1930, the number of visitors has ranged from 420,000 to 530,000. Most tickets are sold as part of a package with one or two nights' accommodation.
The play is today staged every ten years, in the final year of each decade - that is, the year whose numeral ends with a zero; hence, the next perfromances will be in 2010, followed by 2020. However, these regular performances at ten year intervals have been punctuated with additional performances such as those of 1922, and again an entire cycle of performances in 1934 (over and above the regular 1930 schedule) to commemorate the 300-year anniversary of the original vow, and again in 1984 (over and above the regular performances of 1980 and 1990) in celebration of the 350th anniversary of the very first play in 1634.
Cancellations
There were at least two years in which the scheduled performance did not take place.
- In 1770, Oberammergau was informed that all passion plays in Bavaria had been banned by order of the Ecclesiastical Council of the Elector, Maximillian Joseph at the behest of the Roman Catholic Church. In 1780, the play was retitled The Old and New Testament. The new Elector, Karl Theodor, having been assured that the play was "purged of all objectionable and unseemly matter" approved the performance of the play. By 1830, the Catholic Church succeeded in halting the performance of all other passion plays in Bavaria. Only Oberammergau remained.
- In 1940, World War II forced the cancellation of the year's scheduled performance, not to resume until 1950 (but then, only after having to obtain permission from the American Occupation Authorities).
Alleged antisemitism
Historic versions of the play were undeniably
anti-Semitic in character, reflecting a historical anti-Semitism in the Catholic Church.
Adolf Hitler indicated, according to
Abe Foxman, approval of these anti-Semitic elements in the Oberammergau Passion Play.
In response to changing mores, and historical gestures on the part of the Holy See (particularly the
Second Vatican Council, as expressed in
Nostra Aetate no. 4,
October 28,
1965: “the Jews should not be presented as rejected or accursed by God as if this followed from Sacred Scripture”), the most recent performances have been edited drastically to reduce this aspect. The changes included:
- changing some of the high priests' names from Old Testament names to newer New Testament-era names such as Demetrios, Alexander, or Bacchides;
- the role of the Temple traders has been reduced;
- the character "Rabbi" has been eliminated and his lines given to another character;
- Jesus has been addressed as Rabbi Yeshua;
- Jesus speaks fragments of Hebrew in the play;
- Jews have been shown disputing with others about Judaism, not just about Jesus;
- Pilate has been made to appear more tyrannical and some revision of lines was done to reflect that;
- Jesus' supporters have been added to the screaming crowd outside Pilate's palace;
- removing the line "His blood is upon us and also upon our children's children" (from Matthew 27:25), and "Ecce homo" (Behold the man);
- Peter, when questioned by Nathaniel regarding abandoning Judaism replies, "No! We don't want that! Far be it from us to abandon Moses and his law"; and
Modifications to the text of the play and its
tableaux vivants continue to be made each decade. These modifications include the manner in which the play presents the charge of
deicide, collective guilt,
supersessionism and typology. The two main goals of these modifications are to bring the play in line with Catholic doctrine after the
Second Vatican Council and to reduce or eliminate anti-Semitic content and implications.
Nazi exploitation of the 1934 jubilee season
The special jubilee season of the Oberammergau Passion Play in 1934, marking the 300-year anniversary of the original vow to reenact His Passion and Suffering every ten years thereafter, was particularly noisome because of the Nazi regime's rise to power the year previous.
Among other things, the
Propaganda Ministry ordered the official poster for the jubilee season amended to include the message "Deutschland ruft dich!" ("Germany is calling you!"), and the
Kraft durch Freude scheme's discount-travel programme offered special cut-rate packages to the Passion Play, including rail fare, tickets and accommodations.
Official propaganda described the Passion Play as "peasant drama***inspired by the consecrating power of the soil," Hitler attended a performance (and wound up endorsing it wholeheartedly as one with the Greater Anti-Semitic Agenda of the Nazi regime), and the Catholic Church gave the Passion Play a
Missio Canonica.
An attempt to rewrite the Passion Play script to bring it into line with Nazi ideology was rejected, however, by the more conservative element.
See also
