Passion Play Research Articles

In the dead time: The unfacilitated encounters among participants of the Oberammergau Passion Play

The 2022 Oberammergau Passion Play – a giant applied theatre project with almost 2000 participants, running for 110 performances over five months with a run time of over 5 hours – provides an opportunity to study how community participants use applied theatre’s ‘dead time’: the unstructured, unfacilitated time between onstage appearances. This study argues that in the tight spaces backstage, participants talk, play and engage in acts of care and mentorship, imbuing the dead time with tremendous social value. In fact, much to the initial surprise of the authors, most participants described their interest in the project as being primarily anchored in this dead time, rather than the staged action. These findings leave us with many salient questions for the field of applied theatre, and more research will be needed across varying contexts to better understand how to mitigate the social risks of dead time while invigorating its community-building potential.

Politics of the Oberammergau Passion Play: Tradition as Trademark

Politics of the Oberammergau Passion Play: Tradition as Trademark

“Those Who Wait, Burn”: New Penelopes in Plays by Sarah Ruhl, Suzan-Lori Parks, and Naomi Wallace

Homer’s Penelope is a nostalgic symbol in the patriarchal imaginary of war literature. Standing for the ever-faithful and dutiful wife who patiently waits at home while her husband returns from war, her paradigm has fulfilled two purposes in traditional war literature. She has helped to preserve, on the one hand, the dichotomy of home front versus war front and, on the other hand, those gendered expectations that have shaped and limited the notion of womanhood, both in war and in peace. This discussion of plays by Sarah Ruhl, Suzan-Lori Parks, and Naomi Wallace discusses the revisions these writers have undertaken on the figure of Penelope. With Passion Play, Part Three (2005), Father Comes Home from the Wars (Parts 1, 2 & 3) (2015), and In the Heart of America (1994), Ruhl, Parks, and Wallace, respectively, revisit the figure of the waiting woman to reflect on the interrelations between war and home front and to invite the audience to question patriarchal notions of womanhood that continue to operate today. In their feminist revisions of Penelope, this article argues, Ruhl, Parks, and Wallace reconstruct an iconic figure to reclaim women’s agency, independence, and sexuality.

Obrazy stalinizmu w twardym jądrze i na peryferiach. Kłopoty ze Sceną Faktu TVP (2006–2010)


 
 
 The text refers to the part of the performances of TVP’s Fact Stage (2006–2010), devoted to the Stalinist period, as well as to its journalistic and scholarly reception. In no small part, it is a polemic with the position and reasoning expressed in Mariusz Mazur’s article TV Theater: Fact Stage – a specific vision of history. On such historical politics polemically. The author points to the need to interpret the phenomenon of Fact Stage as it really was, to understand its genesis, social conditions and cultural context. However, he rejects the method of contrasting the works in question with the abstract and normative postulates formulated by Mazur. Finally, the article points to the religious (morality play and passion play) sources of the conception of Fact Stage performances.
 
 

Passion Plays: How Religion Shaped Sports in North America, by RANDALL BALMER

Journal Article Passion Plays: How Religion Shaped Sports in North America, by RANDALL BALMER Get access Passion Plays: How Religion Shaped Sports in North America, by RANDALL BALMER. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2022, 192 pp.; $25.00 (hardcover), $19.99 (eBook). William Whitmore William Whitmore Mercersburg Academy, Mercersburg, PA, USA whitmorew0@gmail.com Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Sociology of Religion, srad011, https://doi.org/10.1093/socrel/srad011 Published: 23 June 2023

In Memoriam Hans Straka

Hans Straka died in the morning of December 9, 2022 at his home in Munich, unexpected and much too early. He was a dedicated biologist, loved the mountains and was connected to home (Oberammergau, active participant in the Passion Play). His scientific journey took him from Munich via Paris and New York back to Munich and his many academic accomplishments ranged from a membership of the Editorial board of the Journal of Neurophysiology and of the Journal of Neuroscience. He was associate editor for Frontiers in Neuro-otology and for the volume “The Senses” he edited the part on Vestibular Function in 2020. In 2009 he became Professor of Systemic Neurosciences at the Department of Biology in Munich. Apart from his many academic accomplishments, however, Hans was a close friend to those of us who were fortunate enough to get to know him better.

Something Beautiful and Powerful: Politics, Art, and Bread and Puppet Theater

Something Beautiful and Powerful: Politics, Art, and Bread and Puppet Theater

The People in the Room: Rabbis, Nuns, Pastors, Popes, and Presidents by James Rudin

Reviewed by: The People in the Room: Rabbis, Nuns, Pastors, Popes, and Presidents by James Rudin Eugene J. Fisher James Rudin, The People in the Room: Rabbis, Nuns, Pastors, Popes, and Presidents. Mesa, AZ iPub Global Connection, 2022. Pp. 290. $25.97, paper ($9.99, in electronic formats). This excellent memoir is a must-read for all persons interested in Christian-Jewish and ecumenical relations leading up to the Second Vatican Council and what has happened since. Rudin takes us from his birthplace in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to Alexandria, Virginia, which he notes was Robert E. Lee's hometown. There, as a member of the small Jewish minority, he learned how to befriend his Protestant, mainly Baptist, classmates and those of the small Catholic minority in the then very Southern city. Attending college, Rudin was [End Page 323] drawn to the rabbinate. After ordination he was required to serve as a chaplain, in his case in the Air Force, where he served in Japan and Korea. During this time, he engaged in close relations and conversations with his fellow chaplains and service members, people from a variety of Christian denominations, becoming very adept at interreligious, especially Jewish-Christian, dialogue. Rudin narrates how he joined the American Jewish Committee in charge of interreligious relations, as well as his marriage to his wife, Marcia. He goes into detail speaking of Catholic-Jewish relations and how the two communities had been discriminated against in American society, which brought them together in a number of ways. He follows this with a detailed account, set in the history of both Europe and the United States, and of the Auschwitz convent controversy, when a group of nuns set up a prayer community in a building at Auschwitz, a controversy finally resolved by Pope John Paul II, who asked the nuns to relocate to a new building built outside the camp that became a center where visitors to the camp could come and learn its history and that of the Shoah. He analyzes the 1998 Vatican statement, "We Remember, A Reflection on the Shoah," and a 2000 Jewish statement, "Dabru Emet." He finds both helpful but needing to go further to clarify what they had in mind. He then goes into detail, again giving the historical background and context, regarding Jewish dialogical relations with mainline Protestants, Black churches, and Evangelicals. Rudin speaks of two controversial situations in which he was personally involved, rendering the stained-glass windows at the presidential retreat, Camp David, to reflect the general views of our multireligious, multiethnic society, and working to see that the Oberammergau Passion Play (and others) would not blame the Jews for the death of Jesus or for other social ills throughout history. He, along with a number of supportive Christians (including myself) was successful in these endeavors. He concludes this section with an in-depth narrative of the interreligious efforts to free Soviet Jewry, helped in this effort especially by a Catholic nun, Sr. Ann Gillen. Chapter 18 deals with "special assignments," such as destructive so-called "Christian" cults, the 1985 farm crisis, Biafra Relief, the selection of music for a Vatican concert commemorating the Shoah, and attending Good Friday services. This last is of particular importance because, as the author notes, over the centuries Christians would storm out of their churches on Good Friday and attack the local Jewish communities, robbing them, raping the women, and often committing murder. This was because the lectionary readings and the homilies given would posit blame on the Jews for the death of Jesus, ignoring the fact that [End Page 324] Pilate alone had the authority to order a crucifixion. As the Christian Creed states, Jesus "suffered and died under Pontius Pilate." Rudin concludes with reflections on the future of Christian-Jewish relations, where they are likely to go and where they should go, titled "Ten Personal Interreligious Commandments" (which we should all carefully observe), and a list of questions that dialogue groups (which he carefully defines) should ask themselves and each other. This excellent volume has a foreword by Rabbi David Rosen of the American Jewish Committee and an afterword by Dr. Mary C. Boys, SNJM. Again, I highly recommend this...

The Ways of Things: Mobilizing Charismatic Objects in Oberammergau and Its Passion Play

The mobilization processes initiated by the medieval practice of Christian pilgrimage do not only concern the journeys of human travellers but also of things. The transport of objects to and from pilgrimage sites derives from a pre-modern concept of charisma as a specific kind of energy that can be transferred to things and substances. This mutual mobilization of humans and things can be described as the entangled processes of charismatic charging and re-charging; we argue that this pre-modern logic of contiguity and contagion has survived the multiple transformations of individual travel until today. Even travel dispositives of the 20th and 21st centuries presuppose kinds of situational and spatialized charisma involving human and non-human agents. We illustrate this by the example of the world-renowned Oberammergau Passion Play with its unique playing continuity from the early 17th century onwards. We argue that by taking objects home from elevated places, situational and site-specific charisma can be taken home. To describe the relationship between travel by pilgrims, the mobility of objects, and the mutual charismatic charging of elevated places and things, we propose three perspectives on the material remains of elevated situations. In addition to relics and souvenirs, we propose ‘spolia’ as a third category which allows for the description of discontinuity and transformation in practices of elevating things.

Monumental Jesus: Landscapes of Faith and Doubt in Modern America

Monumental Jesus: Landscapes of Faith and Doubt in Modern America

The Jews and the Reformation by Kenneth Austin

Reviewed by: The Jews and the Reformation by Kenneth Austin Thomas Kaufmann The Jews and the Reformation. By Kenneth Austin. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2020. 288 pages. $45.00 (cloth). This book is characterized by a remarkable achievement: it synthesizes solid research on the history of European Jewry from the late Middle Ages (fourteenth century) to the early modern period (late seventeenth century) into a concise, striking and easy-to-read overall presentation. In this respect, it is less a genuine research achievement than a compact and, in terms of the information available, impressive overview of the situation of Jews in the pre-modern era. The term "Reformation," chosen by the author, is problematic however because it is used to describe all of the conceivable religious changes and movements between the late Middle Ages and the advanced early modern period, as is common in Anglo-American research. With this approach, however, the term "Reformation" loses its traditional historiographical concision. The title of this important book is also problematic in that it suggests that it is about the Jewish people as such, when in fact, Kenneth Austin, Senior Lecturer in Early Modern History at the University of Bristol, describes how different European societies dealt with the Jews, rather than tracing a history of interactions or the Jews' [End Page 175] view of their surrounding societies. None of this changes the fact that this is a comprehensive and convincing book in its own right, particularly with regard to the question of how individual Christian denominations have acted with reference to the toleration of Jews. The book clearly moves beyond previous stereotypes. A detailed presentation of the book's content is appropriate. The very helpful timeline begins with the pogroms against the Jews in connection with the First Crusade in 1095 and ends with the Glorious Revolution of 1688. In his introduction, Austin emphasizes the National Socialist embrace of Martin Luther to justify the anti-Jewish policy of the Third Reich and points out that this horizon must be kept in mind. Luther's position is to be understood in the context of his time. In contrast to a very one-sided focus on the "Jewish Question" in Luther's writings, the author establishes a broader perspective. The typical narrative of the Reformation as a factor in modernization and the development of tolerance, which was particularly popular in the nineteenth century, does not apply to attitudes toward Jews. The book presents a diversity of opinions in each Christian denomination. Austin goes back to the beginnings of the process of detachment and alienation between Christians and Jews in the first century CE. Paul, John Chrysostom, Augustine, and the IV Lateran Council prove to be particularly prominent individuals and factors in the increasing conflict between the two groups. The differentiated picture of a partial Jewish inculturation was set in motion in the late Middle Ages by various "popular attitudes": the accusation of ritual murder, first encountered in England in 1144; the charge of host desecration, first encountered in Paris in 1290; the supposition since the second half of the thirteenth century that Jews, especially Jewish doctors, inflicted physical suffering on Christians or poisoned them, which led to the charge of their responsibility for the plague epidemic of 1348. The crucial developments for the predicament of the Jews in the late Middle Ages were as follows. A process of economic demonization of the Jews had already begun in the twelfth century. Images like the confrontation between (blind) Synagogue and (triumphant) Church, the Judensau, and even the first Passion Plays, [End Page 176] date from this period. Nevertheless, conflicts with deadly results for Jews were the exception during the late Middle Ages. The intensified efforts to promote the Hebrew language under the sign of humanism, which partly included Kabbalah, increased interest in Judaism, but did not per se promote greater tolerance toward Jews. Respect for Hebrew was much less pronounced than for Greek and Latin, as Austin demonstrates through a number of authors, especially Erasmus. In the second half of the fifteenth century, the expulsion of Jews from various European countries increased. Austin estimates that the total number of Jews in Europe around 1500 was 500...

The Revival of the Lucerne Passion Play Tradition in the Twentieth Century

This paper examines the reception of the Passion play tradition in Lucerne in the twentieth century. The scholar, director and playwright Oskar Eberle (1902-1956) was largely responsible for the revival of the Passion Play tradition in Switzerland. His main efforts were associated with his ambition for a general renewal of the Swiss amateur theatre tradition, especially the tradition of sacred plays of medieval Central Switzerland. This study shows how the socio-cultural and political situation in Switzerland changed during the interwar period and how the production conditions for Eberle’s Passion play efforts in 1949 became more difficult.

Text, Performance, and the Production of Religious Knowledge: The Protestant Passion Play and the Catholic Saint Play

The article examines two specific types of theatre plays of the German-speaking theatre history of the Late Medieval and Early Modern period: The Passion Play and the Saint Play. In general, German-speaking theatre of the 16th and 17th century was characterized by the Reformation and Counter Reformation movements, and performances of theatre plays were, amongst other things, meant to spread religious beliefs and to show the citizens the 'right' way to believe and to behave. Also, performance practices as such were influenced by these movements: on the one hand, Reformation theatre rolled back the aspect of seeing, thus spectacle; on the other, the Counter Reformation tried to uphold the traditions of the 'old' faith – an effort which is seen in the staging of Saint Plays, rejecting by their very nature the solus Christus dictum of the Protestant faith but also upholding pre-reformatory performance practices. The drama texts analysed in the article show the reaction of theatre to socioreligious developments by enacting specific content and performative features and hereby shaping the history of Christendom as well as theatre history.

Text, Performance, and the Production of Religious Knowledge: The Protestant Passion Play and the Catholic Saint Play

The article examines two specific types of theatre plays of the German-speaking theatre history of the Late Medieval and Early Modern period: The Passion Play and the Saint Play. In general, German-speaking theatre of the 16th and 17th century was characterized by the Reformation and Counter Reformation movements, and performances of theatre plays were, amongst other things, meant to spread religious beliefs and to show the citizens the ‘right’ way to believe and to behave. Also, performance practices as such were influenced by these movements: on the one hand, Reformation theatre rolled back the aspect of seeing, thus spectacle; on the other, the Counter Reformation tried to uphold the traditions of the ‘old’ faith – an effort which is seen in the staging of Saint Plays, rejecting by their very nature the solus Christus dictum of the Protestant faith but also upholding pre-reformatory performance practices. The drama texts analysed in the article show the reaction of theatre to socio-religious developments by enacting specific content and performative features and hereby shaping the history of Christendom as well as theatre history.

Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Representations of the Oberammergau Passion Play: Heredity, Eugenic Theatre, and “Epic Selection”

The Oberammergau Passion Play became internationally famous in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Beginning in the 1840s and 1850s and through the early twentieth century, English-speaking foreign tourists from Ireland and the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, and even Australia published a surprising number and variety of accounts of travel to the village and attendance at the Passion Play. Professional and amateur historians described the production as an evolutionary throwback or curious hybrid of ancient Greek and medieval theatre, regarding it as an object and event of antiquarian interest. Foreign female travelers attended the play in impressive numbers, and their accounts provide insight into contemporary women's readings of theatre, travel, spirituality, gender inequality, gendered spaces, and cultural difference. Protestant writers reflected uneasily on the play's communication of spiritual truth by means of images. And all of these accounts, whether published in the popular periodical press or as monographs, in turn encouraged increasing numbers of travelers to make the same journey—represented sometimes as a religious and sometimes as an artistic pilgrimage—to the isolated Bavarian village.

G.B.SHAW’S SAINT JOAN - A DIALOGUE BETWEEN THE ANCIENT AND THE MODERN WORLDS

My paper attempts to peruse Joan's religious fanaticism, reaching us through the perspective of 600 years and then filtered through Shaw's imagination, becoming the protest of a plain-spoken individual conscience. "What other judgment can I judge by but my own?" The events presented constitute the birth of the great changes that would hit the middle-aged Europe in the forthcoming decades. Indeed, if one adopts a post-colonial stance, it is quite possible to see Joan as a champion not only of Nationalism, but also of anti-colonialism. We are shown Joan's posthumous rehabilitation as an example of a modern show trial, and her original court hearing as one of history's terrible state trials. In Shaw's view Joan was, like Jesus, an agent for change, a change within the established church.When Cauchon, the Bishop of Beauvais, cries out: "Must then a Christ perish in torment in every age to save those who have no imagination?" this connection is made plain, and Joan herself endorses it when she tells the court: "I am His Child, and you are not fit that I should live among you." So Saint Joan becomes Shaw's passion play and represents Joan's life as another coming of Christ to our world. KEYWORDS: Fanaticism, nationalism, Saint Joan, torment, trial.

“Множинні тіла монарха”: стратегії реалізації метафори body politic на сучасній північноамериканській сцені

The paper seeks to explore the strategies instrumental for the implementation of the body politic metaphor that had been active in Western culture since classical antiquity in the plays authored by present-day North American dramatists (Sarah Ruhl’s Passion Play, USA, 2010, and Timothy Findley’s Elizabeth Rex, Canada, 2000). Drawing upon the concept of the “king’s two bodies” (E. Plowden, E. Кantorowicz, М. Аxton, А. Мusolff, L. Montrose and other New Historicists), the author sets out to demonstrate that in S. Ruhl’s dramatic cycle the metaphor serves to indicate the inextricable links between the concepts of power, the sacred, and the theatrical, whereas Т. Findley uses it to study the ontology of sex and gender in political and theatrical contexts. It is argued that the age-old somatic metaphor conceived in the archaic layers of human psyche manifests its viable receptive potential through its efficient functioning in the early 21st century cultural artifacts.

James Light: “The Parade of Masks” (c. 1928)

James Light: “The Parade of Masks” (<i>c</i>. 1928)

MUSIC IN SLOVENIA BEFORE THE CENTURIES OF THE ŠKOFJA LOKA PASSION PLAY: 16TH AND 17TH CENTURY MUSIC IN THE DUCHY OF CARNIOLA

In the 16th and at the beginning of the 17th century, church and secular, vocal as well as instrumental music was present in Slovenia and in the Duchy of Carniola. We can see this on the basis of material provided during the first decade of the 17th century, i.e. immediately before the first procession of the Škofja Loka Passion play (1721). Among the composers we can mention Tomaž Hren and the Ljubljana Jesuits, although we do not know of any composer at the beginning of the 17th century who may have been anchored as a creator at home. Yet we can find them among emigrants: Gabriel Plavec Carniolus (Plautz, Plautzius) in Mainz/Germany (1641), Daniel Lagkhner from Maribor/Slovenia (in Loosdorf/Austria; 1607) and Isaac Posch (in Carinthia). He died in 1621 or 1622 and he was known above all for the variation suite. Plavec and Lagkhner made the transition from the Late Renaissance to the Early Baroque, while Posch explicitly by the monody, i.e. in the early Baroque. The music and the musicians mentioned above were important in this period of more than one hundred years, even if not always and everywhere alike. The music grew from humble beginnings and, within the Slovenian territory, did not diverge from all which was modern west of the Slovenian ethnic borders.

Pilate as the Legal ‘Other’ in the N-Town Cycle Passion Plays

In the late medieval N-Town Cycle Passion Plays, the trial of Jesus is presented in the context of a medieval courtroom, where Jesus is brought by Annas and Cayphas to be judged by Pontius Pilate. However, while the priests through abuses of the legal procedures attempt to ensure Jesus’s demise, Pilate opposes their intent by remaining true to his judicial duties, which presents him as a lonely Other in the presented world of legal misconduct. This paper explores the concept of otherness in a legal context of the plays, as well as the legal and social significance of Pilate’s actions.