The Oberammergau PASSION PLAY with text by Christian Stückl

“All of you,

who pass by,

stand still!

Watch and see:

Where can you find a love,

to equal this?”

Choir in the Oberammergau Passion Play with text by Christian Stückl, using older plays texts and lyrics edited by Otto Huber

I am in pictured in Oberammergau with director and playwright Christian Stückl.

Here we are at Mardi Gras, Fat, Shrove, Carnival, or Pancake Tuesday, however you designate this day. Pancakes are eaten tonight because traditionally, folks feasted on foods forbidden during Lent: meat, eggs, and dairy products. Sometimes we eat flat delights with friends, but tonight we will stir up a “fancy” meat dish, preparing to eat mainly vegetarian for a while.

Mardi Gras practices, with parades and frivolities, bring weeks of celebration in carnival fashion, leading to Ash Wednesday. Starting tomorrow, we enter Lent’s season of fasting and penitence, lasting 40 weekdays before Easter. Let’s think about Medieval England today since we have a quote from a passion play (albeit German). In those times, the day became known as Shrove Tuesday because people shrived themselves, or confessed sins to a priest.

Having grown up Presbyterian, it was a jolt to my family when I converted to the Episcopal Church when I was in college through the guidance of my University of Montevallo professor, John Finlay. My Presbyterian church never celebrated Lent, or Maundy Thursday, or the Easter Vigil (or Advent or Pentecost). In the Episcopal church, I found these seasonal observances, along with beauty, mystery, incense, diversity, liturgy, sacraments, and a place where everyone is welcome. During the Passiontide (from Palm Sunday through Holy Saturday), we experience foot washing on Maundy Thursday, the Crucifixion on Good Friday, the anguish of Holy Saturday before moving into the jubilation and relief of Resurrection Sunday.

I studied Medieval drama in college, and concentrated on that period in my graduate studies at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. I fell in love with Miracle, Mystery, and Morality plays. For Corpus Christi festivals in fourteenth century England, Mystery Plays were performed on pageant wagons by simple town folk in work guilds of cities, including Coventry, York, and Chester. Passion Plays were often part of these theatrical extravaganzas until the middle of the sixteenth century. The Episcopal Church made sense of such celebrations to me — how I still long to go back and see one!

After many papers, research projects, presentations, and essays about Medieval theatre, I yearned to experience the Oberammergau Passion Play, which — if you want to see a long-running play — has been carried out since 1634. After a plague in the European town, folks promised God that for their deliverance, they would perform the suffering, death, and resurrection of Christ every tenth year. In 2019, Roger and I prepared to see the play in 2020, but the performances were postponed with the worldwide Covid pandemic.

That gave me time to read an interesting book on the play by James Shapiro. In it, I was introduced to Christian Stückl's involvement with the process of the Passion Play’s production, along with the history of the drama and the town. Thankfully, our trip was completed last summer, and on the day after Independence Day (the 5th of July), we were caught up in the excitement and tradition not of America’s liberty, but of the drama of this tiny German mountain town on the Ammer River.

Before the play, we had delicious gnocchi and pork schnitzel at a hotel, wandered the streets and shopped, and marveled at the Lüftlmalerei (murals) of traditional Bavarian themes from religious scenes to fairy tales. After eating ice cream, we moved through security and were able to saunter around the grounds before the gates opened. I saw a group of people lounging on the steps of what looked to be a stage door, and knew immediately they were actors. A gentleman walking from the area informed me that the director was sitting outside as well. Boldly, I walked up, introduced myself, and talked a while to Christian Stückl, as well as with the actors who portrayed Matthew, Matthias, and Judas! In fact, Judas took our photo.

I wasn’t transported back to my beloved Medieval pageant plays, but the experience was amazing. We were instead conveyed to the time of Jesus’s passion, and the brief part of his life from his visit to Jerusalem to his execution by crucifixion. Thinking back on the quote from the Choir, we passed by, we sat still, we watched, and we saw — and after the performance, we asked, “Where can you find a love, to equal this?”