Day 5: So much passion in one "little" play.

On Thursday we were greeted by a cool, overcast day, promising a top of only 12 degrees. After brekkie we donned the wet weather gear and grabbed the umbrellas and wandered down into Oberammergau to have a look around as we saw nothing of it being so late the night before.

Nearby the hotel was the Church with the onion top. We had seen many of these on the bus the day before and assumed them to be Lutheran. How wrong. It is the Catholic Church of St Peter and Paul, complete with surrounding cemetery and so we go in. Mass is starting in German and so we stay. What an amazing church. Rococo style totally over the top architecture. Gold leaf in EVERY direction. I just kept sitting there thinking how plain the Europeans must have thought St Mary’s Cathedral was during WYD.


Further strolling past dozens of little craft shops all selling wood carvings and Christmas decos and the like. Arrived at the museum. It displays historical Passion Play artifacts and diorama and some carvings by a local artist. Wow!!!




Then we arrived at the “Passionspielehaus”, the huge theatre with a capacity of over 2000, where we will see the play in the afternoon and evening. In the grounds there is a growing queue of hopefuls waiting til Midday when the ticket booth opens with the left over tickets. Beside the ticket office there is a sculpture garden with installations concerning this year’s play.

The “crown of Thorns" and the broken pots are very moving. The water fountain of Jesus' arrival into Jerusalem on the donkey is also interesting.


Morning tea beckoned and so we sat in a small café across from the theatre and had a coffee in a genuine passion play mug. I have now seen everything! So wish I could have found one to buy and bring home! The photo says it all. Then we toured the lobby of the theatre where many of the former cast members have their picture and we learned a bit more about the history o the play.

It seems that Oberammergau was badly affected by the 30 years war in Germany in the 1600’s. Invading forces from Switzerland and other places brought disease with them and the community was hard hit by the plague. The villagers promised that, if their village was spared from further plague death by the performance of the Jesus passion and death story, then they would perform this play every 10 years in gratitude to God for that salvation. Miraculously no one else ever died from plague and this passion play is the 41st edition.

Part of the deal with the Passion Play tickets is that you get meals provided at your hotel. I guess it is one way of sharing the wealth and leaving the few cafes in town free for the out of town visitors. So Chris and I wander back to the village to discover a shuttle bus for our hotel. By this stage it is raining quite solidly and we opt for the bus as a good option.

After a yummy lunch it is a wander back downtown to the theatre. While waiting for the play to start we enter the Lutheran church and get a first hand history lesson on the Reformation. The church is tiny, only 8 or 10 rows big and totally devoid of adornment. What a contrast to the OTT Catholics up the road.

We are heralded to the auditorium by haunting music, no ringing bells here. We knew our seats would be good but didn’t realize that we were 9 rows from the front and right in the VERY centre of the auditorium. SCORE!!! While waiting we read the background info to this year’s production. The write-up explains that this is a more modern version with more theological questions. It starts in the afternoon at 2.30pm and tells the story from Jesus entry into Jerusalem til the arrest in Gethsemane. At that point it is 5.15 or so and everyone either buses or walks back to their hotels for dinner. So for almost 3 hours were are engrossed in a performance of a very familiar story told totally in German, interspersed with Greek tragedy style chorus and narrator except that the chorus does actually sing, somewhat operatically. The stage is massive and the cast matches it. Almost 600 strong and that doesn’t include the 4 sheep, one donkey, 3 goats, 8 turtle doves, one horse, two camels and sundry other live things I have forgotten to mention.

And one other thing … there was not a peep out of the audience for the whole first half. Just amazing.

Then we are herded out of the theatre and walk briskly back to the hotel, shunning the bus in preference to stretching the leg muscles. On the way back we heard a very annoyed American fundamentalist say... “no they were wrong... that’s not the way it happened! “and he went on to explain something that they had portrayed about Pilate that was not “correct”!!! evangelical fundamentalism at its best.

Four course dinner again and then back to the theatre at 8pm for round 2, focusing on debate in the Sanhedrin, Jesus before Pilate and Herod and of course the torture and death, burial and resurrection. This is exhausting just watching and listening as each part of the story is juxtaposed against a freeze frame of an old testament story like the Sacrifice of Isaac or the Passover. At the end the cast left on stage walk off, and that's it. No curtain calls, no standing ovation, just a polite round of applause from the audience as the lights came up.


All I can say is wow!!! Theologically, theatrically brilliant in every way, and in order to perform in it you have to have been born in Oberammergau or have a parent or grandparent who was!!!

We walked back to the hotel and discovered that the light show in the church was still going. A leading German opera company lighting adviser had constructed a light show in the catholic church to highlight the elements of the design that are parts of the Passion Story. IT is like a “festival event”. So we decided to sit and watch. Really reflective and of course we weren’t home much before midnight. It had been another LONG day. But WOW!