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OBERAMMERGAU PASSIONSSPIELE: EXPLORING A SACRED THEATRE 8
By Jack Paterson | Part 8 of 10
Date: April 2022
Location: Oberammergau, Germany
Activity: Rehearsals
6 PM.
There is no birdsong heard in the venue today, just the sound of power tools outside the venue as the Bavarian beer tents are built. After a 2-year hiatus, the production is rapidly approaching opening.
Perhaps my favourite thing has become watching Christian casually walk from person to person engaging them in conversation as rehearsal begins.
An understated “um..er..” and a cough signals the beginning of rehearsal and brings 60 people in a semi circle around him. He speaks calmly, clearly. The first mission of the evening is choir placement. Today the choir seems to include a few more teenagers and a young mother has brought her 4 year old son.
Again, he goes from person to person, pointing to the floor, moving people with gentle pushes and arm tugs speaking all the while. Who can go here? A hand shoots up and a woman runs over.
***
7 PM.
The power tools have died down and a dark blue has returned to the sky framing the set. The birds in the rafters once again begin to chatter to each other and the stage is once again full of several hundred people.
The Roman commander’s horse is requiring attention. He sits astride it at centre stage. The horse is nervous; it keeps backing up and small groups of villagers behind it dart for safer territory with combined expressions of bemusement and alarm on their faces. The trainer, standing by its side, rubs its neck, whispers, and gives it a push with his hip.
A few small boys enter from stage left. They shout something and point back in the direction they came from, and Jesus enters surrounded by a mob and carrying a large wooden cross. He collapses centre stage. 2 men break from the masses and run forward to help him lift the cross.
Even in their civvies and winter gear, I can easily feel the impact of this scene.
The scene is worked, more details added, and once the horse has calmed down again we return to ones. This time with the second set of lead actors.
9 PM.
The armies of legionnaires and the people of Jerusalem are sent home and a dozen or so actors remain. The last hour of the night rehearsal is spent figuring out how to get Jesus down from the cross. This is a group effort, sculpted moment by moment around the realities of the rigging, actor safety, and the importance of each moment of the story.
Although this sequence has been done many times before – this is the director’s fourth time – there is no indication that this is anything but new to the people doing it.
There is something very German in the aesthetic. Despite the pageantry, ritual, and scale of this project, this is a story about human beings. Human beings are imperfect, messy, and clumsy – we struggle, we make mistakes, and there is something humanly imperfect in how this man is taken down from the cross. Despite the scope of this project, this is not the spectacle of a large-scale Broadway or West End production, but the awkwardness of human beings faced with the death of a loved one, the handling of a body for the first time.
Stückl crouches down beside Mary as she holds her dead son her arms, listening to her, guiding her, moment by moment.
In his interview with A. Faiz (Broadview), Schtuck says “ Bach wrote the St. Matthew Passion — he told the story with music. I tell this story with theatre. Theatre has to be open. We don’t have dogma in theatre…if I can bring a real human being on stage, then that is enough for me.”
NEXT: OBERAMMERGAU LESSONS & REFLECTIONS
Oberammergau Passionsspiele: Exploring a Sacred Theatre – Part 6
Oberammergau Passionsspiele: Exploring a Sacred Theatre – Part 7
Jack (he, him) is an award-winning devisor, director, translator, and creative producer whose work and practice have taken him across Canada, Europe, the United Kingdom, and around the world. Projects have ranged from contemporary devising, multi-disciplinary, cross-cultural, and multi-lingual experiences to new works & texts, contemporary approaches to classical theatre and main stages. Shows under his direction have garnered over thirty theatre award nominations with many wins. He trained at leading international theatrical institutions including Circle in the Square (NYC, USA), GITIS The University of Performing Arts (Moscow, RU), ISI Indonesian Institute of the Arts (Bali, INA) and received his Masters in Fine Arts from the renown East 15 Acting School and University of Essex (London, UK).
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