Oberammergau’s Passion Play
With Tauck In 1633 residents of the small German village of Oberammergau pledged to stage a reenactment of the events surrounding the crucifixion of Jesus Christ once every ten years. They had powerful motivation for doing so: Bubonic plague was ravaging the village’s population, and they hoped that the promise of a once-per-decade performance of the “Passion Play” would win God’s favor and spare them from further suffering. Whether the promise did indeed inspire divine intervention, or whether the plague simply ran its natural course, the village was largely spared from further deaths following the first performance of the Passion Play in 1634. And although the villagers certainly enjoyed the positive outcome, they had no way of knowing that they’d also launched a rich cultural tradition that would eventually draw travelers from around the world. Today, the Oberammergau Passion Play is a major event involving over 2,000 local residents who participate as actors, singers, costume-makers, musicians, technicians and more. Preparations for the Passion Play begin on Ash Wednesday a full year before the first performance, when actors begin growing the long hair and beards required for their roles (no wigs are used in the production). And when the time finally arrives to perform the play, it’s a marathon effort. Each performance is approximately six hours long, and the play is performed five days each week for a full five months. In 1674 villagers rescheduled the Passion Play to occur every ten years at the start of each new decade, beginning in 1680. Nearly 330 years later, the next Passion Play performances in Oberammergau are scheduled for 2010 – or less than a year away.