Issue Nr. 1 March 2006 - NATO School

The Passion Play of Oberammergau
By Owen Payne, age 10
The story: it is 25 September 1633. The plague is
ravaging Bavaria. Oberammergau keeps safe by
keeping any person from outside the village out
until an Oberammergauer called Kasper Schisler
comes home from working in nearby Eschenlohe.
He is dead in days. Within a month, 81 people in
Oberammergau have died. On 28 th of October
1633 the village leaders make a vow to perform a
Passion Play every ten years if the plague stops
killing the Oberammergauers. The next day the
plague stops.
But is it true? The parish records are said to tell a
different story. By 28 th of October 1633 the plague
had been and gone in this area and the deaths of
84 Oberammergauers are recorded over a period
of 15 months, not one month. There was no time
when the deaths stopped abruptly. In fact Kasper
Schisler’s death was not recorded around
Oberammergau then. So what really happened?
It’s probable that Oberammergau had already
been performing a Passion Play for many years
before. There are a number of things that make us
think that. One: Passion Plays were a common
form of entertainment at that time and lots of
villages performed them. Two: lots of communities
made vows to do certain things if the plague
would stop ravaging their villages or cities, and it
would seem sensible to make a vow to do
something that they already did well. And three:
the oldest version of the Oberammergau Passion
Play script that has been found would already
have been very old fashioned by 1633.
Today the Oberammergau Passion Play is very
important for three reasons: religious, artistic,
commercial. But whether it keeps the plague away
is a mystery.
NATO School
Community Bulletin March 2006 Edition
What is the Passion Play? A Passion Play is the
story of the last few days of Jesus’ life, his death
by crucifixion and his resurrection.
The Oberammergau Passion Play is still
performed every 10 years. The next one will be
performed in 2010. Only true Oberammergauers
are allowed to take part, and even if you go to live
in Oberammergau you cannot take part until you
have lived there for many years. The actors have
to grow their hair long, and they have to wear
special costumes. You can see these beautiful
costumes now if you take a tour round the
Passion Play Theatre. The actors are chosen by
audition, which means that anyone who wants to
perform a certain part has to demonstrate their
acting skills along with anyone else who wants to
play that part. And whoever acts it out the best in
the practice gets to play that role. There are not
just people acting. They have doves, donkeys,
sheep and cows.
About 2000 people perform, out of the town¹s
population of 5000. Most of the people in the
performance play crowd parts. Each performance
lasts 5 hours and is seen by an audience of 5000.
The play is performed 5 times a week for 5
months between late May and early October.The
play was originally performed in the village
churchyard. In 1830 a permanent stage was built
in a meadow and that is where the theatre stands
today. One amazing thing about the theatre is
that, if it started raining during the performance
the actors would get wet. The stage is still
exposed to the weather, but the audience have a
shelter over them.
My two best friends in Oberammergau, Georg and
Lukas, were both in the Passion Play in 2000,
when they were 5 years old.
Reference: Oberammergau, the Troubling Story of the World’s
Most Famous Passion Play by James Shapiro.