North American Passion Plays: "The Greatest Story Ever Told" in the New Millennium

Abstract

North American outdoor passion plays are not marginal theatrical sites; focusing critical attention on these faith-based dramas is particularly urgent in the context of the rise of religiosity in U.S. politics. The amateur evangelical shows offer troubling representations of Jews, racial exclusivity, and implicit assumptions of authenticity; yet, as community theatre endeavors, they hold forth possibilities for innovative iconography.

Mel Gibson's controversial depiction of the last days and crucifixion of Jesus, The Passion of the Christ (2004), was only a recent filmic addition to a longstanding and widespread North American performance phenomenon. Since the 1930s, passion plays have attracted large audiences willing to travel long distances and sit through lengthy performances in extreme weather conditions. These plays fly under the radar of most theatre scholars, arts journalists, and "regular" theatregoers, drawing believers who praise the "authenticity" of these largely amateur productions even as they recognize their artistic shortcomings.

I originally set out to research passion plays as part of a larger, historical project that examines the ways specific groups make use of particular theatre events and genres either to bond, to shore up their social status, to escape ostracism, to alleviate boredom, or for recreation within a cohort. The locales that host passion plays also invited questions about links between theatergoing and tourism, since the productions on which I focus target audiences not only as believers but as consumers and vacationers.

The initial flurry of articles about Gibson's film appeared just after I returned from my first passion play trip in 2003. In the ensuing year, questions about liveness, citation, and representational influences also became part of my inquiry. The ways in which George W. Bush's administration has been unambiguous about mixing its born-again Christianity with politics has forced all Americans to become aware of fundamentalist religious beliefs, especially as they impact those farthest from the fold. Therefore, I also looked for anti-Semitism which, in light of post-9/11 anxiety, can include not only Jews but Muslims.¹

Revelation 1: One Nation under God

In the earliest draft of this article (spring 2004), I cited Howard Fineman's 2003 article "Bush and God" to shore up my assertion about the presidential blending of religion and government in the United States. Eight months later, in a revision, the citation seemed superfluous. By mid-2005, religion's influence on government-backed initiatives could be seen everywhere. A short list of federal involvement included Congressional intervention in the family decision concerning the removal of Terry Schiavo's feeding tube as a "right to life" issue (Congress held an emergency session during which it passed a bill that would allow her case to be considered by a federal judge, and the President cut short a vacation to return to the White House and sign the bill)(CNN.com 2005); repeated assaults by the religious Right on same-sex marriage (Graff 2006); and a "blatant abuse of God and country" that was brought to public attention via "widespread complaints of unconstitutional proselytizing of [Air Force] academy students by evangelists whose efforts were blessed by authority figures in the chain of command" (New York Times 2005:A26). Lt. General William G. Boykin, one of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's "right-hand men," has made internationally publicized proclamations that "his own Christian God is 'a real god' and Islam's god is 'an idol'" (in Rich 2005).² Barbara Hall, creator of the network television show Joan of Arcadia and no enemy of religion in public discourse, charts the distance from 2002 (when CBS bought her show about a present-day Joan of Arc in the suburbs) to 2005 (when the Emmy Award-winning series' renewal was in doubt³) by looking back to a gentler era preceding the start of Bush's second term: "It was before we lived in a theocracy" (in Aurthur 2005:16).

Anti-Semitism was a flash point concerning The Passion of the Christ. Gibson's film—which aimed for an aural, physical, and...