Word: oberammergau
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...plays have traditionally had the unsettling effect of justifying anti-Semitism in their audiences. Though they were widespread throughout Europe until the 19th century, often provoking Christian violence towards Jews during Holy Week, he says, only one internationally recognized passion play is performed today, in the Bavarian village of Oberammergau...
...when peasants believed that Jews mixed the blood of Gentile children into Passover matzos. Consistent with such prejudice--and with the black-hat, white-hat needs of early dramaturgy--Passion plays presented Jews as money-grubbing Christ killers, a dramatic rendering that enjoyed a centuries-long run. Attending Oberammergau's famous staging in the 1930s, Adolf Hitler said enthusiastically, "Never has the menace of Jewry been so convincingly portrayed...
Jesus has been the subject of a hundred or so films, from Edison's The Passion Play at Oberammergau in 1898 to a quartet of Stan Brakhage experimental shorts in 2001. The story has been filmed by Cecil B. DeMille, Nicholas Ray, George Stevens. The Messiah has been portrayed with stolid reverence (in Franco Zeffirelli's Jesus of Nazareth) and Surrealist blasphemy (Luis Bunuel's L'Age d'Or). Often he sings: in Godspell and Jesus Christ Superstar, in a born-again Bollywood musical and in the Canadian kung-fu horror comedy Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter...
...Mart dresses to perform mini-sketches. There are usually a slew of inside references to the Weinstein brothers, who created and run Miramax. Last year I observed Michael Eisner (chairman of Miramax parent company Disney) watching the proceedings with all the intensity of an attendee at the Oberammergau passion play...
...actors crowds the stage, a stunning sight in these budget-conscious days of single-set, four- or five-character dramas. The other, even more startling, is the very fact that anyone would choose to bring this sprawling, earnest pageant back to Broadway. Rather than current theater, it resembles Oberammergau's passion plays or those outdoor historical extravaganzas in the U.S. heartland that put a wig and costume on practically everyone in town...