Word: oberammergauers
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...front cover*) In the Bavarian village of Oberammergau, the social register is the Holy Bible. Rising young men aspire to be Peter or John or Joseph, the more self-confident of them have even thought of being Jesus himself-in the hallowed Passion Play, which has been presented in Oberammergau since 1634. In 1633 the inhabitants promised God that thereafter, once every ten years, they would dramatize the last earthly days of Christ, if only Heaven would check the Black Plague whose dark miasma had penetrated even into the Bavarian Alps...
...Oberammergau lies in a valley of those Alps, a town of ornate chalets inhabited chiefly by woodcarvers who combine medieval craftsmanship with modern salesmanship, who ship their whittlings all over the world. Over the town looms the jagged Kofel peak; in the town a bearded newsboy, attired in plus fours, sells his papers from a motorcycle. It is a town of anachronisms but the Passion Play is still its overtone...
Last week Oberammergau was ready to present the Passion Play again, beginning May 11, with 32 regular and 34 supplemental performances planned to accommodate some 300,000 visitors throughout the summer. Most of the small boys were groomed for supernumeraries, had let their hair grow until it tumbled about their shoulders. Almost every house was swept and scoured, its spare rooms prepared for visitors. Everyone who attends the Passion Play (admission $5) has to pay $11 or $12 for two nights' lodging whether he remains or not. During the Play season practically every Oberammergau home is also a pension...
...auditorium, with a semicircular windowed roof and a huge open-air stage, has been enlarged to receive an audience more than twice as great as Oberammergau's total population of 2,500 souls. Of that number, some 700 are participating in the Play. As the opening performance neared, there was great tension, for this year, for the first time since 1900, a new man was to play the leading role...
...Jesus. Anton Lang, a potter, played the part in 1900, 1910, 1922. Now 55, he was considered too old to play it again by the 21 electors chosen by all Oberammergau to determine the cast. Says he: "You do not know what a great physical strain it is to hang on the cross for a half-hour." Instead of risking heart failure in this fashion, Anton Lang will read the prologs to the 18 acts and 25 tableaux, a duty customarily undertaken by those who have played the Christ...