The Oberammergau Passion Play: Essays on the 2010 Performance and the Centuries-Long Tradition

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Every ten years since 1634 the German village of Oberammergau has performed the world’s most famous Passion Play, recounting the last days in the life of Jesus. In 2010 the village presented the play for the forty-first time, breaking with tradition in a number of ways to present a new text for a post-millennial, international audience. In this volume, seven international scholars who attended and witnessed the Oberammergau Passion Play analyze and respond to the experience. Their essays analyze the way in which the play defines the village, how the performance changes the audience, how the play has changed in response to historic charges of anti-Semitism, and compare Oberammergau 2010 to American Passion Plays, Indian pilgrimage drama, and other German Passion Plays. The volume explores the play from interviews with the villagers who perform it to international responses, including engaging the tension between international perception of the village and the actual activities of the villagers in performing the play. Oberammergau 2010 tells us a lot about religion, culture and how we tell stories from the seventeenth century to the present.