Profile Theatre and Shaking the Tree’s ‘Passion Play’ resonates, but it’s not …

“No one actually wants to be Christ. They only want to admire him from a distance.” So says a Nazi foot soldier (Garland Lyons) in Play Two of Sarah Ruhl’s “Passion Play,” currently running through Sunday at Profile Theatre.

The three-part play is presented as a unique Portland collaboration between Profile and Shaking the Tree theater companies, who share the load of producing playwright Sarah Ruhl’s ambitious project, an epic that travels from medieval England to Germany during the Third Reich to contemporary South Dakota, telling the story of communities putting on their own plays about Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection. Parts one and two take place at Profile; part three will be staged at Shaking the Tree in late September and October.

The irony that Ruhl’s series holds up to the audience is that we all suffer, just not on the cross. The human dilemma she seems to pose is whether we can reach past our own struggles and society’s expectations to comfort someone else, regardless of religion or politics — or if she is the Village Idiot for hoping that such connection is possible. 

The two plays put on at Profile depict acting troupes staging “The Passion Play” first in Elizabethan England, when Catholicism was prohibited, and then in Oberammergau, Germany, during Hitler’s rule. The times and settings are markedly different: One mimics Oberon’s whimsical forest in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” while the other highlights the austerity of the Holocaust. The productions also portray the very different Christs that their time

Article source: http://www.oregonlive.com/performance/index.ssf/2015/09/profile_theatre_and_shaking_th.html