Subverting the Unholy History of… Easter Plays?

“I STARTED THINKING, how would it shape or misshape a life to play a biblical role year after year?” Sarah Ruhl writes in the introduction to Passion Play, her trilogy of plays about religious pageants in small towns. “How are we scripted? Where is the line between authentic identity and performance? And is there, in fact, such a line?”

After reading about an annual religious play in the Bavarian village of Oberammergau in the early 1900s—in which the actors playing Christ and the Virgin Mary were supposedly as holy in real life as they were on stage—Ruhl began writing what would become Passion Play. Now the play cycle has arrived in Portland. Produced in a collaboration between Profile Theatre and Shaking the Tree Theatre, Parts I and II ran earlier this month as part of Profile’s yearlong exploration of Ruhl’s plays. Part III opens Friday at Shaking the Tree. (If you snoozed on Parts I and II, Shaking the Tree will also present four encore performances during Part III‘s run.)

In Part I of Passion Play, questions of identity and performance arose against the backdrop a 16th-century village’s Easter pageant: The actor playing Christ had an enlarged sense of self and piousness derived from his role, Pontius Pilate was convinced his lot in life would change if he could play Jesus instead, and the Virgin Mary tried to hide her lack of sexual innocence to keep her role. The relationship between religion and political structures simmered below the surface. Ruhl writes

Article source: http://www.portlandmercury.com/portland/subverting-the-unholy-history-of-easter-plays/Content?oid=16545644