Oberammergau Passion Play 2022

The whole point of our September trip to Germany was to see the Oberammergau Passion Play! The first time Chris and I came to Germany on a space A flight at the end of flight training, we merrily drove our way through Oberammergau in the Bavarian Alps and heard about their passion play for the first time.

In 1634, as the plague ravaged Europe, people in the small town began falling ill. Together, they made a vow: if God would protect them from this sickness, they would perform a passion play about the week before Jesus’ crucifixion every decade…forever. The sickness ceased spreading in their community, and the play has been performed every 10 years since then, with an exception during WWII and once in the 1700s during the reformation or counter-reformation…I forget.

Wouldn’t it be cool, we cackled to ourselves in 2008, just a month before we were set to move to Japan the first time, wouldn’t it be cool if we found ourselves stationed in Europe during a Passion Play year?! We would TOTALLY GO!

Tickets

Reader, we DID move to Europe just before a Passion Play year—but by the time we got orders, the 2020 show was sold out! Tragedy! The 2020 show took notes from the 1920 show—postponed two years for Spanish flu and WWI recovery—and went ahead and rescheduled for 2022. I was on their website as soon as it opened and popped four of the cheapest seats available in my cart. At 30 euros per person, it was cheaper to bring the kids than find a babysitter, even if the play is five hours long. They’ll handle it. In January of 2021 when I bought them I didn’t know if we’d still be in Europe in September of 2022—I don’t know my life—but I figured I’d worry about that later.

Later, I discovered that of 5,000 seats in the theater, about 100 are at our price point. We weren’t even near the back, just right by the main doors. This was great, because we had no one sitting directly in front of us. Eloise was next to the aisle and the seat on the other side of the aisle cost 120 euros! Most seats in the auditorium were 180 euros each! I had no idea we got such a bargain. This explains why there were no other kids there.

We got there in time for the free, unticketed English introduction and overview of the play at 10am. Anyone can attend this when it’s running, and it was interesting. The main cast goes to Israel to walk where Jesus and the disciples walked for like six months before practices start. At the time of the vow, it was popular for lots of villages to put on their own Passion Plays from time to time. Since people traveled longs roads across the mountains to come, the plays usually lasted 16 hours over two days!! And my kids were worried about five hours–ha!

We walked around the town a little afterwards and got ice cream, and Chris mooned over Christmas crap at Kathe Wolfart, which is a Christmas store that looks like Bavaria exploded in an American cabin in the 1980s. I can’t handle it. The play started after noon, went for 2.5 hours, then had a three-hour break before resuming for the final 2.5 hours. It was all in German, and we had a translation book.

My Review:

So how was it? It was great! It is not like reading straight out of the Gospels. There is artistic license in that people are having conversations in the temple in Jerusalem that are recorded as happening far prior to Passion Week. But it seems reasonable to think similar conversations could happen over time. Sometimes different people would say things, like when Jesus begins the Lord’s Prayer at one point, the disciples each quote parts of it, almost as if it’s a joint prayer they came up with together. But Jesus taught them to pray this of course, so artistic license to show his followers in fact having learned it seems nice. A commentary says the playwriters were constantly looking for ways to distribute text so it wasn’t the same people talking the entire five-hour play. Also, Joseph of Arimathea is portrayed as a major defender of Jesus to the Pharisees throughout the week prior to his death and resurrection, and the Bible says he was a secret follower of Jesus.

My only accuracy beef is with the resurrection scene. Jesus doesn’t make an appearance! An angel appears to Mary and the disciples, asking why they look for the living among the dead. But then it’s the same angel who says Mary’s name when she mistakes him for the gardener and asks if he knows where Jesus’ body is. The Bible says that was Jesus speaking to Mary, but the text commentary said they wanted to leave Jesus’ resurrection to the “mysteries of faith.”

Should you go?

Lots of friends told me, “Ooooo, I wish we’d gotten tickets!” to which I am happy to reassure people: WAIT A FEW DECADES. Chris and I were the youngest people there by like FORTY YEARS. The average age of attendees looked to me to be about 93.

And if I was 93, sitting through five hours of thinking about Jesus’ life, crucifixion and resurrection, I would be extremely interested in, you know, the resurrection part of the story!! That’s the whole point! I don’t want any more mystery—faith in what my eyes cannot see and trusting Christ with my immortal soul is about to become extremely experiential at that point!!

We all enjoyed it, but agreed: after five hours, I wanted more resurrection. No one even came out and bowed; it was over, time to go. It felt unfinished, incomplete. There’s more to the story! The best part!

Let’s Talk About Food

Don’t you get hungry and cold in an open theater for five hours? Yes! I’d made us reservations during the break at L’Orangerie next door. The kids ordered fancy pizza and pasta. Chris and I had the set menu, which included white and red wine, sparkling water, and coffee afterwards: