Audio By Carbonatix
After nineteen years and a remarkable international expansion, pastor Stan Burgett’s Passion Play of Denver is really, in every way, the little Passion Play that could, a full-time non-profit business preoccupied with the stuff of miracles. Though sister productions have popped up under Burgett’s aegis as near as Las Vegas and as far away as Kuala Lumpur and Nairobi, metro-area faithful return to see it again and again every Easter season, no matter what venue hosts the dramatized religious re-enactment. Like Mary and Joseph themselves, the Passion Play has been shuttled from shelter to shelter over the years.
Preparations for the annual production, funded by donations and sponsorships, begin with auditions in January, followed by a rigorous schedule of rehearsals; the cast and crew typically comprise nearly 200 people who represent forty local congregations of various denominations. As the play’s following grows, the productions become more elaborate and new sets are tailored to new locations. This year, in addition to the live action on stage, He’s Alive!, as it’s subtitled, will feature filmed projections during certain segments.
Passion Play spokesman Jon Willis has been involved both behind the scenes and on stage. The memories are good ones: “It’s amazing to see what can happen when churches stop fighting and actually get together on something,” he observes. The play seems to carry with it a whole mantle of tiny, ongoing miracles, he adds — transformed lives and the global spread of Christian values.
Although Mel Gibson’s controversial blockbuster The Passion of the Christ might have influenced the production’s move to an expanded location at Crossroads Church of Denver, Willis thinks the notoriety of the film both helps and hinders Denver’s version.
It all comes down to who’s in the audience, anyway: “It’s hard to match a $30 million, bankrolled major motion picture,” Willis admits. “We just try to depict what really happened, but we’re not really interested in the shock impact of it. What Christ endured is part of the story, but not the only part of the story.
“The passion of Christ is as much about what he did to heal and help people as it is about how much he suffered, and none of it would mean anything if Jesus didn’t resurrect from the dead,” he continues. “That’s the hallmark of the Christian faith: If you don’t believe that happened, all the rest of the stuff doesn’t matter.”
To that end, the production puts a lot of its spiritual energy into the depiction of the resurrection. “Typically, we do an ascension scene with Jesus in the spotlight, rising to the clouds,” Willis says. But this year’s venue change presents at least one logistical problem: a low ceiling. Jesus may have to remain on his feet in 2004. Considering that the play’s East Indian affiliate, a traveling show that goes from village to village, plans at least one show in a stadium before an audience of 150,000, a floored Jesus seems like a small concession.
Passion Play organizers never imagined it would get so big, Willis says. But it has, and the organization’s own global village will set the mood at the twentieth-anniversary extravaganza, a blockbuster version already planned for next June in Denver that could combine casts from all of the play’s expansion cities. “For the first time, we’ll see people who can’t even speak the same language working together on stage to do this play,” Willis vows. “Jesus could be an Indian or an African or an Asian, all in a single performance. But what he looks like is less important than the fact that Jesus came to identify with humanity of all kinds. There will be Muslims, Hindus and Christians of all denominations, from every corner of the world, coming to Denver to put this show on.” Amen.
