Passion plays struggle amid dwindling crowds
During his two hours onstage playing Jesus, Allen Garcia preaches to the masses, heals a leper, raises a child from the dead, rides a real donkey, suffers at the hands of Roman soldiers, carries a heavy cross and is ultimately crucified.
On top of that, he is required to belt out several musical numbers in the song-filled Passion play at the Shepherd of the Hills Church in Porter Ranch, California. This is the 20-year-old San Fernando resident’s second year playing Jesus, and the physical demands of the role haven’t got easier.
“Some nights, I come home with bruises and scratches,” Garcia said after a recent dress rehearsal. “It’s very tough to play an iconic role. Without God, I wouldn’t be able to do this.”
Playing Christ clearly takes a leap of faith. And so does the job of producing Passion plays — an annual rite that has fallen on hard times in many towns across the United States. Staged Passion plays are facing dwindling audiences and a challenging financial environment.
Leaders at Shepherd, a nondenominational megachurch, say their parishioners help keep their Passion pageant wellattended. But for larger productions, many of which operate as independent nonprofits that rely on ticket sales and donations, finding ways to survive can feel like a Job-like burden.
Some are trying to make their shows more contemporary and audience-friendly, with new songs and shortened running times, while others believe that holding fast to tradition is the only true choice.
In the past 10 years, three prominent Passion plays closed for good — the Black Hills Passion Play in South Dakota, the Atlanta Passion Play and the Glory of Easter at the Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove, California.
One of the oldest productions in the U.S. is The Passion Play in Union City, New Jersey — a musical staging that marks its 101st season this year. Organizers used to mount 18 shows per season, with an average of 1,000 people per performance at their 1,400-seat venue.
But in the past five years, that average has fallen to about 600 per show, with audiences consisting largely of people over 55. The production has five performances scheduled this season.
To give it a more contemporary feel, and potentially draw more crowds, the show is enlarging the role that women play in the story, including a new song for the wife of Pontius Pilate, said Carl Gonzalez, artistic director of the Park Performing Arts Center, where the show is performed.
“We are giving the women in the production a much stronger voice,” he said. “They are no longer in the periphery.”
Other companies see a more proactive promotional strategy as the key to salvation.
“We have to really get aggressive with our marketing. We can’t count on people to just show up anymore,” said Philip Hobson, board president of The Promise in Glen Rose, Texas.
In recent years, leaders have shortened the run of the annual show to two months from five. The production nearly closed in 2013 when county finances imperilled its outdoor venue, the 3,200-seat Texas Amphitheater, which is county-owned. Show leaders eventually negotiated a 10-year lease.
“I’m optimistic. Whatever we have to do to get people in there, we will,” Hobson said. But, he added, “there’s no doubt this type of entertainment is a challenge.”
Tena Fowler, who has seen four generations of her family work in The American Passion Play in Bloomington, Illinois: “There is just not that strong, church-based, family faith-based audience out there.
“We used to have tons of churches and tour groups coming in. We’re not able to entice audiences like we used to.”
While some productions have shortened their running times to accommodate contemporary tastes — many now run for less than two hours — The American Passion Play, now in its 93rd consecutive season, clocks in at three hours.
The nondenominational show has stood by tradition and has largely avoided adding contemporary flourishes or vernacular, with much of the spoken text adapted directly from the King James version of the Bible.
“I hope that God’s plan is to keep us going,” Fowler said. “You just don’t know.”
With origins dating back to the Middle Ages, Passion plays have often served as a community unifier in villages and cities throughout Europe. Some were extremely intense experiences, taking a full day to enact Christ’s final moments on Earth.
Today, the desire to attend has significantly diminished, in large part because of the immediacy of digital and the availability of the 2004 movie The Passion of the Christ and other similar entertainment at home, according to Todd Johnson, a professor at the Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California, where his specialties include religion and the arts. The decline is also generational in nature, he said. “The generation for whom it was important is fading away and it hasn’t been passed on to the next generation.”
The number of Christians, including Catholics, in the U.S. is waning, according to a recent survey by the Pew Research Center. The percentage of adults who describe themselves as Christians dropped to 70.6 per cent in 2014, from 78.4 per cent in 2007.
Millennials have a larger percentage identifying as agnostic, atheist or unaffiliated than any other age group, the study found.