I have only a vague and theoretical idea of how the staging of the material has evolved over the centuries. As I have gathered from reports and the few film excerpts in the archives of the Bavarian state broadcaster and from the Oberammergau Museum, for a long time the play was a retread of Christian clichés which didn’t really prompt reflection, with dissemination of traditional images of the “enemy” of greater or lesser subtlety. If the community had decided in 1990 to preserve the play as it was, and to reject reformation, who knows whether it would have made the leap into the present or instead sunk into irrelevance. It almost certainly would not have become a prime example of overcoming centuries of resentment and prejudice, a symbol of tolerance and togetherness.

The election of Stückl

The election of Christian Stückl as director for the Passion Play in 1990 was a close-run thing. In a run-off election on 8 July 1987, he was elected by the local council with nine votes to eight. Hans Maier, director in 1980 and 1984, lost. He couldn’t really understand his defeat. “Nevertheless, Maier does not want his successor to pay for the matter: ‘hopefully...