During the Passion, over 600 people are on stage at the same time in some scenes. The fact that all this usually happens with a fair degree of order is impressive enough in itself. That both the acting and the music are of such a high calibre that you sometimes forget you’re watching amateurs is astonishing. Back in 2010 when I was watching the performance, I asked myself: how do they do it? How do they get so organised? And: where does this knowledge come from?

On music lessons and deficiency instruments

To be honest, in Oberammergau you basically never stop dealing with theatre and music. Preparations for the next Passion begin as soon as the previous one has come to an end. It starts with early musical education and promotion for the children. “The musical performance was long criticised as amateurish,” Markus Zwink told me in October 2019 in the studio of the Passionstheater. “Franz Liszt, for example, could only stand to hear the first half of the performance when he visited in 1870.” They would see which instruments were missing and find people to learn them. “Some people never played anything other than Passion music in their life,”...