Sep 07, 2008 - 04:05:23 CDT
When I heard from a dear friend that the Black Hills Passion Play was staging its last-ever performance last Sunday, I sprang into action. I have a soft spot for last things. On May 7, 2006, I took my old Shakespeare professor to the last performance at the old Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis. It was Shakespeare's "Hamlet," which also had been the first play staged at the Guthrie when it opened on May 7, 1963.And now the Passion Play, which is one of those timeless, perennially in the background institutions that you think always will be a feature of American life and then suddenly disappear forever. I had seen the road show version of the PP at Trinity High School in Dickinson when I was 7 or 8 years old, but I had never been to the big amphitheater on the west end of Spearfish, S.D. The 70-year run that began on June 18, 1939, was now about to end. This saddened me.
Breathlessly I called for tickets, a knot of anxiety at the pit of my stomach. I was sure that because it was not only the last performance of the season but also the last performance ever that it had been sold out for months, and that I would be told there was no room at the inn. I was prepared to connive for tickets, if necessary, and even to show up on spec and try to buy tickets from a scalper - though that sounded vaguely blasphemous. Turns out tickets were readily available.
That saddened me even more.
I got a seat in the fourth row, just beyond camel and horse range, for the PP should really be called the Passion Pageant. The stage is billed as "the longest (that is, widest) stage in America," which is not necessarily a virtue, because a fair amount of the action occurs so far from the audience that you have to squint to keep up with a story you have known by heart since you were a child. To my middle-aged eyes, Golgatha could just as well have been Chadron, Neb. At some points in the play more than 100 people (and a dozen or so animals) are on the stage at once. I brought binoculars.
I remember as a boy hearing ads for the Passion Play voiced by KFYR's Dan Brannon. Back then Josef Meier portrayed Jesus. In the radio ads he was always referred to as "Josef Meier Famous Christus Portrayer" (hereafter JMFCP), as if the actor's last name was actually Portrayer.
Unfortunately, Josef Meier (JMFCP) retired in 1991 after 9,000 performances as the Christ. Just think of that for a moment: arraigned 9,000 times before Pontius Pilate (who washed his hands every time), forced to wear a crown of thorns 9,000 times, crucified 9,000 times in the most purely sincere of all American portrayals of the most somber story ever told. Meier died on Jan. 31, 1999, at the age of 94. He represented the seventh generation of his family to portray Jesus in the PP, which has roots all the way back to the 13th century. There is something marvelous in the idea of Meier carrying on the family tradition, not breaking the string of seven generations of continuous Christus portrayal. I remember sitting in Trinity High as an enraptured child. There was something strange and uncanny in seeing him portray the son of God - audacious, powerful, troubling, moving, odd, noble.
In recent years, Jesus has been portrayed by Chuck (in such a context, I think Charles would be more appropriate) Haas, who has now participated in the PP in one capacity or another for 36 years. He's good, but for me the Christ only can be incorporated by Josef Meier (FCP). I tried, as I sat among about 3,000 others in an amphitheater that can seat up to 6,000, to remember my youth, when the magic of life was still fully open to me. I tried to substitute Meier for Haas, and, in Coleridge's words, to suspend my disbelief and surrender to the magnificent solemnity of the event.
We live in irreverent times.
There was a group just behind me that had come on a bus from somewhere, and it was filled with chatterers, including a husband who made it clear to everyone around him that he was not happy to be here. It sprinkled off and on through the whole performance. At times it rained.
Fairly early on, someone on stage, a member of the Sanhedrin I think, said, "It is over." The curmudgeon behind me quipped, "Great, let's head for the bus." This was greeted with some nervous laughter and several rather stern rebukes.
Later, when the rain was just at the clear-the-amphitheater magnitude, Jesus said, after a meeting with his supporters, "Arise and let us go." The scoffer behind me said, and not in a whisper, "Now there's a good idea!" Eventually he huffed off to the visitor center to dry off. I was glad he was not there when someone on stage, perhaps Jesus, said, "Come, let us drink."
The Passion Play is a wonderful paradoxical mixture of stimuli. At times it is truly profound. At times it is cheesy. In places, there is a Cecil B. DeMille epic quality to it and at other times it looks like the most ambitious village Sunday School pageant ever mounted. Most members of the cast are community volunteers. As I look at their faces behind the costume house beard-work, it is hard to know if they are having the time of their lives or just going through the motions, glad their large, unpaid summer commitment is over. During the initial crowd scene, members of the audience all around me cheerfully and loudly pointed out cast members they recognized from their daily lives in Spearfish, and gossiped about their dilemmas.
At the crucifixion, Meier's son-in-law, Guido Della Vecchia, sang Handel's "Largo" live, at the Black Hills Passion Play, for the last time ever. His voice was pure and beautiful. You could feel the deep emotion in his valedictory performance. It was overwhelmingly moving.
Though it had rained quietly throughout the performance, the minute Jesus was nailed to the cross and lifted upright on the hill on the south end of the amphitheater, it began to lightning and thunder. Such a moment could never have been planned or even hoped for. There was a time in American life when this would have been regarded by the audience almost as a miracle - perhaps it was. The crowd was thrilled - and a little nervous, of course, because each of us had to worry lest Charles Haas (who was now the highest object in Spearfish, and in a mighty precarious position) suffer a very different kind of martyrdom.
Somehow all these heterogeneous elements-the rain in the open air playhouse, the aria, the close of a remarkable era, the unmistakable passion of the Passion Play, the memory of Josef Meier (FCP), Dan Brannon, the lightning strikes on Golgatha, even the irreverent grump in the crowd - seemed to me to be an almost perfect expression of what I love most about America.
As I drove home the next morning, past the center of the United States, all I could think was: I love this country.
(Clay Jenkinson is the director of the Dakota Institute. He is also the Theodore Roosevelt Scholar-in-residence at Dickinson State University. He lives in Bismarck. Contact Clay at Jeffysage@;aol.com.)
Milt Lee wrote on Sep 9, 2008 9:27 AM:
candace wrote on Sep 7, 2008 12:04 PM:
Yes, Coleridge.
How fine, the rain, and the thunder and lightning. "
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