Hailed by The New Yorker's John Lahr as "extraordinary," "bold," and "inventive," and called "a new
American classic" by Time Magazine , Sarah Ruhl's Passion Play takes us behind the scenes of three very different communities attempting to stage the death of Christ.
This intimate epic occurs at the timely intersection of politics and religion. Ruhl dramatizes three different communities of players rehearsing their annual staging of the Passion: 1575 Northern
England, just before Queen Elizabeth outlaws the ritual; 1934 Oberammergau, Bavaria, as Hitler is rising to power; and Spearfish, South Dakota, from the time of Vietnam through Reagan's presidency. In each period, the players grapple with the transformative nature of art, and politics are never far in the background.
Casting Breakdown for Passion Play
Part I
England, 1575
Part II
Germany, 1934
Part III
South Dakota 1969-the present
Pontius the Fish Gutter
(plays Pontius Pilate & Satan)
Foot Soldier
(plays Pontius Pilate)
P
(plays Pontius Pilate)
John the Fisherman
(plays Jesus and Adam)
Mary 1
(plays the Virgin Mary & Eve)
Mary 2
(plays Mary Magdalen)
Visiting Friar
Village Idiot
Carpenter 1 (Sam)
(plays the angel Gabriel)
Carpenter 2 (Simon)
(plays Joseph)
Director
Machinist
(plays the Emperor)
Queen Elizabeth
Eric
(plays Jesus)
Elsa
(plays the Virgin Mary)
J
(plays Jesus)
Mary 1
(plays the Virgin Mary)
Mary 2
(plays Mary Magdalen)
Mary 2
(plays Mary Magdalen)
Visiting Englishman (Simon Lily) VA Psychiatrist
Violet Violet
Carpenter 1 (Johann)
Carpenter 2 (Ludwig)
Carpenter 1/Ensemble
Carpenter 2/Ensemble
Director (Rochus Schallhammer) Director
German Officer Young Director
Hitler President Reagan
Queen Elizabeth
Hitler
Note: In addition to the roles listed above, I will be casting 3-5 ensemble actors (of either gender) to fill various essential parts. These roles will be cast AFTER 1 st -year MFA shows have been cast.
Please note that a male actor will be cast in the role of Queen Elizabeth/Hitler/President
Reagan.

Part I – A village in Northern England, Spring 1575
Part I depicts a love triangle in a seaside village during the reign of Elizabeth I, during the time when anti-Catholic sentiment was the law of the land and priests were hunted down and executed.
Pontius the Fish Gutter, stunted and deformed from birth with a spine that is “crooked as the road to hell” has spent his life envying his tall, beautiful cousin, John the Fisherman. John is popular while
Pontius is an outcast. More importantly, John plays the role of Jesus in the village Passion Play, while Pontius is made to play Pontius Pilate and Satan.
During a rehearsal, we overhear the Marys - Mary 1, who plays the Virgin Mary, and Mary 2, who plays Mary Magdalene - discussing sex. Mary 2 beds men all the time, but finds the whole business boring, while Mary 1 longs for the physical comfort of a man, especially John the Fisherman, who looks so good in his rehearsal loincloth. Mary 1 pursues John in hopes of bringing him to her bed, but his piety isn’t an act, and Mary finds him to be “chaste as a clam”. Pontius, who lusts after Mary
1, seizes the opportunity to offer himself to her. Though he is deformed and smells of dead fish,
Mary 1 takes Pontius to her bed. In return, he promises to be “silent as a dead fish, silent as a closed box underwater.”
Meanwhile, strange and portentous things are happening in the village. The sky has been turning red in the middle of the day, seemingly controlled by an odd young girl known only as the Village
Idiot, who has a habit of speaking truths that the townspeople don't want to hear. At the same time, a priest has arrived, in disguise, and is being sheltered by John. The Village Idiot has prophetic dreams of the Queen coming to stop the playing of the Passion. In the midst of this other-worldly turmoil, Mary 1 discovers she is pregnant with Pontius' child.
Pontius offers to wed Mary, but she refuses, wanting to keep her part in the play. Afraid that it will be taken from her, or that she will be punished or killed, the Marys devise a plan: Mary 1
"confesses" to the priest that she has had a vision that she has been impregnated by God. News of the “miracle” spreads through the village, and many doubt Mary’s claim. John the Fisherman, however, sees God in her eyes and offers to marry her and raise the baby like Joseph did before him.
Stuck in an impossible position, Mary 1 declines, telling him that she is God’s bride now.
Mary 1 hears the rumors going around and decides to take desperate action. When she tells Mary 2 that she has to leave, Mary 2 confesses her love for Mary 1. She asks Mary 1 to run away with her, and offers to dress like a man and raise the child with her. Mary 1 kisses Mary 2 and leaves, alone.
The village goes ahead with their performance of the Passion. With Mary 1 absent, the Village Idiot is placed into the role of the Virgin Mary. During the first scene, courtiers announce the arrival of
Queen Elizabeth, who stops the performance and has her people search houses for priests.
The townspeople strike the play. As they meet in the town square to hand in their costumes, John walks in carrying the lifeless body of Mary 1, saying he fished her out of the sea. In the final scene,
Pontius mourns beside the body of Mary as John fishes on the sea in the background. Quoting the lines of Pilate, Pontius takes his own life, as big, beautiful fish enter and carry Pontius into the sea.
Part II – Oberammergau, Bavaria 1934
The play opens with Simon Lily, an Englishman, traveling by train to Germany on his way to
Oberammergau, which has been famous for performing the Passion for 300 years. He plans to write a book about the theatre where the Passion is performed, and to interview the cast and the director.
On his way into town, he meets a young girl – Violet – crying in the street. She is crying because she

doesn’t have a part in the play; only native Oberammergauers are given parts and, though she has lived in the town her whole life, she is considered a foreigner. She distrusts the villagers because they all look the same – jolly and fat – and because she claims to keep turning the sky red, but no one notices.
Elsewhere in town, we meet Eric, a young woodworker who has taken on the role of the Christus.
His father, who played the role for many years, has gotten too old so the part was given to Eric. Eric and his sister Mary 2 live with and care for their father, who has fallen ill from grief over losing his part in the play. Mary 2 is a homebody who believes in duty to family and home. Eric, however, is sick of his small-town life and the burden of playing the holy Christus.
Eric has become secretly romantically involved with a young man who is a Foot Soldier in the
German army. Eric spends so much time with the Foot Soldier that he has trouble learning his lines for the play, and with each rehearsal, he seems to take a step backward. Eric longs to abandon
Oberammergau to join the army and see the world. Mary 2 tells him that he’s needed at home and, besides, he is too sensitive for the army.
During a rehearsal for the Last Supper scene, Eric can’t remember his lines. Violet, who has been hiding under the table, begins feeding him his lines perfectly. As the scene goes on, Violet changes the words she gives Eric to reflect her own thoughts on Christianity, including asking if people need a strong personality to tell them what to do because there’s no God, and reminding everyone that
Jesus was a Jew. The Director discovers Violet under the table and forcefully locks her inside a cage.
Back at their home, Mary 2 chastises Eric for forgetting his lines. Eric tells her that the role meant something to their father that it doesn’t mean for him. During their discussion, they hear a sound and realize that their father has passed away.
That night, Eric goes to the theatre to rehearse his part. He notices Violet, who is still locked inside the cage, and lets her go. He is surprised by the Foot Soldier. As they embrace, a German Officer watches from the shadows. The next night, as the Foot Soldier prepares to perform in the play, the
German Officer baits him, asking him to comment on the attractiveness of Elsa (the actress who plays the Virgin Mary), and suggesting that, in the German army, something bad could happen to a man who does not “appreciate women the way a man should”.
The beginning of the performance is interrupted as Hitler arrives and speaks to the crowd, extolling the virtues of the Passion and how it clearly demonstrates the intellectual superiority of the Roman
Pilate against “the menace of the Jews”.
The Englisman begins his train journey home, writing a letter to his wife about the glory of the
Passion, and about how nervous Herr Hitler made him. He resolves to stay out of politics. Back in
Oberammergau, the Foot Soldier is shipping out, and he and Eric have an intimate farewell.
A few years later, we see Violet, alone and hiding in the woods. Eric, dressed in the uniform of the
Nazi army, discovers her. He tells her that he has to take her with him because she’s “not an
Oberammergauer”. She tells him she has lived in the village her whole life; he says it doesn’t matter, that her blood is different. Violet tells Eric that this isn’t a play, that he doesn’t have to do what he’s told. He tries to pick her up, and they struggle. She says she’d rather walk. He puts her down and, as the entire company bears witness in the background, Eric shoves her forward into the light as we hear the sound of a train speeding across the tracks.

Part III – Spearfish, South Dakota 1969-the present
Act I
As the play begins we see P and J, brothers who both have roles in the Passion (Pilate and Jesus, respectively). They are saying goodbye, as J is about to go to college and P is about to ship out to
Vietnam. The other cast members throw P a surprise going away party where P proposes to his girlfriend, Mary 1.
One night, when P has been gone for a while, Mary 1 asks J to come over because the wind is making sounds that scare her. J tells her about college and how he has begun taking acting classes. He offers
Mary a joint, to help her sleep. They smoke and both get stoned. Then they begin kissing.
We move to a jungle in Vietnam. P, in uniform, carries a giant, bloody dead fish across the stage, then collapses. Queen Elizabeth appears to him, saying that she can’t fathom why any subject would be willing to die for a leader other than a monarch who fights beside them on the battlefield. Big, beautiful fish enter as Elizabeth’s courtiers carry P away.
On a night in South Dakota, Mary 2 is in the tollbooth where she works when Mary 1 walks up to her. Mary 1 tells Mary 2 that she is pregnant and implies that she is considering an abortion. Mary 2 asks why, since she’s married; Mary 1 suggests that the baby may not be her husband’s, and asks
Mary 2’s forgiveness.
At rehearsal the next day, J tells Mary 1 that he’s been in love with her since 7 th grade, but that they had made a mistake and that he’ll never talk about it again. They practice the Ascension as the act ends.
Act II
The act opens with P coming arriving back home. Though happy to be back, he seems to be having difficulty readjusting to civilian life, and has trouble letting Mary 1 touch him. He meets 3 year-old
Violet, Mary 1’s daughter, for the first time. Violet is confused when P wants to sleep outside the front door of the house; P tells her it’s to protect her from “bad people”. While outside, the sky turns red and P sees Elizabethan sailboats in the sky. He believes he can control the wind, and starts guiding the boats to the shore. Violet, surprisingly, can see the boats as well. Violet seems to remember things that happened to Violet of Oberammergau, telling P that she died in “the war before”. Together, P and Violet try to help each other get the wars out of their heads.
P resumes his role in the Passion Play, alongside his brother who is now a working actor in summer stock. While rehearsing the trial scene, with a young new director, P washes his hands and sees them covered in blood. He also hallucinates seeing Hitler on stage. In his anger and confusion, P punches the Young Director. The Young Director tells Mary 1 that he has to fire her husband, but she convinces him to give P another chance.
At a later rehearsal, P and J come into conflict because J wants the scene to feel more “real”. P loses his temper and, after asking J if he really wants more reality in the scene, P takes a hammer and nail and nails his own hand to the cross.
The next scene flashes forward a decade, to 1984. P is in a VA hospital, being interviewed by a psychiatrist. He and Mary 1 are divorced, and he has been drifting from city to city, sleeping outside. He tells the doctor he just wants help getting back to South Dakota, so he can “play Pontius
Pilate the way he was meant to be played,” which is “like a hung-over politician in a God-forsaken province who took stupid orders on a really fucking bad day.”

P gets back to Spearfish and convinces a reluctant Mary 1 to let him stay the night on the couch.
While he talks to Violet, J shows up, supposedly there for “a visit”. J is now a successful actor on a soap opera in New York, but has come back to do a special performance of the Passion for President
Ronald Reagan, who is making a campaign stop in Spearfish. P and J argue, and when P speculates that J has been sleeping with Mary 1, they get into a physical fight. Violet’s cries stop them, and J leaves.
At the performance of the Passion, Ronald Reagan gives a speech glorifying America and talking about the need for spiritual revival. The play begins: a slick, almost Broadway-style production. As
Mary 1 and J perform a scene, P jumps on stage and stops the play. He addresses President Reagan directly. Then, pulling a gun, he points it at his own head as the lights black out.
In the last scene of the play, we see P as he exists in the present. He informs the audience that he didn’t shoot himself or his wife and brother, and he didn’t shoot the President. In fact, he never actually even got up on the stage. He is still drifting from place to place, sending part of his disability checks to Mary. He tells us that he’s not sure if the country needs more religion or less, and that we all need a good night’s sleep. He promises to summon the wind for us, to help us sleep.
The Elizabethan boats reappear. P gets onto a boat and sails away as we are left with the sound of the wind.