A rabbi's passion, a hajj's play: Oberammergau and its Passion Play between performed history and histrionic place

As a case study, the article focuses on the debate on Oberammergau and its Passion Play in the Anglosphere, namely England and the US, which started in the mid-nineteenth century. Proceeding from notions of the play as a theatre that claims for itself the un-theatrical status of a truth-maker, am ap...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Stenzel, Julia 1978- (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Narr 2019
In: Forum modernes Theater
Year: 2019, Volume: 30, Issue: 1, Pages: 162-177
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Summary:As a case study, the article focuses on the debate on Oberammergau and its Passion Play in the Anglosphere, namely England and the US, which started in the mid-nineteenth century. Proceeding from notions of the play as a theatre that claims for itself the un-theatrical status of a truth-maker, am approaching the debate about this 'other' theatre of religion via the perspective of the English ethnographer Richard Burton and the American Reform rabbi Joseph Krauskopf. In their respective descriptions, Oberammergau becomes a microcosm of religious and historical differences: While Burton points at the histrionic nature of the play and the theatricality of the village, taking it as a symptom of tacit secularization and the touristification of religion, Krauskopf regards the Passion Play as an effective dramatization of the historically untrue and anti-Jewish gospel stories. The reconstruction of their respective notions allows observation of the construction of religious alterity in the process of scientization.
ISSN:2196-3517
Contains:Enthalten in: Forum modernes Theater
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1353/fmt.2019.0011