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| Future Romans and Jewish Guards practising |
As always, the excellent actors are front and centre and do a magnificent job. There are about 60 actors in all the roles of the play from anonymous servants through to companion parts, speaking roles and key characters in the drama that is the Passion.
But behind the actors are a busy team of supporters making sure everything is in place for the play to go on. The unsung heroes of the play ensure the following tasks are ready for the play to go on:
The Monastery Grounds
The Fathers and Brothers of the Monastery together with many volunteers go to great lengths to ensure the grounds are ready for the 5,000 to 10,000 visitors who typically attend the Passion Play.
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| Do you want to help with the costumes? Sure! |
Gum tress continually drop leaves, sticks and branches, lower branches must be pruned, toilets must be prepared and refreshed during the day, police have to be informed about the event, the Fathers assist spiritually with confessions and other support and more.
Costumes
Over the years costumes need to be cleaned and maintained, upgraded and replaced, sorted and stored safely.
In 2017 we upgraded the support crew outfits so all in public display had a costume, including the narrator and prayer leader, crowd management, microphone runners and more. This meant a sewing bee of multiple clever ladies with sewing machines and production line to create dozens of new robes.
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| The prayers heard between the scenes started here |
While they were at it, they updated and repaired all the existing robes and costumes too.
Then at the dress rehearsal and on the day they allocated and fitted the costumes, recording who had what and making sure they all came back at the end. The two ladies in the photo volunteered for the day knowing nothing about what was going to happen. They did a great job and will back this year!
Props
Helmets, armours, weapons, robes, crown of thorns, whips, Last Supper dinner and plates and on and on. Lots of great looking things to add flavour and colour to the play need to be researched, built or purchased, maintained and placed in the right place and time and retrieved at the end and stored.
Script, Narrator, Prayer Leader, Director
The combination of fine tuning the script, aligning it with scripture, working with actors to allow it to match each individuals preferences and abilities makes an interesting challenge.
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| The Excellent Religious Goods store run by these very busy ladies |
It is not a challenge only one person can do alone. It is best done with a group of faithful people all working together to achieve the best result. It also means that each play is subtly different due to the differing personalities and experience of each of the organisers. Ever fresh and the same.
Sound
When you have thousands of people watching the play in the open you need good sound near each scene. That means a mobile rig set up on a vehicle with wireless microphones. A vehicle means we need a driver that is alert and aware of lots of people milling around each scene, a crowd management person to keep the crowd away and a sound engineer to get the sound working properly. This is very tricky and the man that worked the sound for the last ten years did an amazing job before passing on the baton in 2017.
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| Someone has to be the Passionate Narrator. |
Sets
Each scene of the play is in a different place in the Monastery grounds. We have scenes from the Palm Sunday entrance on the roadway, Last Supper, Temple for the Sanhedrin High Priests, the Roman Palace, punishment area for the scourging and the crucifixion. Each scene needs to be in view of the audience, safe for actors and everyone else, recognisable as each scene and sturdy enough to survive setup and take down and storage.
Crowd Management
One of the hardest parts of running a live play which travels across 1500 metres and thousands of spectators is safety of all concerned while providing maximum view of all concerned. Everyone wants front row spots yet if they close in too much too few get to see. Yet, if the viewing lines are pushed too far back the immersive nature is reduced.
It is a fine balance but we constantly work at getting the best view for the most people possible. To do this we have dozens of people dedicated to Crowd Management.
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| The buggy is needed to transport priests and key actors |
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| Sound Truck crew - Crowd Management, Sound Engineer and Driver |
Runners
We have support crew that ensure actors have microphones when they need them, props in the right place and retrieved afterwards and lots of other bits and pieces that come up when least expected.
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| A pause while collecting donations to support the play |
Donation Collectors
Putting on the Good Friday Passion Play takes funding to cover so many expenses including Toilet hire, props, costumes, information booklets and more. Spectator donations have been able to fund the continuing updates and improvements over the last 25 years.
Overall you can work out how many people contribute their time and talents to such an impressive play in so many different ways, hidden from the limelight, but essential to its successful running.
Thank you to all our support crew. We look forward to your help again this year.
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| I have a list and everything should be on it |
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| The past sound engineer passing on the knowledge |
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| Putting up the Last Supper scene |
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| Angels guarding the tomb |
