How I Spent my Easter Holiday

One of the reasons why I encouraged my mom to come visit over Easter was so that we could attend the world's largest outdoor play -- Fazenda Nova's [also known as Nova Jerusalem] Passion Play. The play is presented in the largest outdoor theatre in the world, a one-third walled replica of the city of Jerusalem as it stood two thousand years ago, in a village approximately two and a half hours from Recife. The set consists of nine different stages where the story of the crucification is played out over a three hour period.

The amazing thing is that both the actors and the audience have to move to the next stage between scenes. The night we were there, there were 10,000 people in attendance. Yes! 10,000 people who had to change locations every twenty minutes, the approximate length of each scene. I was amazed at the level of organization that allowed so many people to up and move in an orderly fashion.

In many cases, the effects of the audience moving became part of the play, as the audience unwittingly transformed itself into the crowds of the crowd scenes. The theatre, a privately-funded multi-year labour of love, was landscaped and created so perfectly, that this movement of actors, horses, centurions, romans, wailers, and the audience blended into one flowing movement, neither of which could have existed without the other.

This blend of the acting, mixed with the open air setting [it was a full moon and a perfectly clear starry night] and the "choreography" of the audience was an impressive mix. Well worth the time!