8th Play: The Passion Play

How the Story goes: The three Passion plays under examination take place in disparate milieus, although Ms. Ruhl’s language freely mixes period syntax with contemporary slang and her own timeless lyricism. The simple costumes (by Gabriel Berry and Antonia Ford-Roberts) are a jumbled mixture of now and then. The first section is set in an English village in 1575, during one of Queen Elizabeth’s attempts to stamp out Roman Catholicism; the second at Oberammergau in Germany in 1934, three centuries after the first performance of the Passion play there, as National Socialism is on the rise; the third in Spearfish, S.D., beginning in 1969 and continuing to the present day, with a detour through the Reagan ’80s.
All three sections are, fundamentally, backstage soap operas accented with comedy and a little bit of mysticism, as biblical imagery bleeds from the stage into life and vice versa. For the actors who play key roles in the pageant in all three time periods — Jesus (Hale Appleman), Pontius Pilate (Mr. Fumusa), the Virgin Mary (Kate Turnbull) and Mary Magdalene (Nicole Wiesner) — impersonating these symbols of human suffering and purity and sin is an honor and a burden. And maybe something of an aphrodisiac.
In old England the Virgin Mary finds herself peculiarly bewitched by the slender, sinuous form of Mr. Appleman’s John the fisherman as he languishes on the cross in his role in the pageant. “Oh! His loincloth’s slipping!” she cries out with obvious relish. “It’s sinful to covet your own son, Mary,” replies the other Mary. The grouchy response: “I didn’t ask to play his mother.”
But John seems to take his role more seriously, and the Virgin Mother ends up turning to his cousin, Mr. Fumusa’s hungry-eyed fish gutter, for consolation. The unfortunate results have the unmarried Mary claiming another miracle has taken place, to much village suspicion. Enter Queen Elizabeth, played with chilly imperiousness by Mr. Smith (looking strikingly like Diana Vreeland, but never mind), who puts an end to the play, which she sees as inculcating Catholic subversion.
http://theater.nytimes.com/2010/05/13/theater/reviews/13passion.html

I am going to be working on this play for my Script Analysis class. Professor Orr recommended that i do this play for my final project since I ejoy Sarah Ruhl's play so much. I look forward to reading the play and working on it!
Here is my project proposal for the Play:

For my final project the play I have chosen to do is Sarah Ruhl’s Passion Play. I really enjoy Ruhl’s plays, especially Eurydice, which is the most recent play that I read. Sarah Ruhl’s Passion Play was suggested to me by my professor and I am willingly taking that suggestion. Unfortunately, I have not read the Passion Play yet since I am in the process of ordering it, but I am anxiously looking forward to reading the play. I hope that this play will move me as Eurydice did. Upon researching the play I have come to find that the play consists of three acts. Out of those three acts I will choose to analyze one of them. The overall background of what the Passion Play encompasses is, “The ways faith and art interact with politics and personalities, as re-enactments of Christ's Passion change the destinies of the performers” (Sheward). This quotation I came across in my research of the play is a tease, a sample of the delicious playwriting that I am soon to indulge in. I am eagerly looking forward to analyzing Sarah Ruhl’s Passion Play.