Some 200 people worked and rehearsed for months to portray the events at the heart of Christianity, writes SEÁN Mac CONNELLin Ballylinan, Co Laois
MIRACLES DO happen. We had a series of them during Holy Week in Ballylinan, a small village in Co Laois where the locals were staging the Passion.
It is a miracle such a small community in a village outside Athy on the road to Portlaoise and Carlow should attempt such an undertaking at all. Although its population has been fattened and concreted during the Celtic Tiger days, there are fewer than 900 souls in its tidy environs.
Yet nearly 200 of them – farmers, civil servants, lorry drivers, guards and nurses – have been rehearsing the production since January 19th in St Anne’s Hall.
The producer/narrator is Síle Graham, a retired schoolteacher who produced the first of the Ballylinan Passion Plays in the early 1990s. “It works because the cast and production crew and, indeed, the whole community support the venture,” she said during the week as they played to another full house.
She was involved in local amateur dramatics in the village and had visited Oberammergau in Germany, home of the famous Passion Play. She and others decided to stage a shortened version in English and tonight will see the close of the fifth production where it was first performed in 1992, 1993, 2000 and 2005.
By the positive power of community, the play was revived this year after a five-year absence, when many believed the changed new Ireland would not see volunteers come forward or audiences fill the seats.
Many in the audience in the village hall, and not just the women and children, were openly weeping by the end of the production which was professional enough to grace any stage.
Not that it was tears all the way. Most of the member of the cast agreed they had “great fun and craic” doing the Passion Play, which is very social.
For instance, one of the high priests, Trevor Lazenby, was “an outsider” from Athy until he became involved.
“I have got to know the whole community around here and it is a marvellous feeling and a great achievement for the community,” he said.
Becoming involved in the play was an eye-opener too for Carlow-based artist Mary Cassidy, who runs a studio and teaches in Carlow.
She found herself in charge of continuity and began to get to know her neighbours and found a great level of acceptance.
“They are just wonderful people here in Ballylinan. They are so community-driven and it is a pleasure working with them,” she said.
A similar pleasure was enjoyed by Peter and Mary Ward from Co Wexford, who came to the play on Wednesday night.
"We saw a report on it in The Irish Timesand decided we would like to see it. We are amazed at what we witnessed," said Mary.
In the audience too were visitors from Cloughjordan, Co Tipperary; Navan, Co Meath; Tullamore, Co Offaly; and a group from the Laois Partnership Company, one of the sponsors of the event, with Laois county councillor Pádraig Fleming.
The majority opinion was that the event had been magnificent and significant even for those who are not church-goers.
Anna Marie McHugh – whose mother Anna May, of the National Ploughing Association, chairs the committee that runs the event – said they strive to make the Passion Play a Christian rather than a Roman Catholic event.
“The cast is made up of people of all faiths and, though we don’t ask, of none at all. It’s interdenominational, and even international in its make-up,” she said. “For instance, there are two Polish people, an Australian, and some British and Scottish people taking part and enjoying it,” she said.
But even more of a miracle is the fact the bulk of the cast is drawn from the three communities in the parish, each of which has its own church, school and football team.
“Not long from now, some of these boys who are working so hard together to make a good show will be literally killing one another on the football pitches,” she said.
The toughest role of all, that of Jesus, was played on Wednesday night by farmer Pascal Lacey, who got his acting skills in his local Macra na Feirme club.
He confessed the toughest part of the performance for him was not the crucifixion scene but imparting to the audience the agony of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane.
“Christ was abandoned there. Left by his friends and he knew he was going to die in a very cruel way, very soon. It is hard to muster up that kind of emotion,” he said.
He worked hard at it and it showed. He was in tears at the end of the play, when the cast came forward to take their curtain calls.
And, of course, in such a rural area, the play could not have been staged without a donkey. Not only does Ballylinan have one, it has a stand-in donkey as well.
“Jack”, owned by Martin Hyland, has starred in every performance since 1992. The cast reckon his love of the Toblerone chocolate with which he is rewarded inspires his love of the stage.
And what was the final miracle of Wednesday night? It was the fact half the village’s electricity supply was knocked out by bad weather but not in the part of the village where the Passion was played out so well.
Watch Alan Betson's slideshow of the staging of the Passion in the village of Ballylinan, Co Laois at irishtimes.com/slideshows