PASSION PLAY 2019 ANGLIA SQUARE

A community play for all

Good Friday

19.04.2019

3pm -4pm

Admission to the performance is free.

Anglia Square, Norwich, NR3 1DZ

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Members of various churches and organisations, including a Bishop, will join together for this unique performance under the iconic glass canopy.

The audience are invited to join in the action as it moves around the Square.

Witness…

 John the Baptist on the street calling sinners to repent.

Satan’s temptations in the Wilderness.

The radical Sermon on the Mount.

The treacherous plotting and arrest of Jesus in the dangerous streets of Jerusalem.

In Medieval times the church used street theatre to tell stories from the Bible as a way to communicate Christianity to everyone.  The Anglia Square Passion Play 2019 will continue this tradition.  It will be performed under the glass canopy in the centre of Anglia Square and involve the shops around the square, local people, community groups, local churches, and even a Bishop who plays the Angel Gabriel.

Taking any performance to the streets is ambitious. The Anglia Square Passion Play 2019 is based on a very successful version performed in Horstead last year. There the performance was inside the Tithe Barn on a stage, making life for everyone much easier. However, performing Christ’s Passion is not about making things easy. If we are to understand even the tiniest iota of what He went through both physically and emotionally, then we have to be prepared to push ourselves too.

Through the Angel Gabriel’s narrative lens, we are made privy to actions and emotions which lend a new perspective to a story that many of us may feel we already know well enough. The Rt Revd Jonathan Meyrick, Bishop of Lynn had this to say:

“The original events of Jesus’s last days and death took place in public – the drama literally unfolded on the streets with hundreds of people around. Retelling the story in Anglia Square, surrounded by shops and shoppers, therefore feels very fitting. Kandi Kammoun’s script is fresh and different. As we seek to bring it to life, we are hoping that we can make the old story sing in a new way, that the love released into the world then can fire us again now.”

The audience can witness John the Baptist urging repentance…Jesus preaching a new interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount…the events of Holy Week in the dangerous streets of Jerusalem…the simmering anger of Judas Iscariot and his final betrayal in the Garden of Gethsemane.

Be a part of the walk to the place of crucifixion – Golgotha – or simply watch. See Christ’s suffering and witness the pain of Mary his mother, as helplessly, she stood and watched her child murdered.

Eric Kirk Manager of Anglia Sq said: “Anglia square is pleased to carry on its tradition of working with local churches whether it is beer and carols or hosting a messy church for children. To be host to an open-air Passion Play is a special privilege and we look forward to it with great anticipation.”

Admission is free and people are welcome to watch a part or stay for the whole one-hour performance.

All will be welcome to this unique and special event.

 

Some photographs from The Horstead Passion 2018: