Held only once a decade, the Oberammergau Passion Play will be performed from May through October 2010.  Normally sold out like many world events such as the World Cup, the Olympics, and the Superbowl, due to some impact from the economy both group and individual packages are still available.  

The first Passion Play was held in 1634.  The town's residents vowed that if God were to spare them from the effects of the bubonic plague ravaging the region, they would perform a play every ten years depicting the life and death of Jesus. The death rate among adults rose from one in October 1632 to twenty in the month of March 1633. The adult death rate slowly subsided to one in the month of July 1633. The villagers believed they had been spared and so kept their part of the vow when the play was first performed in 1634. The most recent performances took place in 2000, and the next series of plays will be a season of 102 performances on dates from Saturday, May 15 until Sunday, October 3, 2010.

The play, which is now performed repeatedly over the course of five months during the last year of each decade, involves over 2,000 performers, musicians, and stage technicians, all residents of the village. The play consists of spoken text, musical and choral accompaniment and scenes from the Old Testament depicted for the audience by motionless actors accompanied by verbal description. The scenes portrayed include a scene of King Ahasuerus rejecting Vashti in favor of Esther, the brothers selling Joseph into slavery in Egypt, and Moses raising up the bronze serpent in the wilderness.

For more information on the Passion Play see:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oberammergau_Passion_Play.  Oberammergau is located about an hour drive south of Munich, Germany so it is very easy to combine with your group or individual itinerary to Southern Germany or Austria!   For more information on package deals, contact any group or individual Fellowship Travel agent or Mail@fellowship.com   Click here for a sample custom group itinerary, or watch a short video about the play here.