The Canadian Badlands Passion Play
by Royal Sproule
Role: Bride/Adulterous Woman (2012); Shoshana/Eden (2014) |
Director: Barrett Hileman & Royal Sproule | Company: Passion Play Society
I had the pleasure of acting in The Canadian Badlands Passion Play twice so far in my acting career. It is such a unique experience because the cast is comprised of 200 actors and the stage is the size of six football fields (6.92 acres) . It is played in an outdoor amphitheatre which seats over 2000 audience members. I don’t think there is another place in North America where theatre is produced on this large a scale.
I learned a lot about how the space you are working in affects and changes the type of acting needed to tell the story well. In this space, subtlety is not an option. The space is so large that any gesture, facial expression or movement needs to be exaggerated for the audience to see it. I remember one specific moment when I was playing the Adulterous Woman; I was being hauled out in front of everyone, wearing only a nightgown, to be stoned to death for my sins. My reaction to this situation was to pull myself inward and look down in order to not meet anyone’s eye line due to fear, shame and guilt. However, my director told me to look up. This felt contradictory to me because a woman at that time in that situation would not have met the gaze of the males about to stone her to death; the reason I needed to look up is the audience could not see my face if I didn’t due to the amphitheatre seating arrangement. So even though it felt strange at first, I made myself look up in that scene so the audience could experience the pain I was going through.
I learned how the actor has to be very aware of the space around them in order to discover the best way of telling the story for the audience. I later utilized this experience, of working in an amphitheatre, in my Greek theatre class as I had first hand experience of the type of acting needed to tell those stories effectively in such a large theatrical space.
