THE PASSION PLAY AT UAHUKA

The decennial Passion Play at Oberammergau is, perhaps, the most written and talked about theatrical performance that has ever been staged, and even the annual pageants put on during Holy Week in certain of the Italian, Spanish and South American theatres have attained to considerable publicity in other parts of the world; the Passion Play of the French mission at Uahuka, an island of the Marquesan group, has been witnessed by less than half a dozen non-resident white men, and as a consequence the fame of it, except such hazy versions as have found their way to France through the channels of the missionary society records, scarcely reaches beyond the coral reefs that fringe the rocky Uahukan shores.

Vague rumours of a strange Marquesan Passion Play had come to us before we sailed from Hawaii, and on the arrival of the yacht in Taio-haie, the capital of that group, we were assured that such a performance was "staged" annually. The interest of this announcement was tempered by the news that the last performance had taken place a fortnight previously and that another would not be put on until Holy Week of the following year. We did not make our projected visit to Uahuka, therefore, and I was consequently unable to secure firsthand data regarding this unique event. The somewhat fragmentary and frivolous account I am writing smacks strongly, I fear, of the sources from which my information was gathered, this or that trader and skipper of the "beaches" of Taio-haie and Tahiti, and especially a fascinating renegade by the name of Bruce Manners, who came off to the yacht one night in Papeete and smoked a half dozen of the Commodore's Perfectos while spinning us yarns of his lurid career in the Marquesas and Paumotos.

All through the South Pacific missionary work follows closely the lines of nationality, with the London Missionary Society dominant in the British possessions, and French organizations, both Protestant and Catholic, monopolizing the field in the islands over which the jaunty tri-colour of France whips itself to tatters in the whistling Southeast Trades. As the United States holds only a naval station at Pago Pago, Samoa, and Germany is now out of the Pacific altogether, missionaries of American and Teutonic extraction are a negligible quantity. This alignment gives the aggressive British society most of the reclamation work west of the 180th meridian, and the French the territory to the east. The headquarters of the French missionary system is that country's capital in the South Seas, Papeete, Tahiti, in the Society group; but the active zone, the "firing line," so to speak, is in the barbaric and cannibalistic Marquesas, and centres in the big island of the north group, Uahuka.

The Passion Play at Uahuka has been presented, it is said, every Easter for the last fifty years. It was inaugurated by the Catholic mission, and in its initial presentation all the rÔles were taken by French missionaries, these being gathered from various parts of the Paumotos, Societies and Marquesas and brought to the scene of the performance in a specially chartered fleet of trading schooners. The following year numerous minor parts were given to natives as rewards for becoming converts to Catholicism—the competition between Romanist and Protestant was very keen at this time—and before many seasons had gone by even the leading rÔles came to be filled by the savages, the missionaries contenting themselves with such positions as stage manager, musical director, mistress of the wardrobe and the like.

This Passion Play serves admirably the purpose for which it was originally designed, that of bringing home by tableaux to the simple natives a more graphic realization of the dramatic events surrounding the life and death of Christ than would be possible by mere words and pictures, and while its tone would scarcely be characterized as "dignified" by a dispassioned white man from the outside world, its moral effect upon the natives,—temporarily, at least—is most favourable.

The Passion Play is still presented in the same place that the first performance by the missionaries was put on, a sort of natural ampitheatre in the very heart of the Catholic reserve on the outskirts of the village of Uahuka. The mission buildings, low rambling structures of coral and galvanized iron, flank two sides of the pentagonal enclosure. Two other sides are shut in by close-set rows of banyans of such size that their roots and down-reaching branches mingle to form almost solid lines of irregular wooden terraces upon which hundreds of spectators may find seats without crowding. The stage is a hard-packed piece of ground sloping gently down to a crystal clear stream of water which meanders past, sparkling in the sunbeams like a row of footlights, the position of which it approximately occupies. Behind the stage is a creeper-covered wall of rock, with a face so unbroken and sheer that the direction "exit rear" must necessarily be eliminated from all performances. To the left is spoken of as "down Ta-roo-la,"—the name of the little stream—and to the right is "up Ta-roo-la." Actors waiting in either wings are screened from the sight of the audience by the last of the rows of banyans which run down close to the stream on either side.

The music is furnished by a slightly wheezy organ, a clarionet and a lot of hollow-tree tom-toms, and to the stirring strains of the Marseillaise played by this orchestra the opening curtain is rung up upon the tableau of "Christ and the Children." Of course there is no curtain and no ringing up; Christ simply strolls in from "up Ta-roo-la," and the children troop in from "down Ta-roo-la," and they meet in the middle of the stage. Then Christ pats them all on the head, and they all file off behind Him as He exits "down Ta-roo-la." There is no stage setting, and little is attempted in the way of make-ups.

The children are simply children and the part of Christ is taken by a native called Lurau. Lurau is the greatest pearl diver and shark fisher in all the Marquesas. With his hair and beard neatly oiled and combed, and dressed in a trailing robe of snowy muslin, Lurau makes a far more acceptable-looking Christus than one sees in many of the South American presentations of the Passion Play. There is little in his disposition off the stage to fit him for his exalted rÔle, and before he became a fixture in the leading part of the Passion Play he was a veritable rubber ball in the way in which he bounced back and forth between the Protestants and Catholics. He owes the distinguished honour that has come to him to his beard rather than to his histrionic abilities; he is the only native in the Marquesas—and, as far as is known, in all the South Pacific as well—with a growth of hair on his face.

"The part of Christ is taken by a native called Lurau"

Marquesan mother and child

The simple white robe worn by Lurau is in good keeping with his part, but this can hardly be said of a very tangible halo that has apparently been cut from a square of shiny biscuit tin, a piece of literalness, however, in which the simple islanders seem to see no trace of incongruity. In fact, this item of make-up was added, it is said, at the suggestion of a native who, after one of the early performances of the Play, led the stage-manager to a coloured print in the mission chapel and pointed out that the stage Christ had no such "fire-face" as distinguished the one in the lithograph. He suggested obtaining the halo effect by having the actor wear a lot of little kukui nut torches in his hair, but the cautious fathers, while acknowledging the realistic possibilities of this expedient, decided on the jagged rim of bright biscuit tin as safer.

During the week of the Play, both on and off the stage, Lurau is quiet, dignified and a general paragon of virtue in every particular; afterwards—he is just like all the rest of his brothers and sisters of the Marquesas, prone to excesses. Lurau's post-Passion Play spree is listed with the hurricane season as one of the regular annual disturbances in those latitudes.

The second scene of the Play is that of the "Redemption of the Magdalen." The latter, dressed in a bright red holakau or wrapper—the symbol of her sinfulness—comes strolling in from the upstream side and discovers Christ resting on a niche of the rock which forms the back wall. Her repentance and forgiveness follow, after which Christ presents her with a pure white holakau which he chances to have tucked under his arm. She receives a blessing, trips off down stream, changes holakaus in the wink of an eye behind the friendly trunk of a bread-fruit tree, and the "curtain" follows her disappearance upstream in the trailing robe of white.

The Magdalen has been played by a different person almost every year. The one who took that part in the last presentation was, so Bruce Manners assured us, far better in the "red holakau" than in the "white holakau" part of her rÔle, her work as a repentant sinner having been decidedly marred through a persistent tendency to ogle a group of young trading schooner officers who occupied a proscenium banyan.

For the "Supper" scene, no endeavour is made to reproduce a tableau patterned on the famous painting of Leonardo da Vinci. Historic truthfulness is not attempted even to the extent of a table. A bountiful repast of bread-fruit, plantains, yams and coconuts is spread out upon a cover of banana leaves, and everybody sits down cross-legged and eats for fully ten minutes before a word is spoken. Supper over, the remnants are gathered up and thrown into the convenient Ta-roo-la, the waters of which carry them away in a jiffy. Then follows the washing of the feet of the disciples. Lurau wades over into the stream, seats himself on a convenient boulder, and as each of the disciples comes out in turn, gives both of the latter's feet a vigorous scrubbing with a brush of coco husk and a piece of soap. After receiving a blessing, the disciple heads for the bank, and as each lifts the skirt of his robe to clear the stream a well-defined "high-water mark," running in graceful undulations around his lower calf, is usually disclosed to the eyes of the audience.

The scene of "Christ Healing the Lepers" as presented at Uahuka is, perhaps, the most realistic tableau, in one particular at least, that is staged in any of the Passion Plays. Real lepers appear on the stage. In the early days of the Play these parts were taken by entirely whole and healthy people, but the missionaries were never able to persuade the natives that, with so many real lepers ready to hand, any make-believe in this particular need be indulged in. Finally several of the lepers themselves—Christian converts—came to the Fathers and asked what was the use of curing a lot of well people in the Play when there were so many sick ones about that really needed curing. This was hard to answer—to the satisfaction of the questioners—and the upshot of the matter was that a half dozen of the cases least liable to spread the dread disease were allowed upon the stage at the next performance. Following the week of the Play it is said that a very marked improvement was evident for several months in the condition of every one of the unfortunates that appeared during its continuance. Since that occasion the good missionaries have not had the heart to refuse the prayers of any of those who have come to them at Eastertide, until now it is necessary to divide them off into squads of a score or so each, and allow a different squad to appear each night. The government doctor at Uahuka claims that there has been a marked decrease in the leper mortality of the island since this strange practice has been inaugurated, and that no serious consequences have followed the extraordinary mixing of the sick and the well at this season. No unnecessary chances are taken, however, and the good Lurau who, in his rÔle of Christ, is more exposed than any of the others, receives special attention after each performance in the shape of a formaldehyde fumigation at the hands of the doctor.

One of the most interesting characters in the Play is Judas. From the first it has been the aim of the Fathers to impress the natives as strongly as possible with the real goodness or badness of the various characters, and to this end, in the case of Judas, the natives who have played the rÔle have been repeatedly taken, on a temporary reprieve, from the convict settlement. Judas has always been a bad man, actually as well as artistically, and it is recorded that no less than half a dozen of him have endeavoured to steal the thirty pieces of silver—in this case Mexican or Chilean dollars, which pass current in the island—with which he has been bribed. Of late years the thoughtful Fathers have removed this temptation by binding the bargain with a tinkling bagful of broken crockery.

The Judas of five or six years ago—one John Bascard, the half-caste son of an Australian trader and a native wife, who was serving a term for robbing a pearler—turned out almost as badly as his notorious original, for he looted the mission on the second night of the Play, rowed off with the Magdalen to a trading cutter anchored in the bay, surprised the solitary watchman, threw him overboard, and sailed the little boat off single-handed for the Paumotos, leaving the Play to limp on to a finish with half-trained understudies in two of the leading parts.

The part of Pontius Pilate has been played for nearly twenty years by an old chief—a quondam cannibal—named Rauga. His costume is a frogged military coat and a silk hat, the idea of the Fathers being to effect a combination that will make the deepest impression on the natives as symbolical of constituted power. The missionary and the French soldier are the two most august personages which their simple minds can conceive of, and the two most striking features of the costume of each, united upon one person, make an impression incomparably more profound than would a Roman toga topped off with an eagle-crowned helmet, or any of the other combinations that are worn by Pilate in the more pretentious Passion Plays. Rauga is inordinately proud of his part, and the honour of appearing in it has held him steadfastly Catholic in the face of active efforts by the Protestants to swing him, temporarily at least, over to their side.

The costume of John the Baptist is, as might be expected, that of a native novitiate—a black robe and a shovel hat. If Manners is to be believed, the unfortunate individual who was cast for that part a half dozen years back made a transient appearance in a somewhat modified garb. This was a "Brand-from-the-Burning" called Ma-woo, who had been converted a few months previously when the Fathers secured his parole from prison, where he had been serving a five-year sentence for illicit pearling. His most salient characteristic was an inordinate fondness for coco toddy, a circumstance which was taken advantage of by a couple of local traders to play a practical joke upon the missionaries, with whom their kind, in the Marquesas as elsewhere, have always been at open warfare. The present of a calabash of toddy to Ma-woo, with the promise of another later, putting him in a cheerfully obliging mood, he was rigged out in a ribbon-wide breech-clout, an old dress coat and a battered silk hat, and with a bulky volume of Sailing Directions under his arm was quietly conducted to the "stage entrance" of the banyan theatre just in time to respond to his "cue" in the John the Baptist tableau.

Manners gave me a photograph of unlucky Ma-woo, taken by one of the traders before they "sent him on his mission," and if it is really true, as is claimed, that John the Baptist appeared thus accoutred in his tableau in the Passion Play, one can easily believe our friend's assertion that two of the sisters fainted and that the Fathers caused the culprit to be thrown back into prison to serve the remainder of his sentence.

Ruth Ingalls, who has played the part of Mary, the Mother, for the last three years, is a half-white girl of unknown parentage. She is said to have a Junoesque figure, a face of rare beauty and a manner of real charm. She is about twenty-five years of age—fifteen years younger than Lurau, whose mother she is supposed to be in the Play—and has been directly under the care of the missionaries since the time when, a child of five, she was cast up on the beach of one of the Paumotos with the wreckage of a Tahitian trading schooner. She is supposed to be the illegitimate daughter of a French count—a fugitive from justice in Tahiti a quarter of a century ago—and the queen of the neighbouring island of Bora-Bora, a lady whose marital responsibilities appear to have rested as lightly upon her as blown foam upon the bosom of the Southeast Trade. But whatever her origin, Ruth Ingalls is, according to all accounts, a young person of unlimited balance and poise, has a good education, both as to languages and music, and is possessed of a quiet and modest disposition. She is, moreover, a good Christian in the highest sense of the name, and her work in the mission school has been of incalculable value to the Fathers. Her interpretation of the character of the Madonna is doubtless somewhat naÏve, but is said, withal, to be surprisingly effective; her work in this part, indeed, being generally rated as the only thing in the Play worthy of the name of acting.

Mlle. Ingalls, it is claimed, is heart whole and fancy free, though they tell you in Papeete and Taio-haie that she has received offers of marriage from every bachelor missionary, sailor, official and trader that has ever come to Uahuka.

"Pontius Pilate has been played for twenty years by an
old chief—a quondam cannibal"

"Just in time to respond to his 'cue' in the John the
Baptist tableau"