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.