A Modern-Day Passion Play on the Walls of Londonderry Reimagines Jesus’ Final Days
LONDONDERRY, Northern Ireland — Jesus, understandably, is the star of most Passion Plays. The story of Christ’s Passion, derived from the Latin word “passio,” meaning “suffer” — recounts the final days leading to Jesus’s crucifixion and death, based on accounts in the four Gospels of the Christian Bible. In the Northern Ireland town of Londonderry, however, Jesus gets second billing.
Londonderry’s “Walled City Passion,” a live, outdoor dramatization of the Passion Play set in modern times, takes some liberties with the Gospel stories. Last year, for example, Pontius Pilate’s wife, Claudia, and Jesus’ friend Mary Magdalene took the spotlight. This year’s lead character was Dave, one of four guards charged with delivering Jesus to his death. Dave wears a navy blue protective vest printed with “IST” (short for Internal Security Team) in white block letters, a black long-sleeved shirt and pants, and combat boots. He’s just doing his job as he joins his fellow officers in arresting a rabble-rouser. Then, he develops a conscience.
“We are delivering this man to be killed,” Dave says in the play. “And for what? Because we were told to.”
The production, now in its fourth year, takes place on the storied 400-year-old stone walls that surround the city center of Londonderry, also known as Derry. Jonathan Burgess, the playwright and director, is not interested in portraying Jesus as SuperMartyr, or transforming his crucifixion into a histrionic spectacle. He presents the Passion each year from the point of view of lesser-known figures in the hope that viewers, whether or not they are religious, will relate to the characters and find the story more relevant.
It is not, Burgess said, about the Catholic/Protestant divide that this city was once famous for, and characters like Jesus and Judas don’t represent real historical figures: “We wouldn’t draw those kinds of connections, because it depends on what it represents to the community. People make their own connection.” He has no special message about peace and coexistence; it is just about developing a better understanding of the central story of Christ’s resurrection.
For Christians of all denominations who do find religious meaning in the Passion, he said, “we’re trying to provoke you to be more actively engaged.”
Passion Plays, first performed in Latin during medieval times throughout Europe, then in vernacular languages, are still popular around the world. During Holy Week, from Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday, Christian churches of all denominations usually present a dramatized version of the Passion. Parishioners might read the Gospel passages during a service, or clergy might read from a script as they take on the roles of Jesus, his disciples and others, sometimes with congregants reading the parts of the crowd, who yell, “Crucify him.”
Some churches go to great lengths to reenact the story with costumes, music, props and special effects. The action reaches a climax when a bloodied, beaten Jesus is nailed (usually by ropes) to a cross. Although old productions of the Passion Play were notoriously antisemitic and depicted Jews as conniving Christ killers, most of those versions were purged of such bigotry after the Second Vatican Council of the mid-20th century. The “Walled City” version has none of those canards.
Burgess is known for his quiet but probing plays that re-create the real stories of working-class people during the Troubles — the period of religious and political strife in Northern Ireland from 1968 to 1998, when the majority Catholic/republican population, who wanted to join the Republic of Ireland, fought with the ruling Protestants/loyalists, who wanted Northern Ireland to remain a part of the U.K.
Although Burgess, 53, is proudly Protestant, and grew up during the Troubles, he is committed to peace and reconciliation with Catholics. Burgess said he and Archdeacon Robert Miller of the Church of Ireland, who have worked together on peace-building in Londonderry, came up with the idea for “Walled City Passion” five years ago when they noted that many Christians had distanced themselves from the Easter holiday. They worried that “people like to park Easter and look at it,” Burgess recalled during an interview at the Londonderry offices of the Church of Ireland. “They don’t want to actually engage with it. They want to observe it from far away and ‘over there,’ where it’s safe. We’re trying to make it a wee bit more dangerous.” People from all Christian faiths, as well as those who don’t consider themselves religious, attend the performances.
The “Walled City” of the title refers to the historical stone walls in Londonderry, built from 1613-1619 to protect English and Scottish settlers. All the action in “Walled City Passion” takes place on or within these walls, which form a 1-mile walkway around the city center and range from 12 to 35 feet high. The walls have never been breached, even during a 105-day siege in 1689, which is why one of Londonderry’s nicknames is “the Maiden City.” They were closed down and suffered damage during the Troubles, but reopened to the public in 1995. “The most significant thing we can do is bring people back onto them again, to a place that was once seen as confrontational,” Burgess said.
The changes Burgess makes to “Walled City Passion,” however, are not expressly about the Troubles, and well-known characters like Jesus and Judas don’t represent real, contemporary historical figures, he said: “We wouldn’t draw those kinds of connections, because it depends on what it represents to the community. People make their own connection.”
“Walled City Passion,” this year with performances in the days leading up to Easter, began at the Church of Ireland offices inside the walls, then moved to the gardens of St. Columb’s, an Anglican cathedral built in 1633. Scenes took place at 10 stops along the walls, including historical gates and artillery bastions with space for staging, ending outside the neo-Gothic Guildhall government building. Much of the movement occurred on the wide Grand Parade portion of the walls, which fans of “Derry Girls” might recognize from the finale of the Netflix sitcom, when Erin’s cousin Orla dances joyfully there with a group of young Irish dancers.
The show must go on in all types of weather, including rain, wind and snow. One of the actors, Susie Garvey-Williams, who last year played Mary Magdalene, said the weather sometimes intervenes in unexpected ways. She recalled how last year, Caiaphas, a high priest, was berating Jesus, and suddenly the heavens opened, and snow poured down. “Sometimes you have those moments you’d never have in a theater,” she added.
Audience members don headphones to hear the actors, who wear microphones. When the audience moves from one setting to another, they listen to a recorded narration that guides them. The walls are a popular community and tourist attraction, so residents and visitors, too, wander along as usual during the play.
This year the main cast comprised 13 professional actors, with extras from a local performing arts college.
The play starts out with Dave getting a call at home to report to Gethsemane, the garden where Jesus was arrested, to handle a routine civil disturbance. Dave “is cynical, brutal and tired, but … we also see his loving side” as he interacts with his fiancee, Burgess said. In the garden, a disciple stabs Dave, but Jesus heals him (in the biblical story, Jesus heals a servant whose ear is cut off). Once the “miracle” of healing happens, Dave’s perspective starts to change. As he and the other guards march their prisoner to his demise, Dave comes to see Jesus as a savior rather than a troublemaker.
Garvey-Williams played a guard in this year’s production. Unlike Dave, her character, as a new recruit, “is very much about doing what the sergeant says, and following orders,” Garvey-Williams said. “And my last line is, ‘We were only doing what we were told.’ I think that idea is very important. What orders are we all following today? We try and step away from our responsibility for the actions we choose sometimes as human beings.”
Burgess said he doesn’t have a particular goal for audiences other than wanting them “to think,” especially about preconceived notions. For example, he described a scene from the 2024 production about the woman who washes Jesus’ feet (with perfume or tears, depending on which Gospel account you read), and dries them with her hair. The woman is described in the Bible as a sinner. Burgess thus created a costume that suggested a stereotype of a modern-day sinner: The actress wore black fishnet stockings, combat boots and a revealing top.
As the actress strolled atop the walls, an audience member mistook her for a passerby, Burgess said. The audience member “was tut-tutting and rolling her eyes at the fact that this girl was out here walking.” Then, the actress took Jesus’ hand, took out a bottle of water out of her backpack, and washed and dried his feet. The idea, Burgess said, was to “get people to stop prejudging.”
Garvey-Williams said keeping an open mind also applies to attitudes about the guards. Playing an officer has helped her understand how dangerous the job is, and why law enforcement officials are so close-knit: because “it’s us against the world. We keep each other safe.”
In traditional Passion Plays, Jesus’ guards are villains, in a black-and-white scenario that ignores that they have fears and worries, too. In the gray world of “Walled City Passion,” everyone on the walls wants to remain safe.
Photo at top: In “Walled City Passion,” Andy Doherty (center) and Susie Garvey-Williams (right) play guards who deliver Jesus (Stephen Bradley, left) to his death on the cross. (Photo courtesy of “Walled City Passion”)
All We Need Is … a Miracle?
NEW YORK — Cecil B. DeMille knew the cinematic power of the biblical story of Moses parting the Red Sea. The Hollywood director depicted this awe-inspiring moment, when the Israelites dash across dry ground to escape the Egyptian army, with epic special effects in his 1956 Oscar-winning film The Ten Commandments. To the fleeing Israelites in the Book of Exodus, however, DeMille’s presentation of the sea split might not have felt so miraculous.
On a recent Saturday morning at Congregation Rodeph Sholom on Manhattan’s Upper West Side (at 7 W. 83rd St.), guest speaker Anna Kislanski suggested that contemporary Jews, too, might question the true marvel of this familiar story. Kislanski, CEO of the Jerusalem-based Israel Movement for Reform and Progressive Judaism, an organization that unites all Reform congregations in Israel, led the “d’var Torah” (“word of Torah”) portion of the Shabbat service, a talk based on the weekly Torah reading.
This week’s reading from the Book of Exodus describes how Moses, with a flourish of his arm, and backing from God, divides the waters of the Red Sea, creating a safe, dry route for the Israelites, water suspended beside them on each side like giant cascading curtains. When the Egyptians attempt to follow, Moses sends the sea crashing back down, drowning the entire army.
Kislanski said the Israelites were likely so scared out of their minds during this experience that they might well had missed the miraculous vibes. “At any moment, the walls of water could collapse and bury the frightened people beneath them,” she said.
When the Israelites reached the other side, Kislanski continued, they briefly stopped their journey of fear to participate in “The Song of the Sea,” a joyful chorus of praise as recounted in Exodus. But their praise was short-lived. The Bible goes on to tell how the Israelites soon returned to grumbling about their predicament, and in particular about the lack of decent food and drink.
Kislanski was not criticizing the Israelites, however, and understood their frustration. She compared their fluctuating feelings of delight and despair to the emotional swings felt by Jews today as they experience a series of historical moments: the weekly return of Israeli hostages from Gaza as part of a ceasefire in the latest war between Israel and Hamas.
“In these moments of liberation, we are full of gratitude and fill our mouths with song,” Kislanski said, “yet immediately afterward, we … feel just like the Israelites on the edge of the Red Sea, with great hope, but also unsure whether we will make it to the other side, whether the ceasefire will hold, whether we will all finally return to our lives of peace and prosperity.”
During a Torah study after the service, a more informal gathering attended by about 25 congregants, Kislanski introduced a poem to elaborate. She first asked a congregant to read one sentence from the Torah reading, Exodus 14:22: “And the children of Israel went into the midst of the sea upon the dry ground; and the waters were a wall unto them on their right hand, and on their left.”
She then read an excerpt from Israeli poet Yehudah Amichai’s “Miracles” (translated from Hebrew):
From a distance everything looks like a miracle
but up close even a miracle doesn’t appear so.
Even someone who crossed the Red Sea when it split
only saw the sweaty back
of the one in front of him
and the motion of his big legs
and at most, a hurried glance to the side,
fish of many colors in a wall of water,
like in a marine observatory behind walls of glass.
Suddenly, the miraculous crossing seemed more … mundane, with all the messiness of any hurried mass of people blundering together and mingling bodily fluids. And when speed is of the essence, who has time to ogle gloriously hued fish or improbable walls of water?
“When you're afraid of the world, running from the Egyptians,” Kislanski said, “you're afraid that the world will collapse. You're not thinking of it as a miracle.”
That does not mean, however, that people should give up hope, she said, or forget to sing, even if they register the miracle for only a brief time. Kislanski said she’d woken up that day to news of three more hostages released to Israel.
“It's a miracle they're able to return, that they were able to survive,” she said. “We're able to see them back with us.” After a pause, she added, “And we realize that it's also a very, sad, sad moment.”
The miracle’s close-up had ended — for now.
Day Four: The Road to Londonderry: Physical, Political, Spiritual
LONDONDERRY — When Nobel Prize–winning Irish poet Seamus Heaney traveled from Belfast north to Londonderry on Wednesday, Feb. 2, 1972, the day was bleak and dreary. He wrote in his poem “The Road to Derry” of the “wet wind in the hedges” and “dark cloud on the mountain.” Heaney then described the “flags like black frost / mourning that the thirteen men were dead.”
Heaney was on his way to the funeral of civil rights protesters killed by British soldiers in Londonderry (also called Derry, a controversy to be addressed later) on Jan. 30, known as Bloody Sunday.
Our road trip from Belfast to Londonderry on a Wednesday in 2025 couldn’t have been more different. But by the end of the day, we knew a lot more about those dark, troubled times in Northern Ireland’s second largest city.
Prayer, Music and Sheep
Our bus voyage began, appropriately for reporters in a Covering Religion class, with a prayer. The Rev. Karen Campbell, our host for this leg of the journey, read a passage from Isaiah 32:1-8 that described rulers who lead with righteousness and justice. The result of their wise leadership?
Then the eyes of those who see will no longer be closed.
and the ears of those who hear will listen.
Solid advice for a group of journalists.
Unlike Heaney, we had clear skies, wispy white clouds, and plenty of fluffy sheep chewing emerald-grass grass in verdant pastures to gaze at during our two-hour trip to Londonderry. Professor Ari Goldman pulled out his harmonica and soon had a group of students in the back of the bus singing campfire songs like “You Are My Sunshine” and “Morning Has Broken.”
What’s Its Name?
Our introduction to Londonderry, or Derry, or Derry/Londonderry, was a sign welcoming us to “The Walled City,” one of the city’s nicknames; other monikers include “the Maiden City” and “Stroke City.” Confused? So were we. Our guide on an afternoon walking tour explained the controversial name origins. Back in the sixth century, the site was known as Doire Calgaigh. “Doire,” Irish for oakwood, morphed into Derry. After King James I of England planted English and Scottish settlers there in the 1600s, and London investors financed a new town, the city’s charter added “London” to the beginning (i.e., medieval naming rights). Over the years, and especially after the Troubles erupted in Northern Ireland in the 1960s, unionists/loyalists have preferred Londonderry, while republicans/nationalists favor Derry.
“Walled City” refers to the fortifying stone walls built around the city center in the 1600s. The “Maiden City” comes from the walls’ “never been breached” status, even during a 105-day siege by King James II in 1689. “Stroke City” refers to the slash punctuation mark (called a “stroke” in the U.K.) in London/Londonderry. After much dispute, including a court case, a judge said he didn’t want to get involved, so pick your preferred name.
Before our tour along the ancient stone walls, however, we visited a part of Londonderry outside those walls that for many years was close by, yet worlds apart: the Bogside. This neighborhood down the hill, originally underwater until it became marshland, was home to a mostly Catholic population for hundreds of years while Protestants lived inside the city walls.
Remembering the Humans of Bloody Sunday
Our first stop was a visit to The Museum of Free Derry, which tells the story of the area’s history from 1921, when the U.K. split Ireland into the Irish Free State and Northern Ireland, leaving a Catholic minority in the North governed by Protestants loyal to England. In Londonderry, however, even though Catholics were a majority of the population, they had no political power. Gerrymandering, internment without trials, and voting rules that stated only property owners could vote led to oppression, poverty and a civil rights movement. The concept of “Free Derry” came from a slogan written on a gable wall in 1969 that read “You are now entering Free Derry,” which in turn came from a similar sign at the University of California at Berkeley.
On Jan. 30, 1972, 15,000 marchers in the Bogside who planned to protest their treatment were shot at by a British elite military regiment. Thirteen men were killed and 15 people wounded (one later died).
The museum humanizes this incident by highlighting the victims and march participants. As we walked through the exhibits, we heard their voices on speakers, singing “We Shall Overcome” and describing the carnage they witnessed. Video footage taken that day shows the violence and its bloody aftermath in fuzzy but frightening black-and-white detail.
One object was particularly haunting: a coat worn by one of the men killed, 20-year-old Michael McDaid. Just below the rear right sleeve of the olive-green and blue plaid sporty jacket was the exit hole of the bullet that hit him — the size of a dime, but as large as a half-dollar taking into account the shreds and tears. A photo of McDaid wearing the coat just before he was shot is shown next to the coat.
A photo of the funeral that Heaney attended for the victims shows all their coffins lined up at the front of a church; Heaney mentions the coffins in his poem.
The museum also explains the aftermath of Bloody Sunday, with a British judge declaring three months later that the soldiers had done nothing wrong. Prime Minister Tony Blair announced a new inquiry in 1998 that lasted all the way until 2010 and found that none of the victims had done anything wrong, a huge victory for their families. Prime Minister David Cameron at the time said the killings were "unjustified and unjustifiable."
The former soldiers’ names remain anonymous (in public), and none of them have been convicted. A museum employee, however, told us of a surprising development: On Friday, it will be announced whether one such Bloody Sunday veteran, known as Soldier F, will face charges of murder and attempted murder (stay tuned for a longer story on the decision by student Nichole Villegas).
As in Belfast, murals, signs and graffiti around the Bogside indicated solidarity with Palestine. Someone had spray-painted the bottom of a giant “You Are Now Entering Free Derry” sign with the words “Show Israel the Red Card,” in reference to calls for FIFA, the international soccer body that holds the World Cup, and the Union of European Football Associations to expel the state (“Israel” was painted in red like dripping blood and a bloody soccer ball was depicted at the bottom).
Derry Girls and Walls
After a lunch break, we went on a two-hour walking tour of the Derry Walls with guide Sorcha Bonner of Martin McCrossan City Walking Tours. We started on a light note at a giant “Derry Girls” mural on the site of Badgers Bar and Restaurant (16-18 Orchard Street) that has become a huge tourist attraction thanks to the hit Netflix series about a group of teens growing up in Londonderry during the Troubles. We took a group photo in front of the mural, which depicts the show’s five stars.
We then moved up a set of stairs to the top of the Derry Walls for a 1-mile walk around the elevated ramparts. Along the way we saw St. Columb’s Cathedral, an Anglican church built in 1633, and the first cathedral in the British Isles built after the Reformation. Our guide told us the cathedral’s school is being transformed into an arts center that will include yet another school—for teaching circus skills.
The circus revelation led to a discussion of Londonderry’s status as a creative arts city. Bonner also lauded a few famed Londonderry artistic giants, including poet Heaney, who attended St. Columb’s College, as did playwright Brian Friel, known for his Tony-winning play “Dancing at Lughnasa.” Even Taylor Swift has connections to Londonderry, with ancestral ties to the town.
Innocence Lost
The walk around the walls, which included a lot of history about English people named James and William, and Derry’s former status as a shirt-making industry behemoth, ended where we had started the day: looking out at the Bogside. We saw the neighborhood's murals from high above, which somehow made them stand out even more.
A wall painted with the Palestinian and Ireland flags side-by-side read “Two Nations: One Struggle.” The wall was beneath a newly unveiled mural on the side of a building in honor of Nell McAfferty, a famous Bogside journalist who wrote about women’s rights. “Goodnight Sisters,” painted on the mural, refers to a phrase that McCafferty, a journalist who wrote about who died in 2024 at age 80, used as a slogan to end her appearances on broadcast radio.
Bonner pointed out a mural featuring 14-year-old Annette McGavigan, described as the first child to die during the Troubles. In 1971, she was shot in the head in the Bogside during riots. The mural, titled “The Death of Innocence,” portrays Annette in a green school skirt and tie and white shirt. Next to her is a broken rifle, and a butterfly flutters above her head. But the mural also contains signs of hope. When it was originally painted, the gun was larger. black and fully intact, and the butterfly was unfinished — just like Annette’s life. In 2006, after the Good Friday Agreement, the artists broke the gun and finished the butterfly to signify peace in Northern Ireland.
Heaney, in his poem “The Road to Derry,” ended with five lines equally full of futility and hope:
I walked among their old haunts.
the home ground where they bled;
And in the dirt lay justice like an acorn in the winter.
Till its oak would sprout in Derry
where the thirteen men lay dead.
Photo at top: Londonderry’s Bogside neighborhood includes the mural “The Death of Innocence,” which portrays 14-year-old Troubles victim Annette McGavigan, who was shot by British soldiers in 1971. (Photo by Karen Lindell)
Hearing the Shema Prayer in a New Way
NEW YORK — “Hear” as a command conveys one meaning.
“Pay attention” signifies yet another idea, one that goes beyond the ear canal.
Especially to a Deaf person.
During a recent “ReSoul” Saturday morning Shabbat service at Congregation Rodeph Sholom on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, most of the song and prayer lyrics were projected on a wall of the Reform synagogue’s sixth-floor chapel in three forms. Congregants could follow along in Hebrew, transliterated Hebrew and English.
Halfway through the service, one Hebrew prayer didn’t need a projected translation because the congregants knew it by heart: the Shema. This prayer, which many Jews learn as children, begins with the line “Shema Yisrael, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai echad,” which means, according to most translations, “Hear, Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One.”
Cantor Shayna De Lowe and Rabbi Ben Spratt, who led the service, at times swayed to the music, accompanied by piano, drums and guitar. But as they began to sing the Shema, they moved their arms in a more deliberate, dramatic way: They used American Sign Language.
Nearly everyone in the congregation knew the ASL signs, too, although a few stumbled over the finer gestural details. No matter. All who attempted the ASL smiled as they signed.
The full Shema prayer is actually in three parts. At Congregation Rodeph Sholom (7 W. 83rd St.), only the line mentioned above and the one that follows are signed. The words to the entire Shema come from three different Torah verses in Deuteronomy and Numbers. The first line, from Deuteronomy 6:4-9, in just a few words distills ideas that are key to Jewish beliefs.
The Shema, “one of our central prayers, is our statement of monotheism, that we believe in one God,” De Lowe said. “We say it at every service, and any time we gather,” and many Jews say it twice a day, in the morning and evening, whether at a service or at home. Using sign language to express the prayer is an innovation, something not found in most congregations.
“What it’s really saying,” De Low said, is “‘Pay attention, Israel: This is our God, and it’s one God, and that’s our God.’” The opening word “Shema,” she said, is often translated as “Hear.” “But members of our Deaf community told us that’s very excluding for them.” Even the ASL sign for “hear” — holding a cupped hand up to one’s ear — can leave out Deaf people. So to be more inclusive, “instead we do this,” De Lowe said, and she held up both hands to either side of her head, palms facing each other, the ASL sign for “Pay attention.”
De Lowe, who has a Deaf son, echoed the words of Rabbi Darby Leigh of Congregation Kerem Shalom in Concord, Massachusetts, a Deaf man who describes in a YouTube video how he translates the Shema using ASL — and in turn interprets the meaning of the prayer at a deeper level.
Leigh says he doesn’t translate “Shema” as “Hear,” “because as a Deaf person I don't feel comfortable. It doesn’t make sense to sign Shema as related to the ear, and the real meaning of the prayer, in my opinion, is to pay attention.”
ASL also brings out the deeper meaning of other words in the first line.
Leigh explains his sign for the second word, “Israel.” First, he shows how to sign “Israel” in ASL: He puts his little finger on one side of his chin and moves it down, then repeats the motion on the other side of his chin.
“But this sign alone isn’t enough because this is the sign for Israel the place, and the Shema is talking to Israel the people,” he says, “so I've added to ‘Israel’ ‘the gathering’ of all the people before me.” Leigh holds up his arms horizontally to the sides of his body, then scoops his hands together in a forward collective motion.
At the Congregation Rodeph Sholom service, the Shema ASL signs for “the Lord is our God, the Lord is one” were particularly eloquent.
The ASL sign for “one” is simple: Point the index finger upward with the other fingers folded down. “For a more spiritual interpretation I like to show ‘many’ and then change it into ‘one,’” Leigh says. In one fluid motion, he wiggles his fingers open on one hand, palm down, then sweeps his index finger up in the sign for one.
That ASL sequence, so vivid at Congregation Rodeph Sholom, was packed with meaning, pulling together the many under one God.
Naomi B. Sokoloff, a professor of Hebrew at Washington University, wrote in an essay, “Reading the Shema,” that those who are not Deaf can learn from ASL how to reread or rehear the phrase “Shema Yisrael”: “As the Shema calls on Jews to recognize and acknowledge the diverse manifestations of one God, ASL renditions of the Shema serve as a pointed reminder to honor diversity.”
At the Saturday service at Rodeph Sholom, a vision-impaired woman with a tiny dog — the pup wore a red vest embroidered with “Vision Service Dog — Full Access,” joined in on signing the ASL prayer.
Pay attention, the congregation seemed to be saying loud and clear: All eyes and ears are welcome.
Photo courtesy of Congregation Rodeph Sholom