PASSION PLAYERS NOW STARVING.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17834, 30 April 1926, Page 5

PASSION PLAYERS NOW STARVING.

DAUGHTER OF “ JUDAS ” SEEKS HELP IN LONDON. LONDON, March 12. The Passion Players of Oberammcrgau, whose performances draw pilgrims from all over the world, are in great poverty, and almost starving. "We made no money out of the Passion Play in 1922, because the mark was so low, and now the people are almost without food," said Miss Clara Mayr. whose father plays Judas Iscariot, and who is now visiting London in connection with an exhibition of carvings and pottery created by the Players. "It has been a bad winter, for there was no snow, and therefore no visitors for the winter sports,” she said to an interviewer yesterday. "If no visitors come over this summer I do not know what we shall do." Anton Lang, who played Christ, will not take the part again, she said, as he is over fifty. Her father will not know until 1929 whether he is to play Judas again in 1930. Little Old Testament plays are being regularly performed in order to discover new actors for the 1930 performance. Maria Lang and Clara Mayr are both typical fair-haired, blue-eyed German girls, aged sixteen, who have taken small parts in the Passion Play. The exhibition, which is to draw attention to the poverty of the Oberammergau inhabitants, will be opened next week at a bookshop in Great Russell Street, Bloomsbury. It includes marvellous wooden carvings of religi ous subjects made by Guido Mayr and his four daughters. The pottery of Anton Lang represents the heads of Christ and the Apostles.