Hermanus Passiespel

Artist’s Statement: D J Wilson, LRPS

For many years, Good Friday in Hermanus carried a distinctive tradition: the Hermanus Passion Play (Passiespel), staged outdoors in the Old Harbour, where the natural amphitheatre of rocks, sea, and night sky becomes part of the set itself and usually performed in Afrikaans. Running since 1996, over time it was to become a familiar point of seasonal return — a local ritual as much as a performance.

Its impact has never been only religious. Like many community passion plays around the world, it is also a work of collective memory: volunteers, families, and local participants building something together, year after year, in a shared public space. In that sense the Passiespel sits alongside global traditions such as Oberammergau in Bavaria — famous for its once-a-decade performance tradition dating back to the 17th century — and the vast Holy Week re-enactment in Iztapalapa, Mexico City, which is community-organised and has recently been recognised by UNESCO as intangible cultural heritage.

What makes Hermanus distinctive is scale and setting: not a purpose-built theatre, but a living harbour edge where light, weather, and the hush of the sea shape the atmosphere. And that is partly why its absence is felt as the 2025 and 2026 events were cancelled.