The bodies of Christ: performances and agencies of Passion in Ouro Preto

Abstract In this article, I analyze the enactments of the Passion of Christ that occur during the celebrations of Holy Week in Ouro Preto (Minas Gerais, Brazil). I follow the actors who perform the protagonist’s role and their different forms of rehearsal in more peripheral urban regions. Their conceptions of their practices - including how they distinguish a religious performance from a theatrical enactment - are explored through the idea of a continuum between the domains of ritual and theater identified by Victor Turner and Richard Schechner. I discuss the limits of the notion of performance proposed by the two authors and argue that, from a heuristic point of view, its semantic scope remains insufficient to explore ethnographic settings in which other agencies transcend the actor-audience duality. The analysis of the actors who play the role of Christ reveals different agencies (and intentionalities) that intervene in their performances and emphasizes the importance of the body as a primary locus of action.