Valencia County Passion Play Unites Generations of Faith Across Communities

Performers from Los Lunas, Peralta, Jarales, and Belen converged on the Belen High School auditorium last week for "Death of the Messiah," a community Passion Play that brought multiple generations of Valencia County residents onto the same stage for Good Friday and the day following.

Shows ran April 3 at 7 p.m. and April 4 at 4 p.m., with free admission and a donation box at the door. The cast drew entirely from local volunteers rather than touring professionals, making the production both a theatrical event and a shared act of faith by people who live, worship, and go to school across the county.

Assistant director Mercedes Chavez supported a veteran director who framed the work as devotional as much as dramatic. In describing the cast's responsibility to the material, the director explained that performing biblical roles required genuine moral reckoning: "they are doubting Thomas at times, and we're all responsible for what Jesus had to do for us."

That standard shaped how the production approached its subject. Participants and audience members placed "Death of the Messiah" within Valencia County's established Holy Week calendar, which includes the annual Tomé Hill pilgrimage and church observances across the county's towns. For many residents, the Passion Play occupied the same ritual space as those traditions, offering a public communal gathering during a season that carries deep religious weight in the region.

The production's geography told its own story. That a single cast drew from communities spread across the county, from Belen along the river to Peralta in the north, pointed to the play's role not only as spiritual expression but as a rare event capable of stitching together towns that otherwise operate separately. Staging it in a high school auditorium, free of charge, kept the threshold low enough for the event to function as the county-wide gathering it aimed to be.