We are heirs to a legendary, spectacular story: The Passion. The story of the suffering of Jesus. A story that, after two thousand years, still haunts our minds and bodies—even if you no longer believe, or never did.

You find the sentiment of the story reflected everywhere. In how we give shape to guilt and shame, to “forgiveness”, to heroism, to gender roles, to family, and to who must stay silent and who gets to speak. In that strange voice in your head: am I good enough?

In this audio-visual music theatre piece by Het Muziek and Pensive Vivifier — Passion; A Resurrection Loop — we ask: what have we carried with us from that story, and how do you ever get rid of it? Spoiler: you don‘t. What you thought was buried rises again anyway.

On stage, Pensive Vivifier’s video work (layered, chaotic, too much and exactly right) collides with live music. Five musicians perform newly composed pieces: harmonium, recorder, trombone, and three singers—from countertenor to grunter. Grand, dramatic, full of rage, betrayal, blood, grief, silence and hope.

This Passion is personal. Janne Kosmos (Pensive Vivifier) takes centre stage. One of their siblings confronts them with something long kept silent: that Janne used to kick and hit them. Twenty years later, it is time to stop looking away. To stop denying. To name what caused pain. And to also see the conditions that made it possible: upbringing, religious language, shame, role patterns, the culture of “just carrying on”. Because family is precisely that place where love and pain sometimes sit close together. You can miss someone and fear them at the same time; be both victim and perpetrator.