WORDS Fatima Measham

The Stations of the Cross are a big part of the liturgical celebrations each Easter. Two years ago, Fr Franco Cavarra directed the Stations of the Cross at World Youth Day. Fatima Measham asks him about his experiences, and what advice he has for parishes planning their own ceremonies.

Having been an opera director before being ordained a priest in 1998, Fr Franco Cavarra admits he was an obvious choice to direct the Stations of the Cross for World Youth Day in Sydney. Even so, he says the scale and calibre of the production was daunting.

‘My initial response was one of alarm’, says Fr Franco, remembering the moment he was asked by Cardinal George Pell. ‘I knew what was being asked of me. At least, I thought I knew.’

With the Stations playing to an audience of millions around the globe, he knew in his heart he could not say no. ‘It was like all the scattered bits and pieces of my past life somehow converged’, he muses. ‘All those things I’d done before weren’t just random things.’

Thus, eighteen months of his life became dedicated to directing the Stations of the Cross. In the final eight months, Fr Franco lived in Sydney full-time. The experience was so intense, he says, that when he went back to his parish in Melbourne, ‘I wasn’t the same person who had gone up to Sydney.’

No wonder. His job, he says with a chuckle, was ‘like staging five different opera productions at the same time’. Each Station was a self-contained unit with its own crew, including lighting operators, sound technicians and stage managers. It was important to get professionals for this area. This was not the case with the actors—the roles fell to untrained volunteers. ‘It would’ve been easy to get the best young professional actors,’ Fr Franco says. However, the integrity of ‘the process’ had to be preserved. He and his team wanted ordinary young people who were moved by the story to be in it. They also wanted pilgrims to make a connection with the Stations because they could see that the actors were people like themselves.

Fr Franco adds that the Stations of the Cross is not simply a performance to a script, but a prayer. It mattered for actors to come from a place of faith, especially, as ‘[they] were going into places that [they] seldom have opportunity to visit. It’s too messy, too dark, too frightening.’ Identification with the story was so profound, Fr Franco shares, that the actors would break down crying during rehearsals. He was similarly humbled on the day of the actual performance when he saw ‘worldly’ technical personnel, who had no contact with religion, become visibly moved and unnerved by the story that was unfolding.

It is this personal and contemporary resonance in the Stations that Fr Franco wanted to highlight. ‘It’s not just a sad story about something that happened two thousand years ago. It is a mirror that is held up to us and to everyday life; therefore I stressed links to modern realities wherever I could.’

This guiding principle led to the Australian subtext in the scene where Simon of Cyrene is ordered by the Romans to carry the Cross of Jesus. It was intended as an analogy for the suffering that continues to be forced upon indigenous Australians. By the same token, the metal ‘cells’ in the scourging scene were devised as a visual link to the continued use of torture even today, in places like Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib.

As artistic and technical details like these fell into place, Fr Franco found himself unexpectedly grappling with the nuances of his role. ‘For me to have an emotional outburst and a screaming fit, which is what you would normally do in theatre to get things done, was not going to work in that setting. I had to find a way that was consistent with being both a director and a priest.’

As a result, there were some things that figured in the plans but were not realised. For instance, the Stations were initially going to be staged in their entirety at Darling Harbour, with pontoons and bridges. The cost was prohibitive and the idea was abandoned. Even on the day itself, a rehearsed scene where Christ’s body was placed on a raft and set to drift out to sea was not televised. It was too dark on the water for cameras to pick up the image.

At such times over the course of the production, Fr Franco found himself saying to God, ‘Look, this show is yours, not ours.’ He knew it wasn’t enough that things were right for him: ‘It had to be right for the Church; it had to be right for young people who were coming here from the other side of the world; it had to be right for the people watching it on television.’ Hence, although the fear of failure was real, he knew he had to ‘let go.’

Yet, there was a moment when Fr Franco felt that it had all come together well. ‘That was when we were at Barangaroo, and Jesus had died on the Cross. His body was brought down and at that moment, these wonderful billows of smoke started to rise. The sun set, the moon came up, and all the rest of it. It had the most wonderful, magical effect that I certainly hadn’t produced.’ He pauses. ‘What I realised of course was that the generator had heated up and was throwing up smoke.’

TIPS FOR CONDUCTING A STATIONS OF THE CROSS

Keep it simple

‘The simpler, the better,’ says Fr Cavarra. His advice is that things can be suggestive rather than explicit; for example, parishes don’t necessarily have to have actors in full Roman military regalia. Casting people who fit the role ‘visually’—as in the case of the tall, solidly built actors who played the Roman soldiers in World Youth Day—can go a long way towards successfully presenting the drama in the Stations. Fr Cavarra adds that ‘minimalism gives you freedom to move’.

Get everyone involved

Use as much of the talent that is available. Within a parish, there is a range of people who may be able to contribute—writers could prepare the prayers or script, musicians can select and play songs, or artists can produce visual material for display.

Practice, practice, practice

Rehearsals, as many as can be arranged, have to take place. Fr Cavarra cautions against saying, ‘it’ll be right on the night.’ In fact, when the production relies on untrained volunteers, ‘It’s the work that you put into rehearsals that will give you the confidence to do it well. You have to have as much of it mastered beforehand because the Stations will present you with things that you hadn’t rehearsed. That’s the nature of the event.’

Appoint a director

According to Fr Cavarra, the Stations have to be seamless and make a statement as a whole. The spirit of the event must lead participants to prayer, which means that the leader must have ‘authority, confidence and insight’.

Keep dialogue brief

‘If it’s not brief, it becomes a performance,’ Fr Cavarra points out. He adds that this might reveal the shortcomings of volunteer actors, no matter how much goodwill they have. There is then a risk that the participants would get distracted.

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