Asheville Citizen-Times
March 20, 1999

"Looking at Christ through women's eyes: Asheville actress offers female passion play"
By Dale Neal

The male disciples who had followed Christ in life largely deserted him at his death, according to scripures. It was the women who watched his Crucifixion and then were the first to realize his Resurrection.

Asheville actress Olivia Woodford takes a new look at the old Easter story through the eyes of the women who were there in "The Heart of the Cross." Woodford is performing her contemporary passion play at area churches through the Lenten season.

"These women were my spiritual role models," Woodford said. "I tried to imagine what it would be like to be a woman in that time, watching these events. I want to put you in the place, I wanted to make it real so it's not just an old story, but you are there with these women."

Woodford wanted to hear what these women might say even though they are glimpsed only briefly in the Gospel accounts of the life and death of Christ. She set about developing her one-woman play about eight years ago for a spiritual retreat center in western Massachusetts.

Raised and confirmed a Catholic, Woodford attended a Lutheran school and her father was pastor of a Congregational church. That wide exposure to various denominations helped Woodford to write her play to cut across doctrine and dogmas to capture the drama of the Christian story.

The play follows the final hours of Jesus' life, by placing women in his path from the Upper Room, to the Road to Golgotha, the Crucifixion, preparing his body for burial and then the empty tomb on Easter. In each scene, the women bear dramatic witness to how Jesus changed their lives.

Woodford opens her play with an imaginary character, a 12-year-old girl recruited to clean the Upper Room that will be the setting for the Last Supper. In the custom of the day, the girl is sent away to her room, forbidden to show herself to the honored male guests in her father's house.

But the headstrong girl sneaks upstairs and witnesses Jesus washing the feet of his disciples. Later that night, the girl dreams that Jesus comes and washes her feet as well. "I felt beautiful," she confides to the audience.

In the second scene, Woodford transforms herself with a blue scarf into a woman named Veronica, who had heard Jesus preach the Sermon on the Mount. She puzzles over his blessing of the meek who shall inherit the earth.

According to Catholic tradition, Veronica stepped out in the path of Jesus as he was forced to carry his cross up the road to Golgotha, and meekly wiped his face with her scarf. She's immediately hurled aside and whipped by a Roman soldier. When she looks at her scarf, she finds the features of Jesus miraculously imprinted on the fabric.

"His face was on my scarf. That's when I knew he would not die, and I would not die either. There is nothing to fear."

In the next scene, playing Mary Magdalene, Woodford relives the horrifying agonies of the Crucifixion, where the Roman soldiers and the crowd cruelly mocked Christ on the cross. Woodford tests her dramatic limits as her character veers into tears and near hysteria.

Magdalene recalls how she was the woman taken in adultery but forgiven by Jesus in the famous scene from scripture. Jesus had sent away the priests who would put her to death according to religious law, with the simple remark "He who is without sin can cast the first stone."

After the death of Christ, his mother Mary prepares his body for burial, "pondering in her heart all these events." By the soft glow of a candle, the church plunged into darkness, Woodford preserves the mystery and awe surrounding the Pieta scene of Madonna clutching the dead body of her son.

The lights come back up with the music as Woodford presses into the familiar surprise of Easter morning. Mary, the sister of Lazarus, discovers the angels guarding the otherwise empty tomb. The weeping woman encounters a person she thinks is only a gardener. But when he calls her name, Mary recognizes her risen Lord.

Most passion plays end of course with Easter and the Risen Christ. But Woodford remembers a little voice in her head the night before she presented the play for the first time, "You're not going to end there, are you?"

So at midnight, Woodford sat down and wrote out in 45 minutes the part of Martha, Mary's harried housekeeper sister. After all the high drama, Martha grounds the Passion play with a down-to-earth message of simple service. Martha learns from Jesus - "We each have a place in this work."

Woodford has a bachelor's degree in theater from Boston University and has acted in New York. Since moving to Asheville two years ago, Woodford leads Healing Theatre workshops, chairs the Arts Alliance Roundtable and is producing plays locally.

Woodford has also written a Christmas play from the female perspective. "Faith and Hope: A Mother's Story" depicts the events around the birth of Jesus from the viewpoints of the Virgin Mary, her mother Anna, her cousin Elisabeth, Leah of the House of David, and Hanna the temple seeress.

And she is at work on a third play concerning the ministry of Jesus that may be ready for production sometime this summer.