WAUCHULA, Fla. — With less than two hours until showtime, a man sits amid the backstage chaos and studies his image in a propped-up mirror. The eyes are grayish blue, the goatee trim, the long dark hair flecked with gray. Not there yet. He scoops another dab of makeup to continue the annual transformation of Mike Graham, now 58, into Jesus Christ, forever 33.
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Mounted soldiers/performers and ticket buyers prepared to enter the Cattleman's Arena for the opening night performance of "The Story of Jesus."
An assistant hustles over with a sky-blue robe that an anxious Mr. Graham wriggles over his bare torso and summer shorts. “Too little on me,” he says apologetically, working his way out of it. Someone else asks him to assess a young girl’s angel costume. “I’d like her to be glittered,” he says, before asking whether the child has been warned how to behave around the camels.
Then the man who plays Jesus for a living turns back to his imperfect reflection.
For more than two decades, Mr. Graham, a preacher, has directed and assumed the lead role in a gritty Passion play, “The Story of Jesus,” that unfolds 10 nights a year in the modest Cattleman’s Arena, in rural Hardee County. Across its dirt-floor stage come chariots and sword fights, miracles and betrayals, exotic animals and a cast of hundreds.
Over time, Mr. Graham’s play has survived many trials, some natural, some economic and some, he suspects, the work of the devil. In 2004, the production weathered both the competition of the Mel Gibson movie “The Passion of the Christ” and the wrath of a hurricane that nearly swept Wauchula away but spared the play’s many costumes and long-suffering donkey.
Other challenges, he says, have included his divorce years ago, which alienated many followers; a decline in attendance, due in part to competition from the Holy Land Experience theme park in Orlando; and other, curiously timed setbacks — a car accident, a sudden illness — that nearly prevented him from picking up his cross.
Finally, Mr. Graham knows the folly of trying to slow time, although he has tried. For one thing, he has enlisted a 27-year-old bridge inspector to play Jesus in certain taxing scenes. “He handles the Trial, the Ascension, the Resurrection,” Mr. Graham explains. “I do all the miracles, basically. The adult life of Jesus, the Last Supper, the garden of Gethsemane scene, and the Crucifixion.”
Mr. Graham cuts his hair just once a year, and works out every morning in his home gym so that he is able to carry a heavy cross dozens of yards across the stage. Still, he has no desire to follow the great Josef Meier, who played Jesus in performances in South Dakota and in Lake Wales, just north of here, well into his 80s. A miracle in itself.
For now, Mr. Graham must set aside these concerns, and focus. The first Passion play of the season is just 90 minutes away.
Props, Paint and Petting Zoo
Under the late-afternoon sun, white cast members take turns getting spray-painted a color called Sebring brown, a shade that Mr. Graham thinks approaches a Middle Eastern skin tone. A man in a “Sprayin’ & Prayin’ ” T-shirt dilutes the chocolate muck in plastic buckets, while another man, with a praying-hands tattoo on his left leg, paints a succession of outstretched arms, splayed legs and wincing faces.
This ritual is one of many that have evolved over the last quarter-century, ever since Mr. Graham, as a guitar-wielding youth pastor from southern Illinois, staged a crucifixion scene at a church banquet with a few teenagers and a couple of props. Some of those here tonight have never been in a Passion play; others have never known a spring without one. They are united now by glistening coats of Sebring brown.
Alongside the arena, clusters of ticketholders gather for some nonalcoholic tailgating, while a Roman centurion trots past on a horse. In a tent nearby, volunteers set out various souvenirs for sale, including cardboard license plates that say: The Story of Jesus — I Was There! — Wauchula, Florida.
A kind of off-limits petting zoo has sprung up beyond the arena’s back entrance, with pens containing ducks, sheep, horses, two oxen, a donkey and three camels, just arrived from Ocala. Their owner, Butch Rivers, 70, a former stunt rider who now uses a cane — “You pay for it,” he says of certain passions — is excited to see the play again.
“The first time I saw this play it put chills on me,” Mr. Rivers says.
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