James Burke-Dunsmore has played Jesus on stage for 26 years, ever since volunteering to help at a friend’s production in 1998. Here, Milla Ling-Davies from en chats to James about his experiences across the years.
In 1998, James turned up to his friends’ production to lend a hand with his Bible knowledge. To his surprise, he found a room full of people pointing at him and saying, ‘Him. He should play Jesus.’ Since then, he’s performed in front of tens of thousands in Passion Plays in London and across the globe and has been crucified on stage as Jesus more than anyone else in the world.
en: Have you always enjoyed acting?
JBD: I have. And I think like most people, it all began at school with excellent drama teachers. We looked at lots of the old classics and had fun with them. And you just don't want to give that up, so I didn't.
en: You first started playing Jesus as a favour to a friend. Funny, isn’t it? You turned up to that meeting and it changed the rest of your life.
JDB: It did. And I did have people, very good elderly friends, who said to me ‘Well done. That was a good performance’, and when I told them that I'd been asked to come back the following year they said, ‘Don't do it again because you will be typecast’. Some are still alive, but certainly some of them have died. For those who have died, I just wish they could know how much it's influenced my whole life for the better. It's been a wonderful, wonderful time.
en: In the time you've been playing Jesus, the world around us has changed quite a bit. Have there been any changes in the reception to the passion plays?
JBD: That's a good question, because it gets to the heart of why these plays work. Why they work is, I think, because they're a great litmus test of the community that are putting them on.
There was the year when we had more terrorist attacks in London than ever before. And at Easter, we had intelligence that there was going to be an attack on the production, and on me in particular. So when you've got a cast who's wondering to themselves: do we want to tell this story in such a volatile environment, with such a risk? I think it’s a sort of a minor miracle that somehow we all managed to come to the decision that we would tell the story that year. And so in Trafalgar Square, we all turned up and we had thousands in the audience - we thought maybe hundreds would come if there was bomb threats or assassination threats, but no. Thousands came. 10,000 per production and oh, my goodness – when Jesus appeared, when Jesus spoke, when Jesus was resurrected and when Jesus ascended, the audience cheered and clapped and whooped. The release was enormous. And you just felt like we needed this. London needed it. To have that expression of joy amongst all that fear and fear mongering.
It had a similar impact when we came out of Covid and put the play on again. This was the first time that thousands of people had gathered together again in the centre of London and celebrated the story. And the cheers reflected that. I was quite overwhelmed.
en: Has playing the role impacted your own personal faith?
I’ve been in a privileged position where I’ve had to read Scripture thousands of times, thank goodness. From reading of other people who have also spent a lot of time looking at Scripture, there does seem to be this common thread, which is that, at its simplest: repetition can unlock so much. When you look deeper and deeper [at the Bible] through repetition, not through analysis or theological discussion, but just the repetition – things happen. Those words were chosen for a reason, and they have an impact on us. Had I not experienced that, I know I'd be a very different person.
en: I've heard that people often react to you as if you are Jesus. Has that led to any unique opportunities to talk about Him?
JBD: Well, I realised in my first year that it's not me they’re looking at, which really helped, because you relinquish your ego at that moment.
When I lived in London, someone would have some sort of reaction and say something to me every day. You get a whole spectrum, from somebody on their bicycle just shouting out: ‘Hello Jesus!’ to people on the other end, like a woman who just leant on me in a chemist once. She had only just started going to church after being rescued from a rather awful relationship, and was putting herself back together again. She was embarrassed as she was leaning on me, looking for physical support, and said ‘I don’t want to embarrass you, I just had this strange feeling that I’m standing next to Jesus.’ So I just let her talk.
I was on a tube once, and after a long journey of catching this man's eye and a bit of conversation, he said to me: ‘I'm not gonna tell you what it was I was going to do, but because I've felt like I've been sitting with Jesus on the tube, I'm going to go and do something else.’ Again, that had nothing to do with me, just everything to do with their experience of Jesus I think.
And that's been my hope for decades, that people will enjoy more and more about understanding Jesus’ story.
en: In many ways, you've had a front row seat to that.
JBD: Yes, a front row seat on the streets and front row seat in the plays. I've been the one hanging on the cross looking at 10,000 people's reaction to Jesus dying. Nobody else gets to see that. The other guys on the crosses, usually they're just trying to stay warm, but I get to stare at these faces and then see the same faces watch the resurrection. I've got vivid memories of particular audience members, hundreds probably, in my mind – the difference between how they saw the crucifixion and then their faces when they saw the resurrection. I think it’s given me a window into what their lives are like and why they've come to see this play, what they're taking away with it, and why it’s needed.
Passion plays are happening across the Easter period at a number of locations in the UK. For more info, visit: https://passiontrust.org
