Magdalene at the Grave

A director wants to rehears a scene with four actors. It's not just any scene but the passage from the Gospel of John known as ›Magdalene at the Grave‹. They are rehearsing in a vacant house on Mulholland Drive in Hollywood. The short scene, which seems so simple and unambiguous, is acted out over and over, because with each repetition it loses more and more of its familiar outline: Performance and reality permeate each other eerily. Everything appears to be hinging on a twist that would make the story completely understandable - on a sentence the Bible text omits, however, as though designed to keep us rediscovering a secret over and over.