In separate plays across the Easter weekend, actor James Burke-Dunsmore will be crucified as Jesus five times. “It’s a horrific process. You are suspended, nearly naked, in front of everyone,” explains the actor and director of Brighton’s first ever Passion play. “You’re completely alone up there too – it’s horrible.”

Having played Jesus in various Passion plays, theatre pieces and stage workshops across the UK for more than 12 years, the move to bring the story to the city has been a long time coming. “I’ve been coming to Brighton for years to visit my sister. I’d walk up and down the beach, spouting the scriptures, trying to learn my lines for the plays I was in. Every time I did it, someone would say to me, ‘What are you doing?’ and then ‘Perhaps you should have a Passion play here in Brighton’,” says Burke-Dunsmore.

“They’ve been suggesting it for years and years, and obviously I’m very slow on the uptake. It’s an ambitious project – most Passion plays have a ten-month lead in, so as soon as you finish one you start planning the next. To arrange one in Brighton in three months has seen some serious hard graft.”

With hundreds of local residents taking part in the project, Burke-Dunsmore views the city as an ideal setting for the story – the beachfront in particular providing the perfect environment to address some of the weightier issues discussed in the Bible. “Swings of scale happen in the Bible all the time – take the camel and the eye of the needle. It deals with some massive extremes,” he says.

“People come to the city for the big sky, the beach, the sea – they enjoy the scale – so it’s a perfect place to talk about a story that deals with scale so often. Although it’s essentially a little story based in a tiny part of the world featuring a very small number of people – individuals like you and me – it deals with the biggest subject matter in the world. Put this against that massive sky and the English Channel… well, no theatre could possibly match that.”

The traditional site-specific nature of the Passion play is something that Burke-Dunsmore relishes as it allows the audience to get an unbiased, simple opportunity to hear Jesus’s preaching in context. “There’s a lovely scene when Jesus explains his teachings to Nicodemus, asking him if he can feel the wind. Nico-demus can, and Jesus likens its breadth and scope to that of the Holy Spirit’s,” he says. “I just love delivering that line –you can bet that as soon as I say it a gust of wind will come in off the sea. That shared experience is the root of the teaching.”

Although having a good grasp of the Bible, Burke-Dunsmore still admits to learning new things every time he performs. “Directing the play has given me the remarkable opportunity to take a new look at the [old] scriptures. By running theatre workshops, we look into the past and understand what the people of the time were up against. That’s an eye opener,” he explains. “I’ve been crucified hundreds of times, I’ve broken bread hundreds of times and healed hundreds of lepers over the years – it’s a busy old diary. But I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t think it would be a new experience each time.”