A Senakulo is mounted by ordinary townspeople rather than professional actors, organized by a parish, a barangay or a family group that spends weeks beforehand building a stage, sewing costumes and rehearsing, funded by local government, private sponsors and community donations rather than ticket sales, since no performer is paid. Participants who describe why they take part often use the word panata, a personal vow, treating a role in the production as an act of thanksgiving or penance rather than as theatre in the ordinary sense. Productions range widely in scale and duration: some rural towns stage the full narrative across seven or eight days leading into Holy Week, while urban parishes more often perform a shortened version on Good Friday itself, beginning from Christ's agony in the garden. The town plaza, a church courtyard or the streets themselves become the stage, with individual scenes sometimes moving through several locations before converging on one site for the crucifixion.
One of the best known living productions, Ang Pagtaltal in Jordan, Guimaras, has run since 1975 and now draws roughly one hundred fifty thousand visitors each year, evidence the tradition is expanding rather than fading. A related but distinct Holy Week practice, most associated with San Pedro Cutud in Pampanga, sees individual penitents undergo actual crucifixion outside the formal Senakulo production, fulfilling private vows of their own; the Catholic Church has repeatedly discouraged this literal self crucifixion even as it continues to draw both participants and observers each year.