## Intro

Definitions:

Mystery plays are one of the three principal kinds of vernacular drama in Europe during the Middle Ages. Usually representing biblical subjects, the plays were originally presented in Latin on church premises and depicted such subjects as the Creation or Adam and Eve. During the 13th century, various guilds began producing the plays in vernacular at sites removed from the churches; the strictly religious nature of the plays declined. In England the mystery cycles were suspected of Roman Catholic tendencies and were gradually suppressed.

They reappeared nevertheless from time to time in the 19th and 20th centuries, and since 1951 they have been revived on a regular basis, every few years, in some cities in England, particularly York, Chester or Coventry.

Medieval theatre has influenced contemporary British drama through its aesthetics, this was the subject of EAP's thesis and she wrote a series of articles showing its influence both as a form or a source of subjects to be reworked and rewritten by playwrights

but what I am going to investigate here are more precisely the revivals of Mystery plays that are based on the original texts and adapted for particular occasions and particular locations. They are also written for particular communities who participate in the creation, as we shall see in more detail.

I will refer to several productions and will quote more particularly the York Mysteries of 2012 written by Mike Kenny, and The Chester Mysteries of 2013 written by Stephanie Dale as I have been given the playtexts by their respective authors.

I will also refer to two productions for London theatres:

*The Mysteries* adapted by Tony Harrison for the National Theatre in 1977 and

*The Mysteries* directed by Katie Mitchell for the RSC's The Other Place in 1997.

The sheer number of those productions, and the fact that they endure and become part of a deeply rooted tradition in some cities in the UK, shows that their popularity is more than just a fad. I will try to understand why reviving a text from the Middle Ages based on the Bible and celebrating a Christian identity turns out not only to be popular among participants and spectators but also to appeal to contemporary playwrights and directors in a mostly secularised and multi-cultural, multi-ethnic society.

To explore those revivals I will constantly redefine a series of dialectical tensions between tradition and modernity, local and global, amateur and professional among others, so as to analyse how contemporary writers and directors work at a material through repetition, variation, reinvention, reappropriation, reproduction and renewal towards a renaissance of the Mysteries.

In a first part I will try to assess the reasons behind those revivals, then I will move on to the resulting productions and concentrate on the way they reinvent or renew the relation with
the audience, so as to produce (and this will be my third and final part) a new community, and
shape its identity.

I. Reasons for revivals?

But first let us explore the reasons why medieval theatre is so appealing to contemporary
audiences and playwrights.

John Elliot lists five reasons for the success of revivals in *Playing God: Medieval Mysteries on the Modern Stage*, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1989, p. 142-3:

1. Their Religious content, celebrating a Christian identity

2. The Nostalgic values they herald

3. The fact that Directors are interested in reconstructing a historical form

4. Their Aesthetic appeal (the form being different from the conventional West End play)

5. Local pride of the participants, especially in Chester and York.

1. Celebrate Christian identity?

The most obvious reason indeed remains religious:

The 1951 productions, as I said, are really a landmark, as the plays were revived on a larger
scale in the York Festival of the Arts, part of the Festival of Britain celebrations. Performed in
the ruins of St Mary's Abbey in York and inside Chester Cathedral, they involved many
members of the Anglican church and were a huge success, with over 26,000 spectators. Since
then they have been revived every 3 to 5 years.

What came as a surprise when I investigated further was the fact that bothMike Kenny and
Stephanie Dale, who adapted the plays for York and Chester in 2012 and 2013 respectively,
do not identify as Christian believers. Their theatre is consistently influenced by their leftist
politics and their progressive views and seems at odds with their participation in a production
whose aim is the celebration of the traditional Christian roots of the English people.

Indeed, more generally, quoting Katie Normington:

"In a multi-cultural society of present-day Britain the assumption that society can share a myth in this way is tenuous." (19)

There are two directions that modern revivals have taken to tackle that paradox and produce
inclusive plays in spite of their original material:

One way, illustrated by the revivals in Coventry, is to include not only actors of other races
and skin colour (a common feature in almost all mysteries now), but also to represent other
faiths and cultures. Coventry's population much more varied than that of the rest of the
country.

As a consequence, revivals almost constantly include references to other cultures, with
multicoloured Indian dances, a Chinese opera or a Latin American carnival being added in
some of the plays so that the productions, with their cultural hybridity and eclecticism, seem
at least superficially to provide a sense of communal and global unity.

Another direction, illustrated by the choices of both Mike Kenny and Stephanie Dale, is to
present the biblical myths as more earthly, more down-to-earth. Thus Mike Kenny comments
on the first page of his manuscript that he wishes to write the story of God as if He were
human (see the highlighted passages in the quote). In an interview I had with him in May, he
described his version of the York Mysteries as "political" and "naturalistic", depicting a father's
(difficult) relationship with his children, enabling all spectators to identify with the situations
presented.
The plays are high culture, as evidenced by the fact that the first words pronounced are in Latin. But here Stephanie Dale chose humour and metadrama to deflate the text and make it more relatable for the audience. Thus, God is a man who must play his part, and who is nervous at the task. He keeps rehearsing his lines in Latin, with the help of his son who prompts him, and finally must translate in plainer English for a group of pupils come to perform their own play:

“GOD Ego sum alpha et omega, I primus et novissimus.

*The CHILD looks quizzically at GOD.*

GIRL Pardon?

HEAD (To GOD). Year 4!

GOD ....I, God, most majesty

In whom beginning non may be. » (p. 10)

The modern mysteries are fun, but they are also a ritual, the repetitiveness is part of their identity.

In that regard, just like a play by Shakespeare, they are enjoyed as part of a culture which is relatable, even if the text itself remains obscure at times.

Just like Shakespeare's theatre also, the degree of inclusivity then depends more on the choices of the stage director or playwright of each production, rather than on the original text itself, and the spectators, knowing the source, will concentrate on the particular choices made for each production.

But another constant feature of the modern mysteries which ensures that they are inclusive is the fact that the community of the city in which they are performed is literally playing a part in the creation:

## 2. Use of amateurs, and professionals

Originally, the mysteries were organised, financed and performed by Craft Guilds
Traditionally, an individual guild took responsibility for a particular play.

In revivals, each play is the responsibility of a “family of amateur actors” who are inhabitants
of the city. The hundreds of participants are accompanied by a few professional actors who
play the main parts (Jesus, God, Satan usually), and by the production team composed of a
small number of professionals.

Those conditions for the creation are rather unique and also explain why so many
professionals are ready to get involved in the production of modern mysteries: the motivation
of the hundreds of participants is unfailing, as they all feel that they are really partaking in a
communal creation.
The professionals are rather at the service of the community, they are commissioned to write
a version of the plays especially for them.

In principle, all the amateurs who present themselves will be cast, and hundred other inhabitants will participate in other ways (playing a musical instrument, sewing costumes or building the set).

Some of you may have already heard me talk of Community plays which are comparable experiences, with casts of hundreds of amateur actors. The main difference with modern mysteries is that in mysteries there are main parts, and that they are played by professionals: a hierarchy remains. Nevertheless, the interaction between professionals and amateurs is far from rigidly vertical.

All participants, whether professional or amateur, talk of the exhilarating feeling of being part of a huge whole. Another image used by Jane Oakshott, a theatre director who staged mysteries at Wakefield and York, is that of a necklace, made up of jewels which each represent one pageant.

The presence of amateur actors is seen and presented as an asset, and often represented metatheatrically in the playtexts themselves, which celebrate and reproduce the happiness of playing in and with theatre.

In the end, it quickly appears that the religious content is far from the main incentive for professionals to participate in a modern mystery, indeed, Katie Normington develops the reasons for such productions in a different direction:

"The main impetus to produce mystery plays today comes from three central dynamics: the desire to challenge the predominantly fixed staging forms (...), the opportunity to present a strong directorial vision of the plays (...) and lastly a desire to use the plays to develop a sense of community identity amongst the participants and spectators" (18).

I wish now to look more closely at the incentive for stage directors and playwrights:

3. Huge opportunity for playwrights (different production means and conditions)

If we recall the metaphor of the necklace composed of a series of jewels, we understand how each jewel may be crafted in a very specific manner, and indeed each pageant, each mystery finds itself renewed and coloured by the individual vision of the artists who adapt it.

Once more, like adaptations or reapproprations of Shakespeare's plays, revivals of medieval dramas are as many occasions to comment on the discrepancy, or on the similarities between the historical, social and aesthetic contexts of the Middle Ages and those of our contemporary world.

Just a few instances of the variety of productions that have sprung from the same (more or less) original material:

The variety may come from casting, which offers as many different perspectives: whereas in the original mystery plays all roles were played by men, there have been revivals where all roles were played by women, for instance the Toronto production in 1998.

As soon as 1988, an Indian actor, Victor Banerjee, played the role of Jesus in York, and since then, the parts of God, Jesus or Satan have been taken by boys and girls of all ages and skin colour.
The variety also comes from more general aesthetic choices on the part of directors, and those choices also correspond to the historical context:

In Chester in 1972, Roosevelt-Evans' production was influenced by Brecht's Verfremdungseffekt: this was cultivated thanks to a constant switching of roles (the same actor would play multiple roles, or the same character was embodied by several actors), and when Eve bit the apple, she was mirrored by all the other couples on stage.

In 1997, Katie Mitchell's revival for the RSC, *The Mysteries*, was influenced by in-yer-face drama:

When recreated at the Barbican, the play was set in a war-torn landscape with reminiscences of Bosnia. Christ was a down-and-out living on Matthew's Kensington doorstep. Matthew was a city broker and unreliable journalist of Christ's life. The production was more Sarah Kane than mystery play with "lashings of Quentin Tarantino", machine guns, helicopter gunships, and the F-word. The whole was more reinterpretation than reconstruction!

More generally, all the professional playwrights and stage directors who have participated have been galvanised by the sheer ambition, size, scale, numbers involved, and have seen it as an opportunity to be part of an event bigger than themselves, which was deeply rooted in the community.

For 2012 the Mystery plays adapted by Mike Kenny involved more than 1,000 local volunteers, including 500 amateur actors.

In the interview mentioned earlier, Mike Kenny also explained that all those amateur actors don't look like actors, they are real people!

In the end, each new production, like a pearl in a necklace, is at the same time part of a whole and retains its individual signature, and each creator marks his or her place in the history of the mysteries.

In a second part I would like to explore more precisely a series of dialectical tensions which are all at the heart of the aesthetic choices of each new production of the mysteries, and which all have an impact on the relation between the community of actors and the community of spectators.

## II. Relation with audience

### 1. Inside/outside, promenade/static

The first of those dialectics is between productions outside and inside: I will here concentrate on those mystery revivals which were staged in the cities of York or Chester, and not those which were produced in theatre buildings.

Chester and York are well-known for their majestic cathedrals, and the decorum and heritage that the precious buildings embody are one of the main reasons why revivals were held in those cities.

Some of the productions took place inside the cathedrals (photo1 and 2), while some were set outside, either in the York Museum Gardens (photo 3), with the famous ruins of St Mary's Abbey Church as a backdrop or on the cathedral green in Chester, with the cathedral as a backdrop (photos 4 and 5).
As you can see, and imagine, both outside and inside locations add majesty and solemnity, and of course the number of participants on stage also partakes of the feeling of grandeur and awe.

According to reviewers, the productions outside tend to be more communal and impressive, while those inside, beside creating a more individual relation with the spectators, risk underlining the amateur aspect.

On the other hand, ruins are associated with notions of memory and heritable, a nostalgia of the past as petrified.

But the use of technologies such as videos projected on those ruins may revive them, give them new shapes, or actually give them back their original shapes.

Then again, the increasing secularisation of the plays was often accompanied by a move outside, from the refectory in the body of the cathedral to the cathedral green in front of it. But that move was often counteracted, for instance with the 2013 Chester mysteries moving back inside the Cathedral, without it meaning that they were more religious in content or in form.

Indeed, even a production outside can be felt to have the rigidity of an indoor theatre when the ranks of audience seating are effectively dividing the spectators from the stage. We are here moving on to another dialectic tension, between static and promenade performances, and the consequent impact on the relation they create with their audience.

If some performances were deemed too rigid, others have capitalised on moving spectators: the revival of processional performances in York, with playing stations using pageant wagons (since 1994), have ensured that the audience, moving from play to play, would be less static and would participate more.

The fragmentation in various scenes also meant that, rather like the original pageants, the spectators were free to choose individually the order in which to watch the various plays, or actually which plays to watch, ensuring a personal experience which is reminiscent of the immersive theatre as imagined by Punchdrunk for instance.

But even mysteries which were produced inside have played with participating audiences and organised promenade performances.

This is the case of the National Theatre Mystery, where a fair was organised before the show and during the interval. The actors, dressed as tradesmen, welcomed the spectators, creating a strong bond with them, and the promenade performance which followed turned them into participants, as they danced with the actors, or were part of the crowd condemning Jesus. See the beg of The Passion on Youtube!

Stephanie Dale's production reproduced the same organisation, as the audience entered the cathedral to discover a crafts fair "from across the centuries"

Part of the initial long stage direction then states:

"In the nave of the cathedral, devilish figures start chasing the children" (3)

-> children among the actors and spectators are here undistinguished, part of the same crowd, in a carnival atmosphere.

Similarly the actors are often the spectators of other actors' plays, as in this instance:

"GOBBET2 I like this play. Can I just watch this one. Just this once?
GOBBET4 No!

GOBBET1 I've got a better idea!

GOBBET3 Go on?

GOBBET1 We can be in it! Nobody will even notice!
The GOBBETS *pull on posh frocks and giggle*.

GOBBET4 Just this once." (p. 76-77)

The same interaction between actors and audience works when perspectives shift as Jesus is nailed to the cross, and as a camera stuck in his crown of thorns projects the scene from above, looking down into the crowd.

## 2. Participation/entertainment

On the whole, contemporary versions of the plays have frequently replicated a fluid actor-audience relationship: even when seating and stage is fixed, the outdoor location provides informality and allows conversations between spectators.

Various modes of receptions, alternating "close-ups" with one character and very spectacular scenes with hundreds of participants create a dynamic relationship with the audience.

The participation of amateur actors who are all inhabitants of the city also transforms the relation between them and the spectators who may be their neighbours, friends or family.

Of course, the general atmosphere is that of a joyful reunion, a pleasurable gathering which will avoid direct confrontation and hurtful subjects. Nevertheless, compared to the audience at the Royal Court, we could easily say that left-wing writers are writing for a much more varied and diverse audience.

More precisely, they are not writing for the audience, but with them, in constant interaction. A beautiful symbol of this inclusion is again to be found in Stephanie Dale's version of the mysteries where Noah's ark is built around the seating area, saving the audience from the deadly flood.

The play's symbolism indeed builds a sense of community through the text, the setting and the music, so that the audience and the participants find themselves sharing the same space and travelling back and forth through time, the better to define their identity as a group.

This is exemplified by the stage direction which describes the interval:

*During the interval:*

The 12 DISCIPLES will be in different spaces of the Cathedral. We will see JESUS speaking with them. All 12 have their own musical identity/tune. As the interval comes to an end **each piece of music twines together to make one tune of unity. The DISCIPLES lead us back into the nave of the Cathedral for the second half.**

Each stall selling food or drink should be presented as a wagon from the Mystery Plays and a Guild represented, **from either the past or present.** (For those who don't leave their seats a live stream of what is happening could be fed onto the big screen). (p. 54-55)

In this extract, not only is the music composed of the different musical identities of the characters, who take the audience with them to "make one tune of unity", but the references to the past and to the present mingle, bridging the gaps between the inhabitants of today and their ancestors of the Middle Ages.
### III. Redefining the community's identity and its relation to the present?

Modern mysteries, just like their medieval sources are full of anachronisms (out of time) and anatopisms (out of place), and another series of dialectical tensions appears between timelessness and precise time references, and between locality and globality.

Initially, the revivals were created specifically for a place and for a time. Conversely, all revivals seem to aim at creating universal plays, insisting that we today can relate to texts which were written in the Middle Ages and which were themselves reappropriations of biblical texts! The constant de-territorialisation and re-territorialisation, as well as the time referencing and effort towards timelessness all shape the complex dialectics.

#### 1. Timelessness/updating

Katie Normington explains that the longevity of the mystery plays is due to the fact that, not being the work of a single author, they are in themselves plural and therefore adaptable: she sees those texts as “Part of the reason for their long life is that they were not the work of a single author, and were not limited to the lifespan of that playwright, but instead were **fluid and transitory texts that could respond to changing cultural demands.**” (4)

The term ‘cycle’ itself emphasizes the repetitiveness of those plays and the history they tell. This vision of a cyclical history was prevalent in the Middle Ages, which saw time as a loop. Each year was a single twist of the time-spiral, so that when the audience met for Easter, they were mystically linked with the original Crucifixion and Passion of Christ. Similarly, the different events or episodes recounted in the Bible were seen as happening at different points of the loop which overlaid. History was thus conceptualized as a kind of palimpsest, with each layer not covering but superimposing its addition to what had been before.

That conception of time is intrinsically linked with the Christian belief, and opens up onto the future:

> "The Mystery Cycle plays focus on the present, showing the past of the biblical events to be integrally connected both to the present of the audience and actors and also to their future in terms of salvation or damnation. The cycle plays work with "God's time" which is universal and contemporaneous." (C. Richardson and J. Johnston, *Medieval Drama*, London: Macmillan, 1984, p. 65).

The modern revivals also play with time references, mixing past, present and future. In the guise of medieval paintings which picture Christ and other biblical subjects in medieval costumes to make history relevant, the Mysteries at the NT, created during Thatcher's governments, drew parallels between medieval guilds and workers' unions.

Thus also, Stephanie Dale's version of the passion erupts in a contemporary backdrop:

> "They march JESUS out into the streets. JESUS carries the cross. DRUMMERS drum.

> Chester is now a mass of PEOPLE. They are: shopping; taking their children swimming; eating cake; trying to light a cigarette; running for a bus; meeting friends; out on business; repaving the road; taking a group of SCHOOL CHILDREN out on a trip to the zoo; a little GIRL sits on a bench eating an apple; a BOY plays with his toy ark; two BROTHERS argue; a FATHER leads his SON down to the river. More echoes of other stories. In
turn, each stops what they are doing and turns their attention to the
spectacle. » (68)

Of course, these contemporary references are as many occasions for committed playwrights
to confront their audience on contemporary moral issues, which find an echo in the stories of
the bible, such as charity for the poor:

Herod's wife, the queen, is thus seen refusing to help the homeless and complaining of a
"broken Britain"

"QUEEN Come along my little ones. Walk quickly. Don't stop. Don't catch their eye. They'll only ask you for something.

LUCIFER Money...

DAUGHTER 1 That one hasn't got any shoes!

LUCIFER Food...

DAUGHTER I don't like it here.

LUCIFER Blankets.

QUEEN **Broken Britain.**

DAUGHTER 2 Shall I give her a coin?

LUCIFER No!

QUEEN If you give to one they will all expect the same.

DAUGHTER 1 That one's... weeing in the bushes!

TRAVELLER1 **They've privatised public toilets.**" (p. 46)

That explicit reference to Britain instead of Judea is just one example of many similar
dialectical oppositions between localised references and universality, or globalisation.

## 2. Locality/globality

Though the cycles exist in many different cities and seem forever adaptable to all
circumstances and all communities, they become relevant only if they are tightly knit with a
particular, local and identified community. It is therefore no surprise that the local Northern
accent and idiom is such a defining feature of the York cycles!

The strong regionalism makes the cycle unique

On the other hand, the revivals, like the original mysteries, play with typical characters.
Influenced by Brecht, many directors have their actors demonstrate rather than embody the
characters.

Those characters are from nowhere and from everywhere and everybody can understand
their situation and what they represent.

Those many tensions and oppositions, between celebrating a traditional form and reinventing
it for the present, between exalting an identity which is defined in space and time and
demonstrating that we are all humans sharing the same stories, whether we live in Chester,
York or London, in the 1st, the 13th or the 21st centuries, are at the heart of the success of
revivals of mysteries, as they are at the heart of any revival, adaptation, reappropriation or
rewriting of a well-known text, such as a play by Shakespeare.
Because the text is well-known, the audience will tend to concentrate on the new aspects or perspective offered on it by each new production, and the conversation will thus germinate between different productions and different spectators.

To take up Elisabeth Angel Perez' analysis, the palimpsest is regenerative.

« le palimpseste se fait moyen d'introspection. La réécriture des modèles est une démarche post-moderne par excellence et la ritualisation extrême de ce théâtre médiéval à peine sorti de l'église est séduisante pour le théâtre contemporain. » (p. 513)

What is more, those mysteries are communal creations. It is here interesting to remember the words of Ray Stevenson, who was the only professional actor in the York Millenium Mysteries (*The Journal*, June-July 2000) and who talked of himself as "an outsider within": this expression clarifies the process through which the community for which the play is written and which performs it comes to life: far from being fixed and defined, it adapts and evolves, welcoming all who partake of the creation: the community of participants and spectators of mysteries is imagined (to take up Benedict Anderson's analysis), it is a cultural construct which is defined by and through a common cultural practice (and which oscillates constantly between a definition through its locality (re-territorialisation) and a definition through its identity (de-territorialisation).)

(Finally it is interesting to note that the most successful mysteries were produced for particular occasions by playwrights and directors who were keener on writing for a community rather than for themselves, demonstrating that at the height of capitalism and globalism, the works of art which are local and amateur and which define individuals as belonging to particular communities are the most popular.)

Marianne Drugeon