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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 January 2009
The year 2000 prompted a review of the past millennium that took various forms – and lent a special significance to revivals of the medieval mystery plays for the celebrations in Coventry and York. Margaret Rogerson here argues that, no less than their local medieval counterparts, revivals can function as both community theatre and religious celebration – their appeal in a secular modern world raising fewer questions than versions of the Christian story adapted for the commercial or institutional theatre. She demonstrates how special efforts were made in the millennium revivals to reach out to the community; both local and global, and how through associated educational programmes and the inclusion of a wide range of participants, they introduced innovations into local traditions and built on the past to contribute to a continuing theatrical heritage. Margaret Rogerson is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of English at the University of Sydney who is currently researching the mystery play revival traditions in York from 1951 to 2000.
1. Quoted in ‘Religious Groups Rail at a New Round of Blockbusters’, The Guardian, 26 November 1999.
2. Carroll, Rory, ‘Vatican Endorses Superstar Musical’, The Guardian, 15 12 1999Google Scholar.
3. The Coventry Millennium Mysteries were performed in the ruins of Coventry Cathedral from 18 July to 5 August; the York Millennium Mystery Plays in York Minster from 22 June to 22 July; the Chester Mysteries in the Street at Chester Town Hall Square and The Cross from 24 June to 30 July; and the Lincoln Mystery Plays 2000 in Southwell Minster from 11 to 15 July, and in Lincoln Cathedral from 18 to 29 July.
4. Normington, Katie uses this phrase in her comparison of the Harrison/Bryden and Kemp/Mitchell Mysteries, ‘Little Acts of Faith: Katie Mitchell's The Mysteries’, New Theatre Quarterly, No. 54 (1998), p. 99–110Google Scholar.
5. Turner, Victor, From Ritual to Theatre: the Human Seriousness of Play (New York: Performing Arts Journal Publications, 1982), p. 47Google Scholar.
6. Eaton, Bob (director), quoted in Wyatt, Kathleen, ‘Heaven Sent’, The Times, 19 07 2000Google Scholar.
7. This is the mission statement of Coventry's Begrade Theatre, quoted by Jane Hytch (producer), programme notes, Millennium Mysteries.
8. This comment was recorded in an interview with Ged Murray, who played Joseph in York in 2000. I am grateful to him and to the following cast members, administrators, and participants in the educational programmes in York, who spoke with me and my research assistant, Dr. Denise Ryan, about their experiences with the Minster production: Barry Atkinson, Kit Bird, Jude Brereton, Gill Cooper, Arnold Durham, Ruth Ford, Val Gallagher, Frank Higgins, Brian Higginson, John Roden, Graham Sanderson, Delma Tomlin, and Sam Valentine.
9. Normington, ‘Little Acts of Faith’, p. 100.
10. Normington, ‘Little Acts of Faith’, p. 110. See also discussion of the Harrison/Bryden and Kemp/Mitchell productions, and, briefly, of local ‘heritage version’ revivals, in Greenhalgh, Susanne, ‘“How It Might Have Been to Believe”: Re-imaging the Social Body in Contemporary Productions of the English Mystery Plays’, in Gearon, Liam, ed., English Literature, Theology, and the Curriculum (London: Cassell, 1999), p. 104–23Google Scholar.
11. Eco, Umberto, ‘Signs of the Times’, in David, Catherine, Lenoir, Frédéric, and de Tonnac, Jean-Philippe, eds., Conversations about the End of Time (London: Penguin, 2000), p. 215–16Google Scholar.
12. Keith Ramsay has directed the Lincoln productions since 1978. I am grateful to him for his generous correspondence with me on the topic of his work with the Lincoln Mystery Plays Company.
13. The Lincoln revivals also enjoy a continuity of actors, some of whom belong to the same family. In 2000, for example, three of the players had been with the company since 1978, and the daughter of the actors playing Eve and Satan played the infant Christ of the Nativity sequence.
14. ‘Village All Set for Big Mystery Play Night’, Evening Press, 2 December, 1999; and ‘Show's Starring Role in Appeal’, Evening Press, 13 May 2000.
15. ‘Herod Turns to God, and Jesus Becomes Lucifer’, Evening Press, 1 March 2000.
16. Harrison, Emma, ‘Dame Judi's Advice to Mystery Plays Foursome’, Evening Press, 14 06 2000Google Scholar. In 1998, Dame Judi was Patron of the wagon plays in the streets. She was joint President of the York Millennium Mysteries along with Dame Janet Baker, and one of the Patrons of the Lincoln Mystery Plays 2000.
17. A search for Millennium Person of the Past and Person of the Present was instigated by the City of York Council in collaboration with the Evening Press and Radio York. Joseph Rowntree of confectionery fame was voted Millennium Person of the Past. See Hearld, Bill, ‘Joseph Rowntree and Judi Win Your Votes’, Evening Press, 21 12 1999Google Scholar.
18. ‘Stake Your Claim in York Historic Plays’, Evening Press, 4 November 1999; ‘Youngsters Audition for Mystery Plays’, Evening Press, 30 November 1999, which included a call for more ‘young men’ to audition for speaking parts; and Hitchon, Andrew, ‘Scene Set for Job Training’, Evening Press, 29 01 2000Google Scholar.
19. ‘Taking the Ruff with the Smooth’, Evening Press, 14 November 1998.
20. The director, Ray Alexander, wrote to The Press to express his thanks to journalist Charles Hutchinson, whose articles rescued the project from being ‘well and truly overshadowed’. See ‘At the Heart of York’, Evening Press, 25 July 2000.
21. This tradition dates back to 1954, when a separate wagon play was presented in conjunction with the full-scale Museum Gardens production. For information on a number of wagon play productions since 1957, see http://freespace.virgin.net/cade.york/limen/plays/ wpintro.htm.
22. Titley, Chris, ‘York Minster Awaits the Queen's Arrival’, Evening Press, 26 07 2000Google Scholar; and Hutchinson, Charles, ‘After the Mystery’, Evening Press, 25 07 2000Google Scholar.
23. Titley, ‘York Minster Awaits the Queen's Arrival’. Some children's costumes remain at the Minster for use during school visits.
24. Oakshott, Jane, ‘York Guilds' Mystery Plays, 1998: the Rebuilding of Dramatic Community’, in Hindley, Alan, ed., Drama and Community: People and Plays in Medieval Europe (Turnhout: Brepols, 1999), p. 270–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Planning for another guild revival in July 2002 was under way while the Minster production was in progress in 2000, and towards the end of the year the guild community had begun the necessary process of fund-raising. I am grateful to Kit Bird, a member of the guilds' steering committee for the projected 2002 production, for information on the preparations.
25. Oakshott, ‘York Guilds' Mystery Plays, 1998’, p. 270.
26. Jellicoe, Ann, Community Plays: How to Put Them On (London: Methuen, 1987), p. 257Google Scholar. This approach has been endorsed recently by the work of Johnston, Chris, who sees the ‘potential of community theatre … principally in four areas: recreation, solidarity, self-development, and celebration’, House of Games: Making Theatre from Everyday Life (London: Nick Hern Books, 1998), p. 5Google Scholar.
27. Kershaw, Baz, The Politics of Performance: Radical Theatre as Cultural Intervention (London: Routledge, 1992), p. 66CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
28. Kershaw, Baz, The Radical in Performance: between Brecht and Baudrillard (London: Routledge, 1999), p. 193Google Scholar.
29. Quoted in Charles Hutchinson, ‘After the Mystery’. York residents expressed arguments both for and against filming: see ‘Put Plays on Film’, reader's letter from Leigh, Richard, Evening Press, 22 07 2000Google Scholar; and ‘Scenes for the Soul’, reader's letter from Bowman, Philip J., Evening Press, 1 08 2000Google Scholar.
30. Small-scale productions of selections from the mysteries have been staged in churches in York, as in the case of the Heslington Nativity mentioned above, and, for example, the Life of Christ sequence (directed by Ray Alexander for the Friends of the York Mystery Plays and Festival) presented in All Saints' Church in 1998.
31. In Chester in 2000, the modest thirty-minute overview of the Creation to Doomsday story in the Mysteries in the Street made an effort to achieve communitas through street theatre. This was a free open-air production presented by a local cast and production crew. The stage was designed to resemble a pageant wagon and used a painted streetscape of medieval Chester as its backdrop.
32. Pawel Szkotak, director of Teatr Biuro Podrozy, quoted in Gardener, Lyn, ‘A Breath of Fresh Air’, The Guardian, 19 07 2000Google Scholar.
33. Browne, E. Martin, ‘The Medieval Play Revival’, Contemporary Review, No. 219 (1971), p. 135Google Scholar.
34. Browne, ‘The Medieval Play Revival’, p. 136.
35. Browne was aware of the processional mode of performance in medieval York, but commented that it ‘would dislocate the entire life and traffic of a modern city to have a series of decorated carts perambulating the streets and stopping to give performances from dawn to dusk’. See ‘The English Mystery Plays’, Drama, No. 43 (1956), p. 36. Wagon productions in the streets of York since the late 1980s have adhered to strict safety regulations to avoid congestion. The original performance mode remains attractive, and Greg Doran has advocated guild sponsorship of a large-scale production of ‘all 47 plays on carts on the streets on Corpus Christi Day from dawn till nightfall, starting at 4.30 in the morning’. See Charles Hutchinson, ‘After the Mystery’.
36. King, Pamela M. and Davidson, Clifford, eds., The Coventry Corpus Christi Plays (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, Western Michigan University, 2000), p. 59–60Google Scholar.
37. ‘Behind the Scenes’, at http://www.belgrade mysteries.co.uk.
38. Ian McKellen: Stage, at http://www.mekellen. com/stage.
39. See http://www.belgrademysteries.co.uk. I am grateful to Matthew Pegg of the Belgrade Young People's Department for additional information on the educational programme.
40. Kingston, Jeremy, ‘Millennium Mystery Plays: York Minster’, The Times, 26 06 2000Google Scholar. For details concerning the sound system, see Hutchinson, Charles, ‘Cross Purposes’, Evening Press, 22 06 2000Google Scholar.
41. Quoted in ‘Huge Queue for Millennium Plays’, Evening Press, 25 September 2000.
42. The Creation was produced/directed by Tony Parker of Real Life Productions for transmission on BBC North, 22 June 2000, the opening night of the production.
43. The props for the production have been dispersed in a number of ways. Those that were borrowed were returned to their owners; some had to be thrown away; some of the umbrellas representing the animals for the Noah sequence were donated to the RSPCA; others are now kept at the National Centre for Early Music in York.
44. Revivals of a selection of plays were presented in the streets on pageant wagons in 1988, 1992, 1994, and 1998.
45. Mick Gower, programme notes, A Creative Mystery. Gower worked with the children as poet on this project, with Duncan Chapman assisting as composer, and Allison Clarke as Visual Artist.
46. In the survey taken by Gill Cooper of the York Council's Performing Arts Service, the experience in the great building appears to have delighted a number of the children, though a few were put off by the cold and the waiting around.
47. Richard Hurford co-ordinated the scriptwriting, Karen Hood the design, and Brian Higginson was assisted with the direction by teachers at the schools involved: Jenny Carr (Canon Lee School), Maggie Goddard (Joseph Rowntree School), Ged Goodrich (All Saints' School), Graham Sanderson (Fulford School), Bev Veasey (Oaklands School), and Tina Wright (Burn-holme Community College).
48. Brian Higginson, ‘Symphony of Glass: Final Report and Accounts, July 2000’.
49. Quoted in Higginson, ‘Symphony of Glass’.
50. Quoted in Billington, Michael, ‘The Bard's Biggest Fan’, The Guardian, 27 04 2000Google Scholar.
51. Trussler, Simon, The Cambridge Illustrated History of British Theatre (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 310Google Scholar.
52. ‘Signs of the Times’, p. 190.
53. Ibid., p. 186.