This film was produced by local puppeteer, stage designer and filmmaker Patrick Olsen.  The film was made by Olsen single-handedly, and skilfully edited to appear at times as if more than one camera is being used.  Olsen was too busy in the 1969 production to do any filming, but for the 1973 production he suggested to the director, Edward Taylor, that he make a film record of all that goes into putting on the Plays.   Patrick designed, crafted and painted the highly praised set for the 1969...

This film was produced by local puppeteer, stage designer and filmmaker Patrick Olsen.  The film was made by Olsen single-handedly, and skilfully edited to appear at times as if more than one camera is being used.  Olsen was too busy in the 1969 production to do any filming, but for the 1973 production he suggested to the director, Edward Taylor, that he make a film record of all that goes into putting on the Plays.  

Patrick designed, crafted and painted the highly praised set for the 1969 production.  This, for the first time, raised the action of the play above ground level so that it could be better seen and heard, and allowed for many more points of entry for the actors. John White, one of three actors who played Jesus in 1969, in a 2003 interview states that, “Patrick Olsen's set . . .  for '69 was the best set there has ever been for the Mystery Plays, . . . [by] the use of the polystyrene, he made it look as if it was an extension of the abbey.”  John White is also shown being interviewed in York Mystery Play Interviews. (The 2003 interview, together with an interview with Patrick Olsen and photographs taken by Olsen of the 1969 production, can be found at the York Mystery Plays Archives in York – see References).  


From the available evidence, it seems that the York Mystery Plays were written in the middle of the fourteenth century around the time of the Canterbury Tales – 1367 is the first year the pageant waggons [the original Middle English spelling is still used] are recorded in York.  This was just after the black death of 1349, when York was second only to London in national standing.  The name ‘mystery’ wasn’t given to the plays until the fifteenth century, probably coming from the Latin ministerium, the word ‘mystery’ simply means a "trade" or "craft" in medieval English, although it can also refer to a religious truth or rite, which means ‘act’:

The Plays present, in 48 separate pageants (meaning ‘play’ or ‘act’, deriving originally from the medieval religious plays), the biblical story from the creation of the world – although leaving out most of the Old Testament – through the birth, death and resurrection of Christ, to the last judgement. The cycle – the most complete of four cycles of mystery plays – was produced by the Guilds of York to be performed on Corpus Christi Day (the Thursday after Trinity Sunday), with the last performance variously put as 1568, 1569 or 1572 – just after Shakespeare’s birth.  It was a time when Queen Elizabeth I was suppressing Catholicism – as part of the general Protestant movement away from Catholic rituals and practices – probably accounting for the stopping of the production of mystery plays in York and in many other towns, although the plays were already losing their prestige (see Woolf, References). The Corpus Christi festival was abolished in 1548.

The plays offer a fascinating glimpse into medieval religious life and thought.  The pageants were an act of worship, a 'community theatre', and an education – remembering that the Bible only existed at that time in Latin: the New Testament wasn’t widely available in English until William Tyndale’s forbidden printed editions in the 1530s. Many of the themes of the plays, such as Christ Harrowing Hell, although common in the middle ages, are much less so now, although still in evidence in Eastern Christianity. As well as their religious significance, the plays also clearly had promotional value for the guilds – a forerunner, perhaps, of modern day commercial sponsorship. The procession of the pageants would stop at given places around the town, outside the guilds that were putting them on. The guilds would pay for the privilege of this, and often became entangled in conflicts if the waggons stopped in the wrong place!

The plays were revived in 1951 as part of the national celebrations to commemorate the centenary of the Great Exhibition of 1851. They were performed in the ruins of St Mary’s Abbey, attracting an audience of 26,000.  The plays used a translation from Middle English into a more modern English made by the Reverend J. S. Purvis, from the Toulmin edition of the Asburnhan Manuscript that dates from 1463-77 (held in the British Library) – although the 1973 production used a new translation by Howard Davies.  At the time there was a prohibition on the representation of God or Christ in England, and so the name of the actor playing Jesus was kept a secret: in 1649 Cromwell banned all theatre and this was only partially lifted by Charles II in 1660.  It wasn’t until the Theatres Act of 1968 that direct censorship in the theatre was outlawed.

 

Over the years the plays have used both professional and amateur actors, including Dame Judi Dench – born in York – who played an Angel at the Resurrection in the 1954 production (her mother is shown in the film).  In 1973 John Stuart Anderson – who went on to have a varied career as an actor and dramatist, specialising in adapting and reciting medieval verse – played the part of Jesus. Other notable actors who have performed in the plays include David Bradley as Jesus in 1976, Christopher Timothy as Jesus in 1980,Simon Ward as Jesus in 1984, and Keith Jefferson, a teacher at York Steiner School, as God in 1984 – the first black man to play the part (full listings can be found on the yorkmysteryplays website, see References).

Originally the plays were performed on waggons, in a processional form, with different guilds being responsible for each pageant appropriate to their trade. After 1988 the plays stopped being performed in the ruins of St Mary’s Abbey, and were transferred to York Theatre in 1992. 1994 saw the first processional performance of the Plays in modern times, and in 2000 they were performed in York Minster.

The modern Guilds of York, heirs to the original Mystery Plays presenters, were formally associated with a waggon production for the first time in 1998.  In 2002 they took charge of the production themselves, an historic event that saw the modern waggons repatriated within the community more fully than they had been before.  In 2006, 12 waggons rolled through the streets with the support of the City Council. Future productions of the Plays depend a great deal on the hard work and continuing success of the Guilds and the Early Music Festival.

References

The Archive for the Mystery Plays is held at the The National Centre for Early Music, St Margaret's Church, Off Walmgate, York.

An interview with Patrick Olsen on this can be found at the yorkmysteryplays website, below (this also has a collection of Olsen photographs of the production, programmes and press cuttings):

Beadle, R and King P, eds., York Mystery Plays: A Selection in Modern Spelling, London, Oxford University Press, 1969.

Purvis, J S, The York Cycle of Mystery Plays, London, SPCK, 1962.
Rosemary Woolf, The English Mystery Plays, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1972