A M A Z I N G - 9

Maybe you've been to this website before, maybe you haven't - but it was here that I found out I'm more of a history nut than I let on to be. I can't take too many things from here, as I should only focus on one key thing, but it is jam packed with things to read up on. I'm surprised I didn't find it sooner (and hope that my enthusiasm isn't passed over because the site ends up being common knowledge). It's a site completely dedicated to the York Mystery Plays.

What really got me fired up over this website is that there are snippets from interviewed actors who had taken part in a production that took place right after World War II. Though it doesn't seem that they did their production upon pageant wagons, it seems they were still outdoors. Here are my favorite snippets from the selection:

"We were absolutely delighted at the thought of the Mystery Plays being revived - we'd had the grim years of the war and afterwards when there was still rationing and hard times - the thought of a bit of excitement - something different." Eileen Skaife

"Adam was on the ramparts spouting his speech, and his teeth flew out, and John Van Eyssen [Lucifer] deftly caught them."
Bill Brunton

"I was in the sixth form of Archbishop Holgate's [Grammar] School. we met the Queen. The people of York are extremely fortunate in that one of our greatest traditions is a theatrical tradition. one of the great foundation stones of English culture. I spoke at a Labour Party meeting in Coventry - the car workers were more interested in York and the Mystery Plays than Labour politics!"
Frank Dobson
I think it's so important that there is history recorded in this way. That there are people from the past, however recent, who took delight in putting on these plays really makes me happy. I think little quotations like these make this whole project more alive to me than anything. Hopefully, these voices from the past would help the actors too.

Work Cited

The National Centre for Early Music. "Ancestral Voices." York Mystery Plays. 2010. One to One Productions Ltd. < idno="2">