Audience

The audience was seated facing the raised stage (B). The floor level playing area (A) between the audience and the stage was the variable "place" where many actions took place. The "place" included the aisles through the center and around the outside of the seating area. As many scenes as possible were staged in this platea in an attempt to involve the audience in the action of the play. Both Prologues and much of the Conspiracy were played here, as were Jesus' Arrest and His four Trials. Those who came before the cross stood in the "place" too. In the Ascension scene, the disciples stood on the floor looking up at Jesus on the platform (C) as he spoke. When He finished, they all joined in the "Hosanna," facing the audience. Even the actors who were not on-stage came on and finished the song; then they all walked out through the center aisle.

The audience is an important character in this play. Demon's Prologue is addressed directly to the crowd, as is the sermon of John the Baptist. Jesus (or Jesus' Spirit) talks to the audience about His work of Resurrection following His suffering, and the need for repentance: "Man, and thou let me thus gone /. . . Such a friend findest thou never none, / To help thee at thy need"(45) ["If you let me go today without following, you will miss the friend who knows your need" (Scene XVII, 118)]. Jesus also includes the audience when He speaks to his disciples both at the Last Supper and at the Ascension. In staging the Ascension, the disciples faced Jesus and the actor playing Jesus addressed them and the crowd. Meg Twycross described the value of this device, suggesting that among other things the production of medieval drama has taught us "it is possible to look the audience full in the face".(46)

[page 130] Evaluation

Script

The process of developing and producing a performance script from a medieval religious play has led to a number of conclusions. Paraphrasing and updating language is not as simple as it first appears, because there exist a nearly infinite number of possibilities when one attempts to make medieval references sensible and meaningful today. The loss of poetry by modern paraphrase is worth the sacrifice if the audience can relate to the play as a somewhat contemporary experience, rather than a relic of an unknown age.

Themes

N-town's Passion sequence presents a unified story that may be read as a conflict between Law and Grace. The protagonist is Jesus and the antagonists are the Pharisees. Jesus offers new life and new Law by coming to Earth, dying and resurrecting. His victory over death becomes Man's victory over sin. The language of the plays includes many levels of understanding. Repeated productions would make different emphases. This production emphasized the ideas of Law and Grace, while another might point up the commercial considerations of Judas and the Pharisees.

Production Methods

Concerning presentation, again many modes are possible. It is best, however, to base any production design or technique on the loca-platea staging described in Passion Plays I and II, which is an effective, interesting and flexible plan. To prevent the production from becoming too archaic, costumes should be updated for at least some of the characters, such as Rewfin and Lyon, the judges, for example. Characters like these were touchstones for the audience of their day and may be rewritten or at least re-costumed to illustrate their role in modern society. Miracles may be effectively staged without expensive special effects, particularly in an age of film when theatrical effects often appear inferior to those in the movie theater. A sense of symbolic ritual may be maintained as well by limiting the "realism" of these effects.

[page 131] Audience Relationships

The production audience was similar to the medieval one in another important way: most of the audience members knew one or more of the actors personally. When the cycles were put on by a town and its guilds, most of the audience members knew the performers from everyday life. R. T. Davies has written, "Medieval folk were more used than we are to responding to the role a man was performing as distinct from . . . the man himself, more used than we are to responding to a priest or a king than to Robert or Richard".(47)

Acquaintance with the performers was not the only connection the audience made with the performers, then or now. In terms of physical contact, the Prologues brought the actors into direct relationship with the audience. Demon moved all the way around the audience; John walked up and down the center aisle. Elsewhere in the play, characters entered from behind, around and through the audience, implicating the observers as a part of the action or at least as co-inhabitants of the acting-place, the platea. For example, before His Crucifixion Jesus was led out the center aisle of the church. The arrest party in an earlier scene entered from the back of the room and approached Jesus and His disciples through all three aisles.

This audience-performer connection could have been made clearer and stronger in a number of ways. First, the entire performance could have been turned into a worship service, framed by liturgical readings and responses. In a similar manner, the "Hosannas" which welcomed Jesus and praised Him at His Ascension could have included audience participation, requiring effort on the part of the audience members and identification with the actors and their characters who welcome Jesus, condemn Him, and then praise Him as they say good-bye.

Finding the sense of unity with a modern audience requires some of the techniques of staging, technology and script organization delineated above. Updated contemporary references and costumes may help in this regard, and a modernized script is necessary, though the degree of modernization will vary from one production to another. William Marx writes that he attempted to make as much as possible of his modern performances clear to the [page 132] audience through actions, in order to retain most of the Middle English and some of the Latin words.

Conclusion

This production provided a valuable theatrical experience in three primary ways for different groups of people. For the initiated, it was a religious experience. Those who did not care for, or agree with, the message might have been interested by the medieval staging ideas or the epic qualities of the story itself. And for those who might not have accepted the message initially, but became convinced, the play functioned as a dialectic, sermon or argument that concluded with a "conversion."

Whatever the methods, this drama can be significant and interesting to a modern audience. If its message is true, it will continue to be an important story until the "Doomsday" it describes comes to pass. It is important as well as a glimpse into the life of another age. Performing medieval plays illustrates, as Meg Twycross has written, that "medieval theatre" is "different, and often highly sophisticated."[page 133]

Endnotes

1. William Tydeman, The Theatre in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978) 248.
2. Glynne Wickham, The Medieval Theatre (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1974) 67.
3. Glynne Wickham, Early English Stages, 1300 to 1660 (London: Routledge and Paul; New York: Columbia University Press, 1959-1963) 127.
4. Meg Twycross, "The Theatricality of Medieval English Plays," Richard Beadle,ed. The Cambridge Companion to the Medieval English Theatre (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1994) 37.
5. R.T. Davies, ed. The Corpus Christi Play of the English Middle Ages (Totowa, NJ: Rowman, 1972) 47.
6. John Marshall, "Modern Productions of Medieval English Plays," Beadle, Companion, 296.
7. See John R. Elliot, Jr., Playing God: Medieval Mysteries on the Modern Stage (Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1989) and Marshall.
8. See Sheila Lindebaum, "The York Cycle at Toronto: Staging and Performance Style," Medieval English Drama: A Casebook, ed. Peter Happé (London: Macmillan, 1984) 200-211.
9. See Twycross 59; and Martin Walsh, "The Harlotry Players: Teaching Drama through Performance," in Richard K. Emmerson, ed. Approaches to Teaching Medieval English Drama, Approaches to Teaching World Literature 29 (New York: MLA, 1990) 133.
10. See Walsh 137; and Marshall 295.
11. Milla C. Riggio, "Festival and Drama," in Emmerson, 143.
12. Harvey Cox, The Feast of Fools (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1969) 4.
13. Cox 7.
14. Eleanor Prosser, Drama and Religion in the English Cycle Plays, Stanford Studies in Language and Literature 23 (Stanford: Stanford UP, 1961) 53.
15. Davies 45.
16. Cox 46.
17. V.A. Kolve, The Play Called Corpus Christi (Stanford: Stanford UP, 1966) 119-20.
18. Kolve 119.
19. Marshall 179.
20. William Marx, "Medieval Religious Drama in Modern production," Diss. Mich. State U, 1991 (Ann Arbor: UMI, 1991, 9216333) 13.
21. Davies 235-37.
22. Twycross 59; and Richard Southern, The Medieval Theatre in the Round 1957 (London: Faber, 1975) 17-49.
23. Twycross 60.
24. Anne Cooper Gay, "The 'Stage' and Staging of the N-town Plays," Research Opportunities in Renaissance Drama 10 (1967) 136.
25. See Alan H. Nelson, "Some Configurations of Staging in Medieval English Drama," in Medieval English Drama, ed. Jerome Taylor and Alan H. Nelson (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1972) 133-47; and Martial Rose, "The Stagning of the Hegge Plays," Medieval Drama ed. Neville Denny, Stratford-Upon-Avon Studies 16 (London: Arnold, 1973) 210-19.
26. Beadle xiii.
27. Twycross 37.
28. Beadle xv.
29. Davies 96.
30. Davies 221,
31. Davies 109.
32. Alan J. Fletcher, "The N-town Plays" in Beadle 178.
33. Davies 241.
34. Gay 140.
35. Davies 245.
36. Davies 255. (italics mine)
37. Twycross 58.
38. Davies 255.
39. Davies 237.
40. Davies 235.
41. Davies 306.
42. Richard Beadle and Pamela M. King, eds. York Mystery Plays: A Selection in Modern Spelling (Oxford: Clarendon, 1984) 211.
43. Davies 360.
44. Nelson 134-35.
45. Davies 331-32.
46. Twycross 37.
47. Davies 49.

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