Margaret Rogerson's The York Mystery Plays: Performance in the City

New (appropriately) from York Medieval Press:

The York Mystery Plays: Performance in the City
Edited by Margaret Rogerson

First Published: 21 Apr 2011
13 Digit ISBN: 9781903153352
Pages: 266
Size: 23.4 x 15.6
Binding: Hardback
Imprint: York Medieval Press
Subject: Medieval Literature
BIC Class: DSBB
$90.00

This volume provides a wealth of new insights into the performance of mystery plays in medieval York and their modern revival. It utilises both academic study, and the practical experience of those who now produce the cycle within York itself on wagons in the street, in an approximation of their original performance. A number of topics are covered. The manuscript is linked to Richard III; the Masons are introduced as non-guildsmen in an enterprise assumed to be guild-specific; families, not just male heads of households, are shown to be important to the dramatic narrative; and cognitive theory elucidates performance past and present. Recent productions are discussed in lively detail by those directly responsible for them, leading to analyses of performances in Israel, Spain, and Australia, not all of them of a predictable kind, which offer further angles on the medieval dramatic tradition.

Professor Margaret Rogerson teaches in the Department of English at the University of Sydney.

Contributors: Margaret Rogerson, Keith Jones, Richard Beadle, Sheila K. Christie, Mike Tyler, Jill Stevenson, Elenid Davies, Ben Pugh, Peter Brown, Tony Wright, Steve Bielby, Emma Cunningham, Alan Heaven, Linda Ali, Paul Toy, Gweno Williams, John Merrylees, David Richmond, Alexandra F. Johnston, Sharon Aronson-Lehavi, Pamela M. King

Contents

1 Introduction: Performance in the City
2 Foreword: The Mystery Plays and the Community
3 Nicholas Lancaster, Richard of Gloucester, and the York Corpus Christi Play
4 Bridging the Jurisdictional Divide: The Masons and the York Corpus Christi Play
5 Group Dynamics: The Noah Family in the York Pageant of The Flood
6 Embodied Enchantments: Cognitive Theory and the York Mystery Plays
7 Performing Mystery Plays in twenty-first-century York: Practicalities of Modern Production: Setting the Groundwork
8 Performing Mystery Plays in twenty-first-century York: The Pageant Master's Overview
9 The York Wagons: Construction, Dressing, and Performance: Designing for the Fall of the Angels [Young York Civic Trust]
10 The York Wagons: Construction, Dressing, and Performance: A Custom-built Wagon for the Crucifixion Play [Company of Butchers]
11 The York Wagons: Construction, Dressing, and Performance: Creation of the World to the Fifth Day - the Wagon [York Guild of Building]
12 Interpreting the York Text: Words and Music: The Potters' Pageant of Pentecost [Pocklington School]
13 Interpreting the York Text: Words and Music: The Pageant of The Resurrection - Christ's Appearance to Mary Magdalene
14 Interpreting the York Text: Words and Music: Music and the York Mystery Plays
15 Producing The Creation and Fall of Man in twenty-first-century York: 'Thys werke is wroght now'
16 The Communities of the York Plays
17 Raising the Cross: Pre-Textual Theatricality and the York Crucifixion Play
18 Confraternities and Civic Ceremonial: The Siena Palio
19 Devotional Acting: Sydney 2008 and Medieval York
20 Glossary
21 Bibliography