Just for fun!

Run Jesus, Run!



This is a picture of a production of The fall of the Angels performed in Toronto 1998. The above is god's thrown, and below is hell's mouth. Fairly self explanitory...

http://www.public.iastate.edu/~gbetcher/373/Toronto2.htm

Behind the scenes of a Miracle Play

Entertaining Medieval Theatre

• Silly French!

What YouTube says is Medieval theatre...

• Wow.

Behind the scenes of a Miracle Play, maybe more accurate?

• The following videos are all demonstrating different aspects of productions of miracle plays (Well maybe not the first two...) But the last one definately shows what might be a proper reconstruction of the back stage area of a Miracle play. It's entertaining, but the crazy chaos of people crammed into a tiny space behind the wagon would have been what it was like.

Pageant Wagons



As is shown above; a production of The fall of the Angels would be staged on a very limited, wagon spaced vehicle like the one featured above. They were meant to be mobile because they made a circle around the playing ground. These wagons were specially made in order to accommodate 5-8 actors, to be able to transport all of the sets, costumes and props needed for the play, and everything else needed for performance. 

"Early English Stages: Glynne Wickham: Books." Web. 18 Nov. 2010. <http://www.amazon.com/Early-English-Stages-Glynne-Wickham/dp/0415197821>.

Oxford Reference online

Medieval religious play which derives from liturgical drama, but differs in being wholly or partly in the vernacular and not chanted but spoken. Also it was performed out of doors—in front of the church, in the market square, or on perambulating pageants. The earlier English name for it was miracle play, now seldom used, and a better name would be Bible-histories, since each play was really a cycle of plays based on the Bible, from the Creation to the Second Coming. Substantial texts of English ‘cycles’ of such plays have survived from Chester, Coventry, Lincoln, Wakefield, and York. Simultaneously with the English mystery play there arose in Europe, in the vernacular, the French mystère, the German Mysterienspiel, the Italian sacra rappresentazione, and the Spanish auto sacramental, to name only the most important. Traces of similar plays are found in Russia, in the states of Central Europe, and also in Denmark.

This is Oxford's definition of the Mystery Play. 

"Mystery Play"  The Concise Oxford Companion to the Theatre. Ed. Phyllis Hartnoll and Peter Found. Oxford University Press, 1996. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press.  Northern Ireland Public Libraries.  18 November 2010  <http://www.oxfordreference.com/views/ENTRY.html?subview=Main&entry=t79.e2154>

Miracle Play

The book, English Religious drama written by Katherine Lee Bates, is defined as...

“The miracle-play was the training school of the romantic drama. In England, during the slow lapse of some five centuries, the miracle, with it’s tremendous theme and mighty religious passion, was preparing the day of the Elizabethan stage, for despite all crudities, prolixities , and absurdities of detail, these English miracle Cycles are nobly dramatic both in range and spirit.” (Pg. 35)

Medieval mystery plays focused on the representation of Bible stories in churches as tableaux with accompanying antiphonal song. The focoused heavily on the morals of the stories and were meant to teach their illerterate audience right and wrong. They used the Seven Virtues and the seven deadly sins.

Seven Virtues: chastity, temperance, charity, diligence, patience, kindness, and humility

Seven Sins: wrath, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy, and gluttony.

Bates, Katharine Lee. The English Religious Drama,. New York: Macmillan, 1913. Print.

What's a Barker?

So I’ve searched high and low, looking for the answer. What is a barker? There was obviously a guild devoted to it seeing as they produced a play in the York cycle! The best I’ve come up with is this. “Someone who stands in front of a show (as at a carnival) and gives a loud colorful sales talk to potential customers” This definition sounds close to what I’d image a barker to be. Something akin to this…

Pirelli's Miracle Elixer

[Is this a Baker?]

"Barker." WordNet. Princeton University. Web. <http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=barker>.

The Spectacle of the Scaffolding

“[Jehan Martin deposed that he went to Chelles] to see a celebration which was to take place there the following day in commemoration of the Passion of Our Lord. [He met up with several others in an inn, two of whom subsequently] slept that night, fully clothed, on the scaffold which had been erected for the said celebration.”

This primary document written by Jehan Martin in 1394 from France, is from the scholarly article, the Spectacle of the scaffolding: rape and the violent foundations of medieval theatre studies. I chose it to show that these Mystery plays were a big deal! Actors and attendants would sleep over night on uncomfortable scaffolds in order to see these plays commemorating the passion of the lord. The scaffold was located above the stage on the wagons which worked as the stage for these plays.

Enders, Jody. "The Spectacle of the Scaffolding: Rape and the Violent Foundations of Medieval Theatre Studies." Theatre Journal 56.2 (2004): 163-81. Print.

Ego sum Alpha et O

Ego sum Alpha et O: vita, via, veritas, primus et novissimus.

The following line is written in Latin and starts off the first cycle in the York Pagaent. It's spoken by God and means, "I am the alpha and the omega, life, the way, truth, first and last.” This is a paraphrasing of the original line in Revelations 22:13 "“I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.”

I like to think the line sets up the story of The Fall of the Angels nicely because, the play is a loose interpretation of Revelations anyway. Through pride we all fall, for only God is life and the way.

"Revelation 22:13 I Am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and." Bible Browser: Online Bible Software. Web. 17 Nov. 2010. <http://biblebrowser.com/revelation/22-13.htm>.

Daystar Coming

12 How you are fallen from heaven, O Day Star, son of Dawn! How you are cut down to the ground, you who laid the nations low!

13 You said in your heart, ‘I will ascend to heaven; above the stars of God I will set my throne on high; I will sit on the mount of assembly in the far north;

14 I will ascend above the heights of the clouds, I will make myself like the Most High.’

15 But you are brought down to Sheol, to the depths of the Pit.

16 Those who see you will stare at you, and ponder over you: ‘Is this the man who made the earth tremble, who shook kingdoms,

17 who made the world like a desert and overthrew its cities, who did not let his prisoners go home?

"Lucifer in Isaiah 14:12-17." Relocate. Web. 17 Nov. 2010. <http://www.crivoice.org/lucifer.html>.

                                                   * William Blake's depiction of the Great Red Dragon                                                                       mentioned in Revelations.

             The Barkers' Play: The Fall of the Angels is a dramatization of the bible telling the story of the fall of Lucifer or Satan or the devil. Though it is definitely a lose interpretation of the bibles story, the Fall of the Angels quotes the bible in its script: Isaiah 14:12; Revelation 12:7-9; and Luke 10:18. These verses allowed the Church fathers to examine and explain the existence of evil.

            Lucifer’s fall is the result of inner pride, which instantly causes him and his angels to be dropped out of heaven without truly being driven out of heaven. The show is typically staged with heaven and God’s throne above and earth and hell below.

Isaiah 14:12-17