A cast, at last!

Technically there have been many more developments than the title would suggest, but that is probably the most exciting, and most significant. Following auditions last month, we have now recruited ten 1st year drama students to fill the majority of roles. Myself, Chris, brand-new team-member David and photographer Niall were all impressed by the auditionees and those we ultimately cast were really the cream of the crop. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the makeup of an arts degree, all who auditioned and thus all who were cast are female. For the majority of characters this is no bad thing - indeed, for parts such as God and various angels it is actually rather beneficial. Moreover, having a female Joseph will add an interesting tragi-comic tension to 'Joesph's Trouble About Mary'. However, for the characters of Lucifer, Adam and the angel Gabriel we felt we really needed male actors, and so they have been filled by members of the organising team - David, Gerard and yours truly respectively.

And so, this week, we met with all of our cast to distribute scripts, go over some key points and to give a tour of the locations we hope to use for the final performance. Before that, however, went a lot of organisation and effort - not least in the scriptwriting department. For a number of reasons already discussed we have now settled upon a somewhat contracted dramatic scope, and thus are focusing on the Creation and Fall of the Angels, the Creation and Fall of Man and the Nativity. Given the thematic overlaps of these episodes - arguments between couples, both Divine and human; the aspiration to and fall from grace - we have accordingly titled the performance 'If I Should Fall From Grace With God'. Those of you who appreciate the reference should feel very proud, you have impeccable musical taste!

Next week shall be both incredibly busy and something of a week off. Most of the team are popping down to Dublin for Borderlines XIII, an international postgraduate conference for medievalists founded at Queen's University, Belfast but since on a rotating schedule around Irish universities. Myself and Chris shall both be delivering papers on medieval drama - his a wonderfully theory-based adventure, mine on a typically niche-interest topic as the woefully under-appreciated Cornish drama. However, amongst all this we hope to confirm the time, date and place for the performance and thus to finalise, print and distribute the fantastic poster drawn by team-member Lorraine and art-directed by Chris. All being well, the poster, script-extracts and possibly some photographs will be up on the blog next week. Next Monday also we intend to hold the inaugural table-read, which shall indicate whether this whole venture will be a towering triumph or a well-intentioned disaster. Fingers-crossed!

Eamon

Plan B

In the past week, a number of developments, both positive and negative, have occurred in the development of the Belfast Mystery Plays project. On the positive side, we have recruited (with much appreciated assistance) a number of volunteers from the School of Drama at Queen's University, Belfast, to fill the fascinating and challenging roles of our Biblical protagonists. These volunteers will be auditioned this coming week (a novel experience for most of us on the organising team) after which we will begin rehearsing. On the negative side, the time-restrictions of the academic year have meant that, for this year at least, we have had to scale down our plans - thus we will be performing less material than we had previously hoped, and will not be able to mount each play in site-specific Belfast locations. However, we have now decided to save our original, ambitious plans for next year, in order to do the material and all involved the justice it deserves. This year's performance, then, will hopefully be something of a prelude, allowing us to identify problems and plus-points for next year. Nevertheless, this year's performance will still be (fingers-crossed) an accomplished and entertaining experience with a great cast and soundtrack. Watch this space.

Eamon

The Resurrection

Apologies to whoever may be reading this for the lack of activity in recent weeks. Unfortunately/Necessarily the plays have been on hiatus since Christmas while the team researched, wrote and handed in assignments (a number of which discussed the traditions of Mystery Plays, incidentally). Now however we have no excuses, and so we intend to hit the ground running. This week we hope to get scripts finalised and the process of casting begun. So there should be, fingers crossed, much more to talk about here in the coming weeks. We also hope to start generating a bit more publicity with this website, so we will be hopefully linking to other relevant pages and spreading the word about the project. All that remains is to wish a belated Happy New Year!

Eamon

'The Coventry Carol'

In an attempt to provide this nascent blog with something both festive and relevant/useful/educational I have reproduced below the lyrics of 'The Coventry Carol':

Lully, lullay, thou little tiny child,
By, by, lully, lullay,
Thou little tiny child,
By, by, lully, lullay.

Oh sisters too, how may we do
For to preserve this day
This poor youngling, for whom we do sing,
By, by, lully, lullay

Lully, lullay, thou little tiny child,
By, by, lully, lullay,
Thou little tiny child,
By, by, lully, lullay.

Herod the king, in his raging,
Charged he hath this day
His men of might, in his own sight
All children young to slay

Lully, lullay, thou little tiny child,
By, by, lully, lullay,
Thou little tiny child,
By, by, lully, lullay.

A woe is me, poor child for thee,
And ever mourn and may
For thy parting, nor say nor sing,
By, by, lully, lullay.

Lully, lullay, thou little tiny child,
By, by, lully, lullay,
Thou little tiny child,
By, by, lully, lullay.

Although familiar to most people as a Christmas carol, the song was originally part of the Coventry cycle of Mystery Plays, sung during the Shearmen and Tailors' pageant of 'The Slaughter of the Innocents'. Of course, it is entirely possible that, during the Middle Ages, the song would also have been sung at Christmas. However, unlike today it was not rigidly connected to one season, or one occasion. Indeed, the song's role in the Mystery Plays' performance of the 'Christmas story' at Whitsun or Corpus Christi is congruent with the collapsing of conventional temporal conceptions enacted by the Cycle drama.

Whatever its history as a Christmas song, 'The Coventry Carol' is notable for two things. Firstly, it has great literary and historical value as one of the few surviving musical elements of the Cycle drama. Secondly, its beautiful lyrical and musical devices wonderfully reflect and engage with the drama of the Shearmen and Tailors' Pageant.

If you have to hand a recording of the song* or if you already know the tune, listen to the chorus. In the verses, and in the second line of the chorus, "By, by, lully, lullay" goes up and down the minor scale, returning to the minor root on the last syllable. In the fourth line of the chorus, however, "By, by, lully, lullay" goes up and down the minor scale, but instead of returning to the minor root, the final note is raised or sharped to end in a major key. This device, known as a Picardy third, was often used in Medieval music. It is less common today, although 'Crazy' by Gnarls Barkley does employ it: in that song, the first verse after a chorus is often raised from the minor key to the major. The Picardy Third's distortion of our musical expectations and its production of an uneasy, bittersweet tone is entirely appropriate for this song, and the play from which it derives. Although tragic, although evil, the Slaughter of the Innocents is a part of the narrative which heralds the arrival of the Son of God. Thus, like Judas' betrayal of Christ, its import sits uneasily between the horror of itself in isolation, and the glory of the destiny it helps fulfil. This unease and bittersweetness is perfectly mirrored in the tonally ambiguous effect of the Picardy Third in 'The Coventry Carol'.

On that note (!), on behalf of everyone at The Belfast Mystery Plays may I wish you all a Very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Eamon

* Plenty of people have recorded 'The Coventry Carol' over the years, from the Kingston Trio to Kiri Te Kanawa. However, one of the best is that recorded by Maddy Prior and the Carnival Band on their 1986 album A Tapestry of Carols. An excellent, more modern arrangement (albeit one now 21 years old) is by Alison Moyet, from the 1987 compilation A Very Special Christmas. Incidentally, A Very Special Christmas also includes Sting's fantastic, motet-like rendition of 'Gabriel's Message', another carol with distinctly medieval roots: it is a song derived from 'Gabriel From Heven Came', itself an English version of the Latin 'Angelus ad Virginem', famously mentioned by Chaucer in 'The Miller's Tale'.

For additional information on 'The Coventry Carol' (and some other songs possibly used in the Mystery Cycles) please visit:

http://www.hymnsandcarolsofchristmas.com/Hymns_and_Carols/coventry_carol-1.htm

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A8378733

Update # 2

I may have jinxed things in my last update by suggesting the next one might get forgotten. Better late than never.

This week was the last of our first semester of postgraduate study, but despite all of the attendant busy-ness (including each of us giving two fifteen-minute class presentations, three of which focussed on the Mystery Plays) we were able to do some good work for the Belfast Mystery Plays. The most important development this week, and one of the most important in the project so far was our securing of support to involve Drama students. Aside from the practical benefits of promising us some excellent actors, this development continues the project's aim of being an interdisciplinary enterprise, and of combining the talents and interests of students for a common purpose. We shall therefore soon be getting to work on producing a proposal to present to Drama students, then in February we hope to meet, audition, cast and begin to rehearse with actors and musicians.

Merry Messy Kweznuz to you all!

Eamon

Update # 1

As promised, here is the first in what we hope (as long as someone remembers to do it!) will be a weekly roundup of all things Belfast Mystery Plays. Before the roundup proper though, perhaps some further details about the project would be helpful.

The use of the plural 'Plays' in the working title of this project is significant, because, just like the Cycles of the Middle Ages, this is not a single piece of work, a single script, or a single performance. Rather, it is a series of separate but thematically, dramaturgically and logistically linked plays. This system ensures that, while the whole is cohesive, the parts are not homogeneous - they are free to explore and express differences in terms of language, tone, action, humour, pathos and structure. The potential for difference is illustrated in the program of plays we have decided upon:

- 'The Fall of Lucifer' / 'The Fall of the Angels'

- 'Joseph's Trouble About Mary' / 'The Nativity'

- 'The Entry Into Jerusalem'

- 'The Crucifixion'

- 'The Resurrection' / 'The Last Judgement'

This cycle of 5-7 plays presents a contracted view of the huge dramatic and temporal scope produced by the 30-40 plays extant from the Middle Ages. Thus, our cycle opens at the beginning of Creation, finishes at its end, with the centre focusing on the life of Christ.

Which leads us nicely to this week's events. The scripts for 'Joseph's Trouble About Mary' / 'The Nativity' have been drafted, with 'The Fall of Lucifer' / 'The Fall of the Angels' and 'The Crucifixion' soon to follow. On the musical side of things, Chris last week wrote two excellent pieces of music (one of which might work very well in a crucial part of 'The Nativity' - watch this space) and I have adapted and written respectively two songs for the beginning and end of the performance. Finally, Chris and myself have continued to contact and meet with a number of people interested in the project, so all is essentially on schedule.

All that remains to be said is:

Cherry Mishmash!

Eamon

Welcome

Welcome everyone to the Belfast Mystery Plays, a contemporary adaptation and interpretation of the traditional Corpus Christi drama of the Middle Ages, to be performed on the streets of the city of Belfast in early 2009. This project is led by the current MA students in Medieval Studies, in the School of English, Queen's University, Belfast. However, we hope this will be a collaborative project and so are currently recruiting volunteers from other courses in the School of English and hope, in time, to engage staff and students from other Schools in the University and members of the wider public.

The Story So Far

For us, the story begins a year ago. In the final year of studying for our undergraduate degrees in English, a number of us undertook a truly fascinating course exploring the drama of the Middle Ages. At the end of this course, some students (including three members of our team) staged their own adaptations of Medieval plays across Belfast. All of us were fascinated by the often overlooked and much maligned drama we encountered, in particular the Mystery Cycles performed in places such as York, Chester, Coventry, London, Cornwall and Dublin. Medieval Belfast never had, as far as can be told, a cycle of its own - although traditional festive drama was widespread across Ireland. Of course, there have been a number of modern adaptations performed in Belfast in recent years; but this drama was, in origin, annual - seasonal - cyclical. Why not do it again?

The summer after we graduated, two members of our team, Eamon and Chris, began to discuss the idea of using our fast-approaching time as MA students to stage a short cycle of Mystery Plays. Slowly, ideas began to take shape and after only a matter of weeks of our studies, all seven students enrolled in the Medieval MA had signed up. Since then we have discussed the plans with a number of our fellow students and members of staff and have been delighted with their encouragement and enthusiasm. And now, as Christmas approaches, the scripts are being written, the musical accompaniments being developed and, with the arrival of this blog, the project is firmly afloat.

The Story To Come

It is hoped that as the project develops, this blog can be used to keep all who are interested up to date. There will be a weekly roundup of developments and, fingers crossed, comments and discussion throughout the week. In the New Year we hope to begin to post photographs, script extracts, lyrics and, if our technological capabilities permit, some audio and video elements.

In the meantime, may we invite you to email us with any queries and comments (you can reach us at belfastmysteryplays@gmail.com) and, of course, wish you all a Very Merry Christmas.

Eamon, Chris, Linda, Gerard, Will, Lauren and Lorraine