Adam and Eve (Chester) - Full Audio Recording

After a few stabs, we've put together this almost final edit of Adam and Eve, from the Drapers Play in the Chester Mystery Cycle.  The play doesn't end here - there's a time jump and we move onto Cain and Abel, which we'll edit one day.  We will possibly do one final version of these two (should we say three?) plays, telling the story of the fall of Lucifer, through to Cain and Abel as one sweep, with some cuts and changes to make a single play for audio.
Here's our thinking.
There's never not a good reason to do more versions of a thing.  Especially when so few versions exist.  If we can use these (admittedly flawed) recordings to create both an approximately 'accurate' textual rendering and then a more accessible version, then that would be great.
Also, just because the plays are presented as two pageants in these texts means very little.  The play texts themselves are so buggered about with, 'proper' form is impossible to establish except at the moment those texts were created.  We suggest that there's good evidence that these two plays were at some point three or even four separate units at some point in their life, and possibly put together as one.  There's some discontinuity between the end of the first and second play which suggests two different approaches to the creation of the world.  There's also a massive time jump in the middle of play two between the Adam and Eve section and the Cain and Abel section - with exposition in a speech from Adam to bridge the gap.  The fact that we can split the Drapers play in two for these audio versions is suggestive that at some point someone else did - and the overall shape of the Chester cycle changed enormously over the years, so nothing need be fixed.
We'd also like to do a bit of a documentary about these plays - we have two recordings (the Exploring series and these dramas) to mix together, so if we can get some talking heads and a narration together, we'll be cooking with gas.
But that's for the future.  For now, here's what has been done with The Drapers Play. You can listen to the Fall of Lucifer here.

Bigly Bliss

As mentioned in the last blog post, we're creating a Trump like characterisation for the eponymous character of the Duke Moraud in the lost play.  So, as we've brought the Donald up, it's a good opportunity to talk about the word bigly.
Trump came under a lot of flack for possibly saying bigly during his campaigning to be President.  "I'm going to cut taxes bigly..." etc.  Lots of people pointed out that the word did exist and has many meanings accrued over time - but this is a blog about early drama, so let's have a little look at bigly.
I've come across it a fair number of times whilst working on mystery plays, so I did a quick look through my files and quickly came up with these examples.  I suspect it was used more times than this - variant spellings will throw searching for words in a database and I don't have a complete collection of work on my computer - but here are a few random examples of the use of the word bigly in early drama.  It's almost always used when referencing heaven, specifically the bliss of living in heaven.  God talks about building a heaven of bigly bliss in Chester...

God:

A biglie bliss here will I build, a heaven without ending... (Chester 1)

And in the York cycle, a bad angel who falls in with Lucifer mentions that he's in bigly bliss...

Angel Deficiens: 

So bygly to bliss am I brought... (York 1)

And Adam and Eve refer to the bliss of heaven after being cast out...

Adam: 

Alas, wretches, what have we wrought?

To byggly bliss we both were brought...

And later...

Eve:

We are full well worthy iwis

To have this mischief for our mys,

For brought we were to byggely bliss,

Ever in to be.  (York 6)

And at the other end of time, the Angel Gabriel tells the Virgin Mary that God will bring her to heaven soon...

Gabriel:

And therefore he bids thee look that thou blithe be,

For to that bigly bliss that berde will thee bring... (York 44)

So, bigly - something that is more than just big, but is biglier than big - is a perfectly legitimate word for a President of the United States of America to use.  

Except that he didn't use it in the context of heaven or used as a prefix to bliss, so we can probably safely assume that Trump wasn't quoting the word in reference to it's late medieval usage.  Oh well.

Milk Bottle Productions Presents...

The Summoning of Everyman

Adapted and performed by Robert Crighton 
With Simon Nader in bonus play - Duke Moraud

Everyman has been summoned by Death to meet his maker - and he doesn't want to go.  This interactive performance brings his struggle directly to the audience, asking them to become part of the story, to stand in the footsteps of Fellowship, Good Deeds and even Death himself.  Will you help Everyman make his peace?

Previous audiences have said of the show:  “A one man tour de force... gripped from start to finish... a mix of pathos and humour all done with a light touch... a real privilege and honour being there... having volunteered, with no acting experience whatsoever, was guided expertly throughout by Robert... an hour very well spent...  I’ve come to see it again!  What more do I need to say?  In awe of the intensity!”

[The show was presented at The Bread and Roses Theatre on Tuesday 8th to Saturday 12th August 2017]

Duke Moraud

There comes a time in every producers life when they end up using a cliche.  Sometimes it seems desperate, sometimes it is - but in this case it was just the only way to go.  We have put a 'modern twist' to our production of Duke Moraud, and we feel just a little bit dirty.  In a good way.
Let me explain - we've been working on a version of the lost play Duke Moraud on and off for a while now.  The script for the play is lost, except for the dialogue for the Duke - all we have is his dialogue.  From inferences in the text we know it is similar to a story that survives in another format, so we know what is going on.  The challenge for us is - how to stage it?
We could have written alternative dialogue for the other parts - but we seriously didn't no where to begin.  Writing cod medieval verse always feels wrong.  Additionally the plot of the play is somewhat problematic to the modern ear (more on that another time) and, whilst it seems reasonable to give the original the benefit of the doubt and history, it feels wrong to contribute to a slightly questionable moral stand point - especially as this is a morality play.
Also the play is presented as the second half following my revival of The Summoning of Everyman, and full dialogue would make it a very long evening - it would be a bit bread on bread.  So I decided we would have one actor be Duke Moraud and have a second to act as general narrator and commentator on the play itself - this allowed us to a. keep the original text pretty much as writ and b. change the tone of the show by making it a bit more playful.
Then we started rehearsing.  As per my usual practice I'd created a basic edit of the text, modernising the basic spelling but leaving obscure words and phrasing as writ, as well as a rough script for the commentary in between speeches.  We then threw ourselves at the words, looking for an in.
The first try was fairly shit - but it was supposed to be.  We were too loud, too over the top and, even with the commentary, we weren't communicating what was going on with any clarity.  It also took twice as long as planned.  We regrouped and began again.  And again.  Tea was drunk, clarity of meaning improved, but it wasn't working as well as we'd hoped.  We planned our next rehearsal and went about our lives.
We met again and then... the idea happened.  We felt unclean.  It felt good.
The beginning of the play runs thusly - the Duke Moraud enters, greets the various people of the audience, and tells everyone to shut up on pain of pain.  So far, so standard.  He then tells the audience who he is and says what a great guy he is.  He's got lots of stuff, he's got great clothes, horses, he is just great.
Now, we knew that this is boastful hyperbole by a character who shows himself later to be thoroughly horrid, but we just couldn't get that across.  It read as a character being genuine about how great a person they were.  In an outdoor space, where it probably would have been performed originally, we could out Herod Herod with grandstanding - but we're performing in a nice fringe venue, so it needed to be smaller and subtler.  How do we show how prideful, nay delusional, how obsessed about how he is perceived, how small this Duke is.  And then we thought...
He enters, announces himself, says what a great guy he is.
He's got lots of great stuff.
He's got lots of great clothes.
He is just lots of great.
He's Donald Trump.
At that moment we realised - we have to do the play with a 'modern twist' - because, obvious though it is, it worked perfectly.  The more text we threw at it, the more resonance there was.  Though the play Duke certainly goes much further than Trump has ever done - we are not suggesting for a second that the Duke of the play is actually him - the tone of how he speaks about people and women is perfect.
Now we have a way in, we can really tighten the linking script, make the story speak - because we no longer have to worry about getting the audience up to speed with who the Duke is.  They will see it straight away.  The Duke becomes less Trump like as we go along - as those parallels drift.  And we're not Saturday Night Live, we don't have an axe to grind beyond making an old text speak today.

Milk Bottle Productions Presents...

The Summoning of Everyman

Adapted and performed by Robert Crighton 
With Simon Nader in bonus play - Duke Moraud

Everyman has been summoned by Death to meet his maker - and he doesn't want to go.  This interactive performance brings his struggle directly to the audience, asking them to become part of the story, to stand in the footsteps of Fellowship, Good Deeds and even Death himself.  Will you help Everyman make his peace?

Previous audiences have said of the show:  “A one man tour de force... gripped from start to finish... a mix of pathos and humour all done with a light touch... a real privilege and honour being there... having volunteered, with no acting experience whatsoever, was guided expertly throughout by Robert... an hour very well spent...  I’ve come to see it again!  What more do I need to say?  In awe of the intensity!”

The Bread and Roses Theatre, Clapham

Tuesday 8th to Saturday 12th August at 7.30pm

Tickets available here - www.breadandrosestheatre.co.uk/everyman