Over the next few weeks, I'll have finally finished archiving the first five Exploring the Chester Mystery Plays events, publishing audio for the Nativity, Kings, Shepherds and Herod plays. I've also found a wealth of video footage I'd forgotten was taken and will edit some of that together.
Not only that, but I'll be announcing dates for a return of the events, completing the cycle by the end of the year - phew!
But to celebrate finally getting this together, here's an old audio clip I found from a show I did in 2007, Medieval Mysteries. It was a Christmas Nativity show, using sections from various mystery plays - but I opened with applicable verses from the Chester Banns. The audio quality is terrible - I recorded it on a mini-disk player using a pair of headphones as the microphone - which goes to show how far the world has travelled in but a few years.
And, if you want to listen to the complete set of the Exploring the Chester Mystery Plays events to date then they follow after the banns on this audio player.
From the earliest drama in English, to the closing of the theatres in 1642, there was a hell of a lot of drama produced - and a lot of it wasn't by Shakespeare. Apart from a few noble exceptions these plays are often passed over, ignored or simply unknown. This is a blog about what exists beyond Shakespeare, about the plays, fragmentary and extant, that shaped the theatrical world that shaped our dramatic history.
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