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.

God's Promises - Act Six

Mark Holtom reading for Esaias...

It's been a long time since I recorded this act, covering the prophet Esaias - as Bale writes it.  This is Act Six of Seven, this prophet being the forerunner to the forerunner John the Baptist, who I've posted previously.
These recordings are very basic, they've been produced largely on the hoof, but they are I hope moderately clear.  Whilst I'm going to get a move on an record the remaining five acts this year, they won't deviate from this template - narration, text.  It's beyond my budget to have a score at this time, and that does limit the effect the words have.  This isn't, as I'd first assumed, the easiest of plays to translate to audio - without music or a visual set of cues, it is quite difficult to keep focus.  But one day I may get around to a more detailed production.
As I say, I hope to have this piece completed over the next few months - I might then create a shorter and more accessible version, to go with this no-frills approach.  Who says we can't be playful?

God's Promises by John Bale - Act Six - Esaias

Narrator - Annie Eddington
God - Robert Crighton
Esaias - Mark Holtom


And below is a player with all the parts recorded so far - at time of posting this includes the Prologue, Act Six and Seven and Epilogue.



God's Promises, like all my audio work, is supported by my patrons - becoming a patron is easy, just go to www.patreon.com/robertcrighton and make a pledge.

The Fall of Lucifer (Chester) - Full Audio Recording

In the dim and distant past of 2013 we started a real in depth look at the Chester Plays - launching the Exploring the Chester Plays series as well as recording fuller audio productions for future release.  We've nearly caught up with ourselves.  The first five Explorings, covering plays 1 to 10, have now been archived and the first audio production has been edited.  It's not perfect, but considering how rushed the sessions were, it's turned out quite well.  Beyond a minor edit to bypass the issue of the Angels singing (sorry Mat, you ended up on the cutting room floor - we so can't do music of the period yet) it's a full recording of the text we used for Exploring in 2013 - though with more considered performances and sound to help tell the story.  It is hopefully a good introduction to the play for the student who's never seen or heard the play in full before - i.e. almost everyone on the planet.
We've recorded play two which will follow in a similar fashion, and some bits from plays 3,4 & 5 - which may be completed at a later date.
And that'll be it for a while - we're moving on from Chester for the present (though we hope to finish the Exploring sessions at some point).  We're based in East Anglia, so the N-Town play is a much more important 'cycle' to be looking at at in the future.

So, please enjoy our version of Play One of the Chester Plays - The Tanners Play covering the Fall of Lucifer.


God: Robert Crighton
Lucifer: Trevor Laver
Lightbourne: Richard Fawcett
Angels and Archangels: Helen Arbon, Neil Arbon, Adam Webster, Kevin Roychowdhury, AM Barrett, Annie Eddington.
Recorded at the Quay Theatre, Sudbury
Produced and edited by Robert Crighton

Music and Sound Effects all come from the lovely people of freesfx - http://www.freesfx.co.uk

God's Promises by John Bale - Act 7

Discussing the play with John the Baptist

In late 2013 I started to record God's Promises but quickly got very behind.  Since those first tentative steps I have upgraded my equipment and, to some degree, feel I want to start all over again.  However, we did record the introduction, the final scene and the closing speech and these are now available to listen - in a rough edit.  There were several textual issues which I don't think we have succeeded in clearing.  Firstly, the text is very dense.  It features a lot of argument, the kind you might expect from a theologian, especially one such as Bale who had the Protestant axe to grind.

The Prologue: Baleus Prolocutor
So, the opening and closing speeches are to be spoken by Bale or someone as him.  (We decided to ignore this in the recording, so that there was at least one female part in the production.  It also meant we could use the same actor to read stage directions without them being confused as another character.)  They are outside the text, the author directly addressing his audience, or perhaps more appropriately, his flock.  Making this Tudor text clear was a challenge and one which, in the short time span available, I don't know has succeeded.  But you may judge for yourself.  Hopefully anyone thinking of reading the play can use the recording to help guide them into the text.

listen to ‘God's Promises - by John Bale. Baleus Procolutor’ on Audioboo

Act Seven:  John the Baptist
We spent a little longer recording the completed scene seven.  The play is a running argument, starting with Adam and ending with John, encountering various Biblical figures along the way.  All argue with God to forgive mankind, and only with John does God relent - though, of course, he has already relented, having already sent Jesus into the world.

Cecil Qadir as John the Baptist

John begins by pleading with God that the worst excesses of man are past - this is a long list of people and names from the Bible, showing up the virtue of many good men.  When God reveals his plan, and that John will be Jesus' messenger to the world, John says he won't be of any use, he is as a child.  God then gifts him a golden tongue (this is a literal stage direction) and he then ends the play with a speech about his mission, ending in a song of praise.  We couldn't think of a way of turning the golden tongue into an audio event and used a narrator, and as we have no budget for music at this time, this is also indicated by the narrator.
Again, as we rehearsed this scene we had a long discussion about clarity.  The final recording is clearer than the opening and closing speeches, as it is a dialogue.  If you read the precis first, I suspect what is being said is clear.  However, out of context, without reading the above, I suspect most people will struggle.
This isn't, I hope, just because of our performances.  I suspect that the text, its very denseness, will always make this play a difficult proposition.  It is, oddly, harder to follow than an earlier play - it is caught between the more rigid rhyming verse of the medieval street theatre and the later public theatre voice.  That doesn't make the play uninteresting, just difficult, and I hope listening will reward your effort.

listen to ‘God's Promises by John Bale - Act 7’ on Audioboo

The Epilogue: Baleus Prolocutor
I find, listening back, that the closing speech is much clearer - but that could just be me.  It's possibly tempered by the fact that I've gone through the play before listening to it and am more attuned - which would also be the case for the audience.  It's a reminder of the message of the play and the importance of the Protestant interpretation of Christianity.

The light of our faith makes this thing evident,
And not the practice of other experiment.

The other being the Catholic interpretation.  This is a polemical work, designed to reference the Catholic drama of the middle ages but retooled for Protestant ears.  This kind of religious propaganda is short lived, lasting from the reformation to the reign of Elizabeth, with both sides of the divide flinging drama of this sort at each other.  It was divisive, dangerous and could not last.  Perhaps the reason why these plays have fallen out of favour is this lack of context.  The play doesn't need to involve inner conflict, because the conflict was off stage, the danger is in the existence of the play, not necessarily in the dramaturgy.  The challenge for a modern producer is to find a way of making these stakes evident.

listen to ‘God's Promises - by John Bale. Baleus Procolutor (Epilogue) ’ on Audioboo

The Chester Plays 3 & 4 - Noah & Abraham

This week in Exploring the Chester Mystery Plays we looked at plays 3 & 4, which cover Noah and Abraham.  The team gathered with autocued script and a live link up and off we went.
[All our Chester recordings are currently being archived and are being added, piece by piece, to this blog.]

It is in these plays that we start to encounter some of the more severe forms of the general buggering about that the Chester texts have seen (see blog about plays 1 & 2).  Chester has come to us, unlike the other 'cycles', in a number of texts, and there are some big differences between them for the Noah play.  The latter part of the play has differing endings, with the business of sending out birds to hunt for land cut in some.  It's patently a difficult play to stage and the ark must have been big, as hinted at in the stage directions.  There's a direction that the animals would appear as painted boards on the ark, for when the Noah family go through and list all the animals on board - of which there are a fair old number listed. 

And here are bears, wolves set,

Apes, owls, marmoset,

Weasels, squirrels and ferret...  (Note the assumed pronunciation of ferret, lovely!)

With a future echo to the Nativity, the family speak in wonder that the animals are content to live side by side, that cats and mice do not get up to any Tom and Jerry activity, let alone the lions.
Early on we get a return of the misogyny of the earlier plays - the dialogue of the unnamed women (only named as wives of the men) largely point out how useless they are:

And we shall bring timber too

For we mon nothing ells do;

Women be weak to underfoe

Any great travail.

And, as in other 'cycle' plays, Noe has a go at his wife for not getting on board the ark.  She refuses to go without her friends, her gossips, and has to be bodily carried on board, where the text suggests she gives Noe one hell of a slap.  

NOE:  Welcome wife into this boat.

NOES WIFE:  And have thou that for thy mote! 

We have our first anachronisms, as both Noa and his wife calls by Saint John - but we've yet to have anyone call out by God's wounds and the like.  Yet.

Noe's wife's refusal to board is the only note of disharmony in the play, and in comparison with other plays, her stand isn't so dominant a part of the narrative - it's fairly half-hearted.  Noe's wife helps build the ark and is swiftly part of the family unit again - the play uses music to suggest the ultimate harmony of the family, for they sing when they set sail.  There is a speech by Noah that covers a lot of time jumps - between stanzas he indicates that forty days have passed and that he's sent out two birds.  How these time jumps were staged (and as they were cut in some versions, perhaps they were never satisfactorily staged) we do not know.  There is also the telling detail of offering sacrifice to God and asking him whether they should leave the ark - the issue of sacrifice comes up in the next play - which is missing from some versions.

The Noah play is a more expansive piece of theatre - the set/setting for the play was obviously large and there are many effects that could and probably were used.  It is in a contrast to the more contained dramas of the previous two plays which, though they included a lot of music and occasional spectacle, are focused on the pride and fall of individuals.  Noa and his wife are not as deeply drawn here - they, and their many family members - are concerned with a grand project and life changing events.  The flood and the ark are the major players in the action and the amount of plot and detail to the actions of the family limits how much time the play has in looking at the characters inner lives.  At no point do the characters really question what is happening or even comment on how horrible it is to see the whole of humanity slaughtered.  The action of the play leaves the author/s no time.  It is only in plays which deal with simpler shorter stories where interior thoughts can come to the surface.  Which brings us to play 4.

The Abraham play is a very different kettle of fish - unlike other versions it is split into three separate parts of Abraham's life.  A gift giving section featuring himself, Lot and Melchysidech - a section dealing with God giving he and his wife a child and the usually staged story of the sacrifice of Isaac.  Each episode is flanked by the figure of the Expositor, who is presumably a post-reformation addition to the text who is there to explain to the audience what these episodes mean, theologically that is.

But before we even get to the rather irritating figure of the Expositor we get an even odder opening speech by someone calling the audience to order and generally turning their attention to this play, rather than the Noah play which, perhaps because it involved a lot of set, was stillin the way.  He comes across rather like a representative of the county council popping in at the start of the village production.  He feels added on, like he is just there to mark time as the Ark is got out of sight.  He calls himself Gobet-on-the-Green and is never heard of again, unless the last speech of the play, a messenger, is the same person.
The first part features the gift giving between Abraham and Melchysidech, which is interesting but feels incomplete - like we've walked in the end of a story.  It's supposed to follow pitched battles - and I wonder whether something of this was originally in the play.  We know that there were other Abraham plays, in the Towneley cycle for example, which dealt with acts after Abraham with Isaac and his sons after the sacrifice play, so why not have a play that tells us more about his life prior to that episode?  Either way, the continued existence of this brief episode is explained to us by the Expositor - who is, perhaps deliberately, patronising to the audience.

Lordings, what may this signify

I will expound apertly

that lewed standing hereby [unlearned]

may know what this may be. 

The Expositor claims that this episode, where gifts are given in thanks, rather than sacrifices, prefiguring the gift of the body and blood of Christ.  This explanation of the parallels between this Old Testament episode with the New, as presented, is not very convincing.  Much of what the Expositor says smacks of really desperate revisionism in a hope of keeping the plays alive in the new world order - even if there is a reasonable case in the text for the argument.  This opening could be seen as a parallel to the tithes offered by Cain and Abel - just reversed.  After the battle and the bloodshed, gifts are given to cement relations - rather than tithes are offered to God leading to murder.  It is, perhaps, a sign of an advance in culture - leading, as the Expositor argues - to the ceremony central to Christian worship.  If so, it is an advance not fully heeded, as animal sacrifice is central to the close of this play.

The second episode is extremely brief, a short chat Abraham has with God to have a son.  That is, a legitimate one - as Abraham points out he still has his 'nurry', his illegitimate child, and that it doesn't count.  This is mentioned almost in passing.  God tells Abraham that he'll have a child, so long as he's circumcised - where follows an appeal to the joys of circumcision, which Abraham and all his fellows must take on. 
The Expositor suggests that the circumcision of the Old Testament has been replaced by Baptism - a comment I am not theologically qualified to confirm or deny.  Finally he points out that the seed of Abraham will one day beget Jesus, which is fair enough.
Neither of these episodes appear in any other cycle - and as presented here it's not surprising really.  Until the arrival of Isaac there is little sense of a complete play - the episodes are brief and feel really random, not dramatically or theatrically well linked to the plays so far presented or as an individual play in itself.  How they ended up in this state - especially as there are other versions with the prophets as well - is largely lost to history.  Oh, to have an earlier version of the text to answer a few questions of dramaturgy - because these opening sections could function in a clear way.  There is a good dramatic reason to see Abraham pray for a son - so that you feel the more when he is asked by God to kill him.  However, as presented here, after the rather odd gift giving scene, it's too brief and somewhat jarring.
Anyway, now we reach the final and most effective part of the play, the meat, if you will.  Here there is something at stake and Abraham is genuinely torn between his love of God and Isaac.  When we were reading this section I stopped interjecting unless it was really necessary - and let the actors and the text speak and the play really held us, the first time since the first and second plays of the sequence.
Abraham plays the innocent to his son, asking him to carry the implements of his own death to the place of sacrifice.  There are echos of Cain in Play 1, guiding his brother away to his death.  I love the slow realisation of Isaac, as he starts to twig that something isn't right.  Going to the place of sacrifice he asks:

Father, if it be your will
where is the beast that we shall kill?

It takes a little bit more questioning before the truth comes out.  The scene is long, the longest individual scene in the cycle so far, and it just gets worse and worse for father and son.  When Abraham confesses what he is doing, his dialogue is almost bathetic.  It is an understatement and a half to say...

ABRAHAM:  O my son, I am sorry

to do to thee this great annoy.

Gods commandment do must I

his works are aye full mild.

The last statement being patently untrue.

By slow stages the boy is tied up, blindfolded and placed on the altar, all the while telling his father to not mention what he's done to mother.  Eventually the Angels arrive and the test ends - a sheep is provided for sacrifice and God appears 

DEUS: Abraham, by myself I swear...

Well, by who else can he swear?

And we have our first proper anachronism of the cycle - 

ABRAHAM: Jesu, on me thou have pity.  

But time is not linear in the medieval world, so it's not an error.

Next time we look at the unique play 5, Balaam and Balak, and the more universally known play 6, The Nativity.

The Exploring the Chester Mystery Plays Team:
Readers - Michael Harding, Kevin Roychowdhruy, Peter Drew, Liz Cole, Claire Lawrence and Mark Holtom
Tech Team - Tim Regester on live link, Marion Tuke on autocue, Mark Pavelin for photography and

Bexy Lou Johnston in Dictionary Corner

Host - Robert Crighton

This event was live streamed from the Quay Theatre in late 2013.

Claire Lawrence, Mark Holtom and Liz Cole preparing to go...

Peter Drew, Liz Cole and Mark Holtom - watch Bex in Dictionary Corner

Robert checking where the hell he is on Marion's autocue

Mark Holtom - occasional God

Foreground, Marion and Tim, working the tech...