With 139 days to go to the opening night of Chester Mystery Plays, Jane Dawson reports from rehearsals
MRS Noah’s gossips enjoyed a singalong in the pub last weekend, while three Kings brought some gravitas to the Chester Mystery Play rehearsals!
Meanwhile God was caught on camera, hard at work in his workshop, creating the Earth and everything that lives on it.
But rehearsals are just the tip of the mystery play iceberg.
Alongside the production this year, there will be an exhibition of mystery play material from 1951 onwards.
A small team of dedicated volunteers have been putting an archive together from hundreds of items donated by past performers, directors, designers, other volunteers and members of the public.
This project has been undertaken with help from the Heritage Lottery Fund and the University of Chester where the archive is housed. Within the next couple of months some of the material collected will be put online so that it can be viewed by anyone, anywhere, while all the material will be available to view by appointment at the university’s library.
The exhibition will be in two parts – one at the university’s Riverside library and the other within the cloisters at Chester Cathedral where the original mystery plays were written by the monks.
You will be able to see photographs, publicity material and programmes from many of the 19 productions (including the Chester Mystery Plays in Miniature) seen in Chester since 1951. And if you have anything hidden away in boxes in the loft and would like to donate it to the archive, just get in touch! We’ll always have room for more.
Tickets for the 2013 production of Chester Mystery Plays are now on sale at www.chestermysteryplays.com, in person at Chester Cathedral box office or by telephone on 01244 500959.
To keep in touch with news from the Chester Mystery Plays ‘like’ on Facebook (Chester Mystery Plays) or follow @MysteryPlay13 on Twitter.
