Those who were unable to attend in October may be glad to hear that we will revive this production in January for a fund-raising event, and we also hope to make a videotape. Please come, and bring your chequebook!
Since Trinity-St. Paul's Church, the usual venue for the Toronto Consort's subscription series, bears very little resemblance to Beauvais Cathedral, David and I took some liberties with the drama itself in the process of fitting the play into an obviously Victorian space. We added some further music where this seemed appropriate to the drama: thus the decadence of Belshazzar's court was further exemplified by a group of courtesans, one of whom sang a highly suggestive song (drawn from the Carmina Burana) and two of whom danced for the king. After his installation at Darius' court, Daniel privately prayed to his God, but no prayer for him is given in the score. We again borrowed a lovely prayer from the Carmina Burana to provide Daniel with an appropriate "aria".
It is quite possible that our costumes were rather more lavish than those of Beauvais Cathedral. Although the evidence is very thin, conventional wisdom often repeats the claim that the costuming of liturgical drama was likely drawn largely from modified ecclesi-astical vestments. Whether or not this is the case, our stock of secular costumes is much better than our stock of vestments, and we assumed that our clerics of Beauvais were able to provide elaborate costumes for their production. There were, of course, other clear differences in our production. Women would certainly not have participated in the performance, and it is possible that instruments might not have been used, or at least less extensively than we will do. Our production included bells, harp, vielle, recorder, saz, and organ.
The Play of Daniel was not a "reconstruction" of a late twelfth
or early thirteenth century performance; short of going to Beauvais
we're not really in a position to do that. What we do hope is that
our adaptation of this wonderful music drama was able to provide an
insight into the medieval reading of the Old Testament story of
Daniel at the courts of Belshazzar and Darius for a modern
audience, as well as an exciting evening in the theatre!
Three years later: I'm scrunched in an uncomfortable crouch, barely concealed behind the stage in Trinity-St. Paul's United Church. I watch ten minutes of the Toronto Consort's Play of Daniel ("in association with the PLS") in a mirror on the back wall, thinking that it looks as lovely as it sounds.
Then, it's my big moment. I yank a monofilament. A pin plummets from the blackness above, just missing my right eye. The thing it was holding in place--a gigantic scroll reading, "Mene, Tekel, Peres"--unfurls. A character on stage shrieks in fear and the singing stops. For the coup de grace, I hold up a huge Left Hand of God on a stick (it's supposed to be a Right Hand, but that's props departments for you), and move it slowly right to left, underlining the words, as the characters gasp in terror and the audience breaks apart in hysterics.
Then, because the scroll has completely obscured the mirror but not me, I sit for the next hour in the same crouch, wondering if it still looks as lovely as it sounds.
How can this sort of thing happen to a reasonably sane person?
There's only one answer: I've got PLS on the brain. I'm writing a thesis on medieval drama; I've produced, directed, stage-managed, acted in, built props for, and worked God's hand in medieval plays. I'm the PLS treasurer and a member of the Production Committee and the Board of Directors. I gave a conference paper on the Digby Conversion of Saint Paul. I met my wife and many of my friends through the PLS. Practically every day, my wife and I repeat some quotation from that centre of the Western canon, the pseudo- Shakespearean Yorkshire Tragedy.
All of this ought to convince anyone that the PLS is dangerous. "Takes over your life" is putting it mildly. Just before Daniel began, JoAnna Dutka asked me, "Chet, do you ever stop doing PLS?" A sheepish, "Well, I'm not doing that much this time," was the best I could manage. Why do I do it? Why do any of us run ourselves into the ground for no money, little publicity, a sore eye, and a crick in the neck?
Well...the plays get to you. As infuriating as they can seem on the page, they're magnificent, poetic, and sublime in performance. As obvious as they may seem when you read them (the most common criticism of them that I hear), they hold unexpected surprises when you perform them.
For instance, when I was directing the York cycle's "Joseph's Trouble About Mary" episode this summer, I knew that the real trick would be the angel, who of course remains above the action (Right?). Joseph had to be asleep in the street; Mary and her maids had to be on the wagon, and the angel had to come from...somewhere...and stand...somewhere else...to tell Joseph that Mary really is both pregnant and a virgin. Where, though, and where? Should he pop up on a hidden ladder behind Mary's house? Should he appear through a door and come to the edge of the wagon? Should he come up one side of the wagon and exit down the other side, as in the 1977 production? What?
At our first rehearsal, it worked out so smoothly I couldn't believe it. I'd decided to have a run-through with no set blocking, to see what the actors would do. Feeling like Peter Quince, I told them merely, "This part of the room represents the wagon, and this the street." I sat back to watch.
When it came to the climactic moment, Steve Berenger, who played the angel, simply walked right over to Joseph in the street. He physically helped Joseph off the ground as he explained and reassured. It was pure magic, and it was so simple.
"Of course!" I said afterwards. "If the angel stays above and harangues Joseph, he's like a preacher telling Fallen Man to get up under his own power. But the whole point of the Incarnation is that Heaven doesn't ask Fallen Man to do that, but sends its own power down to help. Anyhow, the Bible is full of people meeting angels in the road--Abraham, Hagar, Balaam, Jacob, Tobias....It's so obvious!" Yeah, right. I never would have thought of that in a million years.
And that, I guess, is why we do what we do. There's a sense in
which discoveries just happen by themselves when you perform these
plays; you report the discoveries but you don't really make them.
Maybe that's why the plays still, even in a mostly post-Christian
era, retain their air of mystery. Just when you think you've got
a handle on the things, something unexpected comes out of the blue;
the plays slip free and you've got to start all over again--and
again.
I had taken a small part in a workshop conducted by British director (and Globe Theatre board member) Patrick Tucker involving his ideas of producing Shakespeare without rehearsal, and I decided to make use of that experience in rehearsing Yorkshire. The source edition, from a 1608 quarto, is not at all suitable for performance, and therefore not for non-rehearsed production, and so Linda Phillips, as dramaturge, and I spent some time on making changes. For the first rehearsal I asked the actors to perform (books in hand) as they would before an audience, following their own instincts and listening closely to one another. The results were quite astonishing. Rather than seeing the process of creation taking place over weeks we saw it in minutes, and what we saw convinced us of the value of the piece. The critical literature on the play tends to speak of it as unworthy and weak, but in fact it has a remarkable theatrical power, with many of the techniques one sees in longer works of the period being distilled into very clear form. What happened in that first undirected rehearsal formed the majority of what audiences finally saw. When I first read the script I realized the many fight scenes had to be done with great precision, impact, and safety, and these were not done at that rehearsal, but rather superbly choreographed by Daniel Levinson, who made excellent use of the actors athleticism.
We decided that performing A Yorkshire Tragedy off-campus in a
summer theatre festival would be a fine opportunity to present the
PLS to a different audience, and we were able to secure a place in
SummerWorks in August at the Theatre Centre West. The actors saw
the remount as an opportunity to develop and improve the piece, and
so with Linda s participation as assistant director we re-
rehearsed. Most comments from those who saw both versions agreed
that the piece gained depth. We were able to garner very good
reviews in NOW, The Toronto Star, and The Globe and Mail (which
also favoured us with a an almost quarter-page photo of lead actors
Ruth Barrett and Paul Babiak.) The comment by the Star that the
PLS does more than enough to prove that the work remains eminently
stageable, was particularly gratifying in stating that we did, in
fact, meet our mandate.
Our goal in presenting these plays was to show the uniqueness of the processional nature of the York plays, performed at stations along a set rout in the city of York. Each play was performed on its own wagon, which stopped at four "stations" around Victoria College in Procession, in order to reproduce a production of these plays in the city of York in the 1470s. In fact, we successfully tested the hypothesis that the wagons used by the Tile Thatchers and the Chandlers (Nativity and Shepherds) travelled in tandem and interacted along the performance route. The production was a great success, and we were delighted to draw a very large crowd of PLS fans from all over Ontario.
The wagons were complete refurbished and repainted for this event, thanks to the hard work of many loyal PLS volunteers. The lacun‘ in the Shepherds' play were reconstructed using text from the Coventry plays and the spelling of the entire text was modernized by director Kim Yates. The other directors were Chet Scoville, Linda Phillips, and Vicky Cook, all of whom have worked with PLS in the past.
Our technical director, Chris Warrilow, provided us with an authentic Star of Bethlehem, and our musical director, Michael McKay drew on Sarum chants for the Feast of the Annunciation, and a chant for Isaiah's "Lux fulgebit" for the Nativity. The shepherds heard part of the Sarum Gloria sung by a heavenly host, and in turn delighted the audience with pair of fifteenth-century carols.
Many thanks to all the participants and volunteers who helped to
make this production such a success.
After the success of this summer's wagon production of four York plays, PLS is considering the possibility of doing a set of four or five biblical plays as an outdoor wagon production on an annual basis in early August.
Watch this space for further information!
We are in the process of establishing a prize in David's name
for "Studies in Early Drama in Performance". Anyone wishing to
contribute to the prize should send their special donations to
the PLS made out to the University of Toronto.
Now, for the church's 125th anniversary, we are staging three
plays from the York Cycle relevant to the season of Lent: The
Creation and Fall of Man (directed by Paul Babiak), The
Temptation in the Desert (directed by Chet Scoville), and The
Crucifixion (directed by David Klausner). The plays will run
late from March 28 to 31 in the Church of the Redeemer.
I enclose a donation of $______. Please send me me a receipt for income tax purposes.
Name _______________________________________________
Address_____________________________________________
_______________________________ Postal code_________
Please return to: PLS, 39 Queen's Park Cresc. E., Toronto M5S 2C3, Canada; telephone 416-978-5096, or drop by for tea - we are usually in the office on Wednesday afternoons.