Category Archives: Drama

The Mystery Plays: A Wrap-up

Posted on by under Drama, Historic, Musings, Mystery Plays, York Mystery Plays 2026

It’s in the spirit of #mysteryplaymonday, even though it’s midweek. We’re saying farewell to the York Mystery Plays 2026, to our wonderful cast and creatives, and we’re also in the middle of a clear-out of stuff! But, with a few days to process behind her, our play’s director is taking a few minutes to reflect on the ups, downs, and joys of “The War in Heaven”.

What happened to Mystery Play Monday- isn’t this a Wednesday? I can hear you asking, and you’re right. The answer is simple: we all needed a couple days to rest, recover, dismantle, and let go. I for one have been a puddle of emotion about the ending of the mystery plays: pride in what we accomplished, joy at a successful run, happiness for having met so many new, wonderful people who I hope will stay in touch… that all runs right up against the wall of ending, saying goodbye, and physically pulling apart something that you’ve spent months building. It’s very abrupt, and it’s a lot to process.

That’s theatre, always has been and always will be, but I never really find it any easier. So I needed a bit of breathing space to mentally process everything before I could sit down and write my reflections on it.

The mystery plays are incredibly central to my life and my story, they’re the genesis of HIDden as an organisation, but I can’t pretend they are always an unalloyed blessing. Street theatre is difficult. Amateur theatre is too. Throw in processional staging through the streets of a busy city, and eight or nine different companies, and there are a lot of moving parts; even if we, as HIDden, don’t have to deal with all of those things, the totality of the whole means that there is a lot to organise, and a lot which can fall through cracks. There were definitely days where “frustrating” is the only answer I could have given, if someone asked me how things were going. It would be a misstep for me to paint over that as if it weren’t a truth just as real as the good parts. It was hard work- incredibly hard- and it’s always done by far fewer people than is ideal.

But it’s also a moment to feel incredibly proud. Our cast and crew were amazing. Nine performances without a single line blip or choreography mistake (I’m not saying there weren’t a few minor issues, but they were largely mechanical or entirely out of our control, like having a building alarm go off in the middle of the Shambles performance on Wednesday night, through which the cast sailed with imperturbable grace). I’ve heard nothing but positive comments from people who saw it, so while there are always things one knows one could do better, I feel safe in saying that the production did what all theatre is meant to do, first and foremost: it engaged and entertained its audience. 

I can’t praise the people in our group enough. The waggon master and crew did an incredible job of moving Large Rolley, our waggon, through the streets, with a smooth elegance. (This may sound like an odd thing to say but trust me, I’ve seen waggons struggle!) The volunteers who helped with costumes and puppets leaped in with both feet and weren’t afraid to offer suggestions for how to achieve the end goal, which I always appreciate, because we’re all in this together! The creative team brought ideas and viewpoints that were fresh and unlike anything we’ve ever done. And the cast- amazingly, I just read through a journal entry I wrote right after audition week, where I said that I had such confidence in our cast that I wasn’t nervous about the production from that very early date! That’s awfully early to be counting any dramatic chickens, but that instinct that we had a very solid group of people proved out through the rehearsal and performance process. They really were delightful and interesting people, whose enthusiasm for acting and the Mystery Plays in particular made me feel utterly secure. They were also wonderfully flexible, as we reworked scenes and hammered out technical difficulties, like how to change Lucifer from a white feathered angel to a singed and burnt denizen of hell. Their suggestions and insights also helped shape the show.

It’s always the people that make the Mystery Plays what they are. I imagine that has always been true: the guilds that originally staged them were communities, bound together by a shared trade, a shared city, and often close family ties as well. I think about those people a lot during our production and its development, because I feel like they are part of it, too. In fact, if someone asked me to sum up why I love the mystery plays in one word, that word would be connection. It’s the connections that we make between different companies, working together for this large-scale shared event, and even more  the connections among the people we work with directly. Hopefully, new friendships are formed that will last beyond just this play, maybe for years or even a lifetime. We find connection with the guilds and their members, and we connect with audience members, who are part of our story even if we never know their names. And I think we connect with everyone who has ever been part of the plays in previous years, or even previous centuries, be they twentieth-century or fourteenth. When we work on the plays, we’re stretching our hands out to touch theirs, just as they were, perhaps unconsciously, reaching forward to us, their posterity. We’re all connected, everyone who has had some contact with these plays, as part of York’s story. I know it’s Rome that is called “the eternal city” but if you’ve ever lived in York, you will appreciate that the name feels right for it, too.

The Mystery Plays can sometimes be the concentrated distillation of those features of theatre which drive us most to despair- but they are equally intensely the kind of event that brings out all the best aspects of theatre as well. It tends to be the latter that we remember the most clearly: the shiver of excitement when your waggon rolls by York Minster and you feel the weight of history on you, the adrenaline of performing several times in quick succession under incredibly varied conditions, the happy rush (and tears) when you realise that it’s finished and you’ve all done so brilliantly. I hope everyone involved will treasure these memories, as I will, for the rest of their lives. And I hope we’ve made it an experience that will bring them back for more historic drama, because there are so many more stories to share.

The War in Heaven: Bibliography

Posted on by under Academic Curiosity, Drama, History, Mystery Plays, York Mystery Plays 2026

For our #mysteryplaymonday, our play’s director shares the research that has helped to inform our production.

Both fortunately and unfortunately, a full bibliography of the York Mystery Plays would be far too large to list here! There are many wonderful books that I would recommend to anyone who isn’t especially familiar with the Plays, and many of them have informed our play in the long term, since they have also gone into my academic work over the last twenty years. But of necessity I’ve chosen to focus here on those studies that were either especially helpful or are specific to our project with The War in Heaven. If you are interested in reading about the York Mystery Plays on a more general level, please email me (laura@hiddentheatre.com) and I would be happy to offer suggestions!

Ashton, Gail. “Bridging the Difference: Reconceptualising the Angel in Medieval Hagiography”, in Literature & Theology, vol. 16 no. 3 (Sept 2002), pp. 235-247.

Auffarth, Christoph and Loren T. Stuckenbruck, eds. The Fall of the Angels. (2004) Brill: Leiden and Boston.

Berefelt, Gunnar. A Study on the Winged Angel. (1968) Almqvist & Wiksell: Stockholm.

Butterworth, Philip & Katie Normington. Medieval Theatre Performance. (2017) D.S. Brewer: Cambridge

Chase, Steven. Angelic Spirituality. (2002) Paulist Press: New York.

Davidson, Clifford. Staging the York Creation and Fall of Lucifer. (1976) American Society for Theatre Research: Pittsburgh.

DuBruck, Edelgard. “The Devil and Hell in Medieval French Drama: Prolegomena”, in Romania, vol. 100, no. 398 (1979), pp 165-179.

Eszenyi, Edina. “The Edge of Heaven: Revelations 12:7-9 and the Fall of the Rebel Angels in Anglo-Norman Apocalypse Illustration”, in Arts(2022), vol. 11, p. 41.

Fox, Michael. “Alefric on the Creation and Fall of the Angels”, in Anglo-Saxon England (2002), Vol. 31, pp. 175-200. 

Gabor, Ittzes. “Spirits Immortal In and Out of Time”, in The AnaChronisT (2004), vol. 10, pp. 1-30.

Gathercole, Patricia May. Depiction of Angels and Devils in Medieval French Manuscript Illumination. (2004) Edwin Mellen Press: Lewiston, NY.

Gill, Meredith J. Angels and the Order of Heaven in Medieval and Renaissance Italy. (2021) Cambridge University Press: Cambridge.

Harkins, Franklin T. “The Embodiment of Angels: a Debate in Mid-Thirteenth-Century Theology”, in Recherches de theologie et philosophie medievales (2011), vol. 78, no. 1, pp: 25-58.

Hoffman, Tobias, ed. Companion to Angels in Medieval Philosophy. (2012) Brill: Leiden.

Hoffman, Tobias. Free Will and the Rebel Angels in Medieval Philosophy. (2021) Cambridge University Press: Cambridge.

Iribarren, Isabel & Martin Lenz. Angels in Medieval Philosophical Inquiry. (2008) Ashgate: New York.

Koszkalo, Martyna  and Robert Koszkalo. “What the Fall of Angels Tells Us About the Essence of Morality”, in Religions (2021), vol. 12, p 920.

Lyle, Marie Caroline. “The Relation of the Lucifer Tradition in the Literary Composition of the Middle Ages to the Story of the Fall of the Angels in the Mystery Plays”, unpublished thesis, University of Minnesota (1912). 

Martin, Dale Basil. “When Did Angels Become Demons?”, in Journal of Biblical Literature (2010), vol. 129, no. 4, pp. 657-677.

Medicus, Gustav. “Some Observations on Domenico Beccafumi’s Two ‘Fall of the Rebel Angels’ Panels”, in Artibus et Historiae (2003), vol. 24, no. 47, pp. 209-218.

Murphy, Mary Agnes. Representation of Angels & Angelic Orders. unpublished MA thesis, University of Leicester, Jan 2010.

Norcross, Katherine R. “Counter-Empathy and Elegiac Critique in the Old English Christ and Satan“, in Philological Quarterly (2017), 96.2, pp. 143-170.

Ogilvie, Sheilagh. “The Economics of Guilds”, in Journal of Economic Perspectives (2014), vol. 28, no. 4, pp. 169-192.

Pagels, Elaine. “Christian Apologists and ‘The Fall of the Angels’: An Attack on Roman Imperial Power?”, in Harvard Theological Review (1985), vol. 78, no. 3/4, pp. 301-325.

Parma, Mariana Valeria. “Entre los Signos del Cielo y las Voces de los Hombres: la Vision Medieval del Cielo y Su Representacion Apocaliptica”, in Espacio, Tiempo y Forma (2019), pp. 473-498.

Raiswell, Richard & David R. Winter, eds. The Medieval Devil: a Reader. (2022) University of Toronto Press.

Rice, Nicole R. & Margaret Pappano. The Civic Cycles. (2024) University of Notre Dame Press.

Rosser, Gervase. Crafts, Guilds and the Negotiation of Work in the Medieval Town. (1997) Oxford University Press for the Past & Present Society.

Schall, James V. The Politics of Heaven and Hell. (2020) Ignatius Press: San Francisco.

Schmindt, Gary D. The Iconography of the Mouth of Hell. (1995) Associated University Presses: Selinsgrove, PA.

Shinners, John Raymond. Medieval Popular Religion, 1000-1500. (2009) University of Toronto Press: North York.

Sowerby, Richad. Angels in Early Medieval England. (2016) Oxford University Press: London

Tamburr, Karl. “The Dethroning of Satan in the Chester Cycle”, in Neuphilologische Mitteilungen (1984), vol. 85, no. 3, pp. 316-328.

Toulmin Smith, Joshua & Lucy Toulmin Smith, English Guilds. (1870). Trubner: London

Vos, Nienke & Willemien Otten. Demons and the Devil in Ancient and Medieval Christianity. (2011) Brill: Leiden.

Walker, Greg. “‘In the Beginning…’: Performing the Creation in the York Corpus Christi Play”, in The Oxford Handbook of Tudor Drama, ed. Thomas Betteridge and Greg Walker (2012), pp. 36-54.

‘The War in Heaven’ digital programme available

Posted on by under Drama, Historic, History, Mystery Plays, News, Production, York Mystery Plays 2026

Today is the first performance day of the York Mystery Plays 2026, so we are pleased to share the digital programme for our production of The War in Heaven. Find it here

In the Home Stretch

Posted on by under Drama, Musings, Mystery Plays, York Mystery Plays 2026

It’s the final #mysteryplaymonday before production! It’ll be a busy week here at HIDden, but our play’s director takes a moment to reflect on the challenges, successes, and final development for the show. 

By this time next week we’ll have finished the first day of the Mystery Plays and The War in Heaven. We’ve been working flat out- more than flat out, really!- to make sure everything is ready, so if you don’t see us posting much online this week, you’ll understand that making sure everything is in good order is the main priority. As of last night, we not only have our waggon (“Large Rolley”), but we have a complete set built on it. There is a suitcase full of costumes, ready for a final ironing and smoothing out, sitting in the back of my car. The puppets are currently “sleeping” on the waggon bed. And, most importantly, the cast has been consistently having excellent show runs in the rehearsal room. 

Tonight will be the first time the cast meets our waggon. This is both extremely exciting and a challenging step, because it inevitably takes all the brilliant work you’ve seen in the rehearsal room and knocks it back on its bum briefly. This is just because it’s the very abrupt introduction of a large number of small but significant adjustments: real stairs instead of having steps marked out on the floor with tape, the extra space around the waggon and having to manoeuvre around the waggon tongue, the unsettlement of suddenly performing a meter and a half above ground. It’s just a lot to think about when the show has become almost instinctive, and suddenly that muscle memory is disrupted. I have to remind myself to expect this- when you have a cast as reliable as this one has been, I know it will be disconcerting to suddenly see something that’s been in excellent working order for more than a week suddenly go temporarily south.

And the reliability of the cast has indeed been astounding. Every show has its own developmental pacing, but it’s not unusual to get right up to opening night, still thinking it might not all come together in time. In your heart, you know that it probably will be okay, but the possibility that it won’t feels very real. This is definitely not that production, which is itself disconcerting. If you’d asked me two weeks ago, I might have said something very different, because everything still felt very fragmented. But all of a sudden it somehow just locked into place. Everything coalesced, and if I’m honest I can’t really say why. Of course there are little details we’re still working, but if the production had to go up tomorrow, I would feel that the cast was ready. Having everything come together so quickly, and so early, feels unnerving, like “what have I missed?” And yet it makes sense logically, because the cast for The War in Heaven has been unusually good at adapting, taking direction, and identifying and solving problems on their own. This is particularly remarkable because our role as a “Guild of Waifs and Strays” means that we weren’t turning anyone away, and we could easily have ended up with a much less talented group. 

One of the most challenging projects for this show has been putting together Lucifer’s costume. I don’t want to give away the details of what happens, but the costume has required quite a lot of design, re-design, re-design again, adjustment after adjustment. Costume making is something I usually do but it’s not something where my skills are especially high-level, so seeing the costume finally work out in rehearsal yesterday was a huge moment. Similarly, the hellmouth part of our set has not been easy to plan out, but yesterday it too suddenly worked out, through a couple of brilliantly elegant solutions from a colleague. That really has been the theme of this show: this coming together all of a sudden, going from chaos to completion with what I can only term astonishing abruptness, and well before I have anticipated. 

And yet there is still so much to do! Final details. Waggon rehearsals. Waggon crew. And in truth, none of it fully prepares you for doing the show in total, because moving through the streets and performing in these spaces is something we can’t actually rehearse. But of course it’s also that liveness that makes the mystery plays so special- all live theatre has an unpredictable quality, that’s part of its charm, it’s just amped up a few extra notches when you’re doing street theatre with waggons.

We’ve poured our hearts and souls into this project, and I’m so excited to be arriving at the point where we get to share the results with you. So if you happen to be in York next weekend, come by and see how it all turns out!

The Theological Labyrinth: Playing Lucifer

Posted on by under Drama, Musings, Mystery Plays, York Mystery Plays 2026

We’re deep in rehearsals, which is why this is going up rather late in the day!, and character questions inevitably arise. On this week’s #mysteryplaymonday, our play’s director looks at the challenges that face anyone playing Lucifer, who is first God’s chosen angel and then God’s great betrayer. What does one make of an angel who comes to spend eternity in hell? The answers aren’t easy to find…

Though the mystery plays are all biblical, it could be argued that they aren’t all equally theological. What I mean by that is that some plays are quite straightforward, and if you accept the central premise of the storyline, you don’t have to get too far into the weeds as far as theological debate is concerned. You can understand, for example, the Nativity story: Mary has a baby, shepherds and kings arrive to visit him, we are told that the baby is the son of (and also sort of himself) God. Whether or not one believes in it, in a faith sense, is immaterial; one also doesn’t have to parse the confusion of the Christian Trinity, or debate the virginity of Mary, to understand the story.

Other plays are almost entirely theological, and can be much harder to approach. I directed The Transfiguration in 2010 and I still can’t really explain “the transfiguration” as an event. I was ringing friends who’d been to seminary, asking them what on earth this whole thing even was, and they didn’t have particularly clear answers, much less anything that could be staged reasonably well. It’s in the plays because it holds theological weight, and while I’m sure it’s an attempt to explain the matter to the medieval audiences, I don’t think the text succeeds in clarifying anything! Imagine having an actor ask why they’re doing something in the play, and having, as director, to shrug and say, “Your guess is as good as mine.” Neither person will be very happy with that situation.

The War in Heaven is, as a story, fairly straightforward. But the play is actually, and unavoidably, about the question of where evil comes from. You can’t escape asking it, because any reasonable actor is going to be faced with character decisions that are entirely grounded in very unsettled, perpetually contested theological territory. Why does God favour one angel above the others? Why does he pick Lucifer, clearly the worst person for the job? Is Lucifer actually evil? God has literally just made him: did God plan for this capacity, or is it something Lucifer has come up with on his own… which would imply that he has his own ability to create, and therefore his boast that he is like God isn’t completely wrong! Does Lucifer have agency, or is his entire heaven-to-hell-trajectory something God planned all along? That will have significant implications for how an actor approaches the role! And what exactly is Lucifer’s role upon reaching hell? We traditionally think of him as ruler of hell, yet in our play his domination over the other fallen angels and demons is lacking.

Additionally, it’s very difficult to get one’s head around the idea that pride, even excessive pride, is the same as ultimate evil. Sure, he’s got a big head, and he’s leading some angels astray, but it’s not like Lucifer has killed anyone, or even truly intends harm towards anyone else. Even in hell, trying to deflect blame from himself, Lucifer is self-protective rather than aggressive.

In hell, we hit the question of whether Lucifer, Satan, and/or the devil are the same being. The names get thrown around at different times and in different places, functionally interchangeable in the colloquial mind, but the answers really matter to our play. If they are different entities, then Lucifer’s had quite a demotion, and in Hell he is presumably no more powerful than the other fallen angels- which makes their attack on him a very different fight than if he still has elevated powers! But if Lucifer is Satan and the devil, then ironically sending Lucifer to hell has essentially just given him what he wanted: a kingdom he can rule, and the power to do so. Lucifer has thus gained status, in functional terms if not in ethical ones, by arriving in hell, and that has to be played very differently. 

This is genuinely contested theological ground. God is supposed to be omniscient and omnipotent, and therefore logic suggests that he has to have created evil (or at least set the pieces in motion for it to exist); but the idea that God created evil, directly or indirectly, has never sat well with Christians, and so the devil legends give him a pass: evil is obviously someone else’s fault. But that makes God not all-powerful and all-knowing… you don’t have to dig very deeply to see that these contradictions have been hotly contested over the centuries, and no answer that has satisfied everyone (much less logic itself) has appeared. It doesn’t help that our play is pieced together from quite discrete lines in the bible, apocryphal texts, and tradition, rather than existing as a single, congruent, and cohesive narrative. In fact, Lucifer/Satan/the devil doesn’t have a particularly big role in the bible at all! (Nor is his role large in the wider mystery plays.) 

The actor playing Lucifer thus has the challenge that, at every conceivable moment, the stereotypical actor question, “what’s my motivation?”, ends in a long discussion about theology, and doesn’t really get answered. Every character-building question leads down this inevitable path, because “what are good and evil?” are simultaneously enormous, unanswerable questions, and also the foundational questions that define the character. We have to answer them, or at least make decisions about what, for the duration of the play, we want them to be.

What would our medieval Tanners have thought of Lucifer? Making sense of ordinary people’s beliefs is tricky, since they didn’t leave much record of their thoughts or ideas, and the medieval church found power in keeping itself somewhat mysterious (through means such as the Latin service that lay people couldn’t easily understand, and rood screens that kept churchgoers from clearly seeing what was happening at the altar), so their knowledge and sense of concepts like “evil” or “the devil” may barely have existed; if they did, we have no way of knowing if they made sense of them in an orthodox manner or not. No doubt some innately introspective Tanners might have pondered the contradictions in logic that are occasionally presented in our play, but we just can’t know what conclusions they might have draw, or with whom they might have discussed things.

What we do know is that, like other aspects of religion (see our earlier post on angels), questions about Lucifer and the devil had come in and out of vogue, and the interest in an apocalyptic battle between good and evil that is currently highly visible within Christianity due to the prominence of the Evangelical branches, has not always been so dominant. Hell scenes bookend the York mystery plays, with our play at the beginning and Doomsday at the end, but the vast majority of cycle focuses on Jesus’ life or the prefigurement thereof: the emphasis is not on how to avoid damnation, but rather on how to achieve salvation. In this sense, Lucifer stands as an object lesson in what not to do, rather that the epitome of all evil. Sitting beside all the deep theological and philosophical questions that our play poses is a phrase we’ve all heard: pride goes before a fall. This, perhaps more than all of the more complex questions, is what Lucifer needs to embody.

Meet Our Musical Director & Composer! An Interview with Samuel Fernandes Morais

Posted on by under Drama, Interview, Mystery Plays, York Mystery Plays 2026

As part of our series of talking to the creative team members who are new to HIDden, I had a talk with Samuel Fernandes Morais, who is both the composer of some new music for our show, and also the music director. I’m the daughter of a music director, so I have some familiarity with that work, but composition has always baffled me. How does one just… create songs? Samuel’s process is of course unique to him, but it was fascinating to learn even one person’s approach to something I can scarcely imagine doing! If you have songs going around your head, Samuel’s insights might be just what you need to start getting them on to paper! [Note: this interview has been edited for brevity.]

Tell me a bit about your background and how you got into music?

I did music history as one of the modules in college and that’s my first interaction with the more theoretical side of music. I’d started playing guitar when I was about thirteen- then I went to uni and did solo performance and composition. I really explored how wide I could compose, with different genres and ensembles. And then I did my master’s. In the last two years, I’ve become interested in soundscapes and music for screen as well as theatre. 

Did you grow up doing music or was it something you got into later in life? 

I didn’t get properly into music until about I was about 14 and that was when I begged my parents for a guitar. I actually didn’t like music from years one till six, because the teachers were very mean. It was only a bit later on that I taught myself how to play guitar, and then I decided to try bass because it’s almost the same thing. And then drums as well. And then at university I learned how to play clarinet as well in a group. So [there was] lots of trying out stuff. 

So are there other instruments you hope to pick up at some point in the future just for curiosity? 

I can make a sound on flute. I’ve tried violin, and I can kind of play piano. I’d really like to try cello- the sound is so warm and it’s bigger as well so it’s not as fiddly. I really love strings- I find them very challenging, but they’re really fun. It’s not challenging to write for them, but they can take up a lot of space [in compositions]- when I did my orchestral piece, I was like, “I’ve just written everything on the strings and I have sixteen more instruments to write for!”

So, what inspires you when it comes to creating songs? Where do you get the inspiration?

A lot of different places. It depends on what I’m writing for. One thing that always plays a big part is the rhythm and texture of it. I’m not as melody driven as [a musician] friend is, for example, and sometimes it’s harder for me to come up with a melody. Sometimes I have all these ideas swimming around in my head. It’s like trying to figure out a puzzle- what instrument gets what notes and who plays loudest. But mostly I get inspired by other music. I try to replicate it- not copy it, but se some of the same technique, or orchestration detail, or a chord progression that interested me.

There’s an element of self-teaching in that as well!

It was a lot of exploration but especially during uni, because I started out as a self-taught musician, so my impulse is to try and do it by myself every time when I want to try something new. My university course provided me with the resources and time to do that. My lecturers, they were more contemporary, so they pushed me to try things outside of my comfort zone.

What is the difference, composing for contemporary pieces versus composing for more classical pieces?

I’m still learning for classical because that’s not really my background. It’s a lot of rules and structures. I feel like contemporary is a bit more free of all of that. But I think I’m trying to find a balance between classical and writing new stuff, but sticking to the structure and trying to learn all that, which I’m still doing, to be honest…. Remembering all of [the rules], I find it a bit harder- because I came across them a bit later on it’s just harder to stick in my brain.

What got you interested in doing mystery plays specifically?

 in 2024

It was because I came across them when I was at uni. I was in the one in Chester. And then two years before that it was the Canterbury Choir Festival with my university, where we did Monteverdi’s Vespers and Eric Whitacre’s Lux Aurumque..  And one of my lecturers, David Lancaster, is really interested in medieval music. But [my interest] was really from the choir festival [in Canterbury]. 

How much of composing comes to you sort of organically and how much of it is, “oh here’s the melody I hear [in my head] but now I have to think about how to make that happen [on paper or with instruments]?

For example, when I was writing my orchestral piece, I started with the strings but I had a melody in my head so I wrote it down. Most of the time it’s just like that. Sometimes I have to really work for it- I’ll write something and then I have to really edit it, because it’s not as polished, but sometimes it just pops into my head. If I’m on my guitar I’ll just write something really random. And I’ll think, maybe I could move this note up or cut it in half. And then at the end, I’ve got a little bit of melody. So it’s like a process of concept and then revision and concept and revision kind of constantly. 

What would you like people to know about composition as a process, as an experience? 

That it’s a lot of work and revision, revising melodies, rhythms and orchestration in search of what fits and feels right, because I think people sometimes think that musicians just do it on the first try, like it’s all in their head. But it’s not, it’s a lot of trial and error.

What do you think is the best the best thing about composing and what do you think is the worst? 

The worst is [when] you can’t find any notes or anything that fits- when you can’t come up with ideas- like composer’s block. Also, when I have to change a section in the middle and then everything feels like it doesn’t fit; everything feels really disorganised. But the best thing? I really do like seeing it get more and more complete. Just going from just a single melody to the whole thing. I compose over a large period of time sometimes, and just seeing it progress to get bigger and bigger, until it gets to the final product. 

I imagine getting to see something you’ve written, and other people are playing it, it’s got to be quite exciting! Do you get really attached to pieces that you’ve done?

It’s more that if I have to change them, I’m like, “No, that’s wrong, that’s not how it should be.” Sometimes a friend and I [will be] talking about it and I don’t take feedback in the best way because I really like how it sounds in my head. And [my friend says], “oh, but it would be better.” And for me it’s not better. A few of my lectures would say, “Your piece ends too abruptly”, but that’s because some of the stuff that I wrote was more like rock and pop for a band. And in my experience, that’s just how they end, because that’s my background, rock and pop, that’s what I learned on guitar first, and then they’re used to slower, longer endings on classical pieces. So that’s the two things I don’t like! 

Do you have a favourite genre to compose in?

I like to write textured music for rock bands, although classical and Romantic music are up there as well.

When it comes to listening to music do you have a favourite style? 

I’ve been really into musicals for the last two years. It started when I was kind of forced into being in a pit band at university for a new module that involved the musical theatre cohort- we did Carrie. I really liked the music though because it was more complicated than what I was used to and it’s what made me learn notation for guitar in a different context, as well as my sightreading skills. It all just forced me to another level and then ever since I thought it’s actually really good [music].

What is the next project after mystery plays?

I’m currently looking for entry-level producing jobs in theatres in London and trying to book work as a pit band guitarist/bassist. Apart from that, I’m working on a project with my friend [I mentioned earlier] to record classical music that was written by female composers, in addition to spin-off recordings of different themes, as one big project catalogue. I am also re-releasing my MA project called Backstage, and working on making all the pieces I composed for university ready to be released. I’m kind of catching up after my MA, to be honest, when I think about it. Just looking forward. 

It always takes a while to just get back on your feet after an MA. MA’s are hard!

Yeah. I really liked it, though. Especially my dissertation. I did it on music psychology and film soundtracks. It’s completely different from what I usually do. It’s on how music can help you overcome trauma by associating the soundtrack with the hero’s journey during the film, and then seeing how it relates to yourself… You know when some people, if they’re sad, they just listen to sad music because they’re sort of playing their feelings out, or some listen to happy music because they’re going to feel happy? It’s kind of that, and my goal with it was to take something that only formally exists in a clinical setting and propose a way to safely use it at home.

I know you grew up in Portugal- is it different musically? How much does it influence you?

I grew up on American and English music, so I’m not the best person to ask. There are a few Portuguese bands; they have this sound that’s kind of European, but it’s not as streamlined as in the UK and US. There’s a fairly big market for Portuguese music in Portugal, although t’s not the same as English. There’s a lot of hip-hop as well with younger people, but I just don’t like it. Music with Portuguese lyrics sound very cliched to me. Some of it you’re like, oh that’s nice… and then you forget about it. I left when I was 19, but I basically grew up with the internet, so I had access to all the music I wanted. On the radio, they’d all play just normal pop music as well. I think they have to have [some] Portuguese music [on the radio]. I’m not doing a good job of selling it!

You’ve got quite a diverse catalogue [of pieces on your website]; it doesn’t all sound the same. 

That’s one of the things [for which] I’m grateful from my uni course, because it allowed me to explore everything. I don’t think I would have done it otherwise. If I’d done another course I think I’d have been too busy. They actually gave us time to explore and find [different] styles. 

Of the pieces that you’ve written, do you have a favourite? 

I really like one of the movements of my classical piece, one or two of them. When I wrote it, the first and the last movement were originally the same movement. But I split it because I wanted to develop them all. But yeah, those two are my favourite. And then “Burn” from the EP. 

You can hear the pieces Samuel mentions, and much more of his work, at samuelfmorais.com. And you can hear his compositions for “The War in Heaven” at the York Mystery Plays on 28 June and 5 July! 

Meet Our Assistant Director! An Interview with Irem Saticioglu

Posted on by under Drama, Interview, Mystery Plays, York Mystery Plays 2026

Continuing with my [Laura-Elizabeth Rice, director for “The War in Heaven”] interviews with our creative team, I chatted with our assistant director Irem Saticioglu, about her journey into theatre and directing. People seem to come to directing from such different places- we all get here via a journey, and though both Irem and I were born outside of Britain, we both seem to have found that the personal journey has been more convoluted than the geographic one. Enjoy learning a bit about her route from puppet-phobic child to Assistant Director for a puppet-filled Mystery Play! [Note: this interview has been edited for brevity.] 

How did you get started in theatre?

I started doing student theatre in Glasgow, when I was studying at University of Glasgow. Then I had the opportunity to direct a small play; that’s what got me into directing. I had a lot of fun and I wanted to do that for the rest of my life. Then I finished uni and decided to do my master’s on theatre. My education wasn’t on theatre, [my degree] was zoology, so there was a big switch from biology science, STEM subjects to theatre. I did my theatre-making MA at University of York; during it and after graduation I’ve been doing theatre in York. This is my first time doing mystery plays, but I’m really enjoying it so far. 

What got you interested in the Mystery Plays?

I wanted to do mystery plays since I learned [that they] exist. It was during my MA because I wasn’t aware of anything like this in Glasgow, but since I learned about it I wanted to become part of it. I didn’t know if I could be a part of a directing team, I was thinking I would volunteer or do something [else] in it because it’s a big lovely festival and then I realized that maybe a [version of] directing is possible. I know a couple of the groups in it as well, and I know how they were passionate about it. And specifically with The War in Heaven, I think it’s the badass play of the entire group. I’m really interested in the idea of discovering Lucifer, by himself as a character, and Lucifer’s relationship with God and how that ends, how it doesn’t go well and an angel turning into a fallen angel and that being why the universe is created is a very interesting story to me. That’s why this one caught my eye.

Why did you get interested in directing specifically?

There was a student theatre society that I was already a part of, but I was doing stage management and helping with props, not getting too involved with the stories or the creative progress, and in one of the small festivals that we had, I tried to actually enter with my writing but I didn’t get picked and then a friend said,  “would you like to direct one of them, though, because we’re still allowing directors to say, oh yeah, I’m interested in that play,” and then I used it as [a springboard]. ‘If I can’t write I’m gonna direct’, was kind of my motto. I decided directing is better for me than writing. I can’t remember what happened in that process that took me from writing only, to [thinking] I should maybe direct, but I think it was the  making of something as a group that really got me, because [although] writing can be a group thing as well, most of the time you write something, give it to a group of people and then they perform it. Finding the best way of performing something is actually, for me, a more thought-provoking process than just sitting and writing something. So [the fact] that it’s collaborative is what got me, and the creative process is digging into something that’s already written, rather than creating something from zero to 100. Digging deeper into something is like solving a mystery: you need to solve that to get [somewhere]. What I mean is, I thought it was really fun but I didn’t know it was a feeling like that before I tried it.

What’s your first memory of theatre?

This is really funny because we have puppets [in our show]. My earliest memory is actually me being very afraid of puppets in a puppet theatre. I think I was five or four. It was one of those puppets with wooden arms and legs and I remember this puppeteer bringing the puppet to my lap- I started screaming. But [my first] positive memory of [theatre] was when I was like 13. We went to see a show in Istanbul. IIt was [a one-man production of] Diary of a Madman, from Gogol, Nikolai Gogol, a Russian dude. That play really got me. I just couldn’t believe something like that was possible and I remember at the end of it I was actually crying silently, I was staring at something and I was just crying, I wasn’t even aware that I was crying and then I went, “oh, I want to do this!” There was something that got me and I knew I didn’t want to do acting so it was more about, I want to be involved in this, I want to do something that has to do with this. 

You grew up in Turkey- we have a very international group, really! How does theatre differ from Turkey and the UK?

I don’t know a lot in terms of doing it. I can comment on it as as an audience member, because I’ve been an audience member for both Turkish and English theatre. I think the culture of going to the theatre is different: in the UK it’s a bit more- I can’t believe I’m saying this- it’s a bit more accessible, really. We always talk about how inaccessible arts are in the UK and how it’s getting harder; it’s the truth, it’s getting really hard [to afford to go to performances], but I think it’s even harder to do it [in Turkey]. It’s the class divide. You really don’t [go to the theatre] in Turkey if you are not that lucky in terms of financial situations. In the UK, you can actually be in the middle of a street and, “Oh yeah, they’re doing a play there, let’s go see that!”, like we’re doing now. You know, in the UK, there are opportunities like that. I think it’s less like that in Turkey. I think it’s a bit more focused on, “we need to make more money from this”. Even a very small, independent theatre company, they’re more focused on the money than the art. I don’t want to really say it’s always like that, but I think it’s a bit more accessible here with opportunities to be involved. We don’t have a lot of community theatre going on in Turkey.

Also when I’m in Turkey and I talk about doing theatre in the UK [the people I’m talking to] always go into Shakespeare, “oh my god how many Shakespeare shows have you done?” and I’m like, maybe one? I’ve done The Tempest and I was a stage manager. Meanwhile, we do new writing [more in the UK]. I’ve done so much new writing in the past couple of years. This- the mystery plays and the one I did before these [the Nativity with York Supporters Trust] are the [historical] texts that I’ve done, but the rest have been new writing, and I think it’s really nice in the UK that you get a lot of [that]. In Turkey you get translations of popular, classical plays, like you get Russian literature, Shakespeare, Tennessee Williams, some American classics; you get classic or well-known writing more than you get new writing. I know a lot of Turkish theatre makers, both professional and non-professional, who have moved into UK so that they are a bit more active in theatre because it gets really stagnant in Turkey. [They think], nothing new is happening, where do we go, what do we do now? They usually either create their own independent theatres so that they have artistic control and they get to pick what they’re doing and they’re not just doing whatever the big theatre people say, or they just go somewhere [else].

What’s your favourite show that you’ve worked on?

I think it was the first thing I did as a student. To this day, I think it’s the best thing I’ve done. We did a show called Eve Strong, an Adam-and-Eve and even a Harry Potter-esque play, about a girl called Eve- it was actually “Adam Strong” when we first started doing it, but we couldn’t cast any boys. [It had all] the tropes: the chosen one trope, and the wise elder trope, the villain, the romantic interest, and the parent of the hero telling them, “You have a purpose in life,” and guiding them through. We had all of those people in it and I had so much fun breaking down every single character, because they’re very classical characters, but you never really think about them, you just take them for granted. Like Harry Potter- we all know him but do we? I just loved that production. I loved working with it. It was the first time that I’d done any directing at all. We had a really nice group of people , everyone was so naturally funny and it just worked out. It is what got me into theatre and I still think it was the best thing I’ve done. My aim is do something better than that. My best memory is the first- everything was perfect in my first [show]. I feel like I need to up that at some point, I need to redo that or even do something better than that.

That one show, where everything’s perfect, you don’t get that very often.

Maybe this show will be the best one! I’m going to hope.

What’s your favourite part of directing?

I think it’s watching people. When the cast gets together for the first time and the second time and seeing the difference, becoming unified, they’re becoming one and they’re understanding, “we have a mission and it’s a nice mission, we chose this”. Having one goal, all together, turning into that harmonized mix of different characters, different people but still having one single goal and wanting it to be good. And discovering their personalities and what they do in real life. I really enjoy seeing that because, especially community theatre, it’s bringing people together. I love seeing that. They get more comfortable with each other, they become friends and as a director you’re the person who sees the entire process happening. Sometimes it doesn’t happen, sometimes people get together and they’re more, “okay we’re professionals, we’re just gonna do this”, so they don’t get to be friends, but when it does happen I really enjoy that. 

What do you find to be the most challenging part of directing?

There’s a point zero, where you start for the first time, and there’s point ten, which is your goal- between zero and ten for me it is hard to navigate myself and not get lost in the tiny details. I have a general idea of what should happen and then perfecting it, so not getting caught with small details at the beginning is what I struggle with, so in the point one to point ten, before five is where I struggle, because it kind of happens by itself after that point- people know what to do. You have a basic blocking, you go into polishing and do costumes and puppets and the other things come in and it kind of happens by itself, because if you have a good group of people who know what they’re doing and you know what they should do when, it just comes together naturally. But before that point, where you’re not sure that it’s going to [seem like] random things, that’s gonna look all scattered, that’s what I struggle with. Not getting caught up with the smallest details, and not letting myself be upset about these small things as well. Sometimes I don’t know if [everything] is working out, and it gets to that point where you see, okay it’s actually happening. I’ve had it many times and I know this time it’s gonna happen again, but I need to know that it’s fine… It feels like it a director’s [form of] imposter syndrome. “Oh, can I do this? Am I doing this correctly? Is this gonna figure itself out? Or should I do more of this?” You’re literally not sleeping at all, but you’re [wondering], should I do more? The answer is no. You’re doing fine. But yeah, it’s the imposter syndrome. And every show is a new show, so each show will have a thing of its own as a problem, and just accepting that is helpful.

Cast & Creative Team for “The War in Heaven”

Posted on by under Drama, Historic, History, Mystery Plays, News, Production, York Mystery Plays 2026

We are excited to share the cast & creative team who are bringing forth The War in Heaven for the York Mystery Plays Festival 2026. Find out more about our production on our Current Projects page.

CAST
Angel EnsembleFreddie Amy
Fallen Angel EnsembleChristopher Bradshaw
1st AngelJacob Carhart
2nd Fallen AngelRobin Denley Bowers
3rd Fallen AngelOliver Eardley
LuciferColin Hayes
2nd AngelImogen Lisle-Clarke
GodEhren Mierau
3rd AngelWill Seddon
1st Fallen AngelSue Whyte
CREATIVE TEAM
DirectorLaura-Elizabeth Rice
DesignerLaura-Elizabeth Rice
ComposerSamuel Fernandes Morais
Musical DirectorSamuel Fernandes Morais
Puppet DirectorCatherine McRae
Assistant DirectorIrem Saticioglu

Report from the Rehearsal Room

Posted on by under Drama, Musings, Mystery Plays, York Mystery Plays 2026

Welcome to another #MysteryPlayMonday! We’re well into rehearsals for “The War in Heaven”, so today the play’s director is sharing a bit of what we’re working on from behind the scenes.

By the time you see a performance, hopefully everything that happens feels, if not real, then at least natural. The conversation should feel real, not rehearsed; the movements should feel logical and organic, not choreographed. Obviously there are exceptions to this rule- actual choreography, dance, is clearly not spontaneous, despite what musical theatre might want you to believe!- but in the main, the performance should belie the many hours put in to make that happen.

And many hours there are! This week we had the whole cast in, and finally had a chance to really work on the blocking. For those who don’t do a lot of theatre, “blocking” means figuring out where everyone is going to stand, and when they’re going to move, and where, and why. It’s the choreography of everything that isn’t actually dance (or fights). Blocking can be as simple as telling a cast member “you stand there” to a far more complex series of movements involving dozens of people. In fact, in most cases, the more moving parts (people or motions) involved, the more tightly choreographed something is likely to be, to make sure that all of those many pieces sit comfortably together and look the way you want.

Many years ago, I worked with a director who had the entire show mapped out on paper, down to which direction she wanted the spoon to go when a character stirred her tea, and how many times it was to go around the cup. Although I applaud the thoroughness with which she had thought through the show, the experience was stifling for the actors, who had no ability to create the physical world for their own characters. The effect of that experience on me was that I like to go into rehearsals with some general notes about how I’d like things to look, and why, but it’s probably more loose than some people would prefer, as I want to give the cast maximum flexibility to contribute to the process (and to the solving of solutions when there’s a problem, because they should know what feels right for their version of their character better than I do!), and because I’m fully aware that what looks lovely inside my head may bump up against a physical reality that I haven’t anticipated, like just how many angels can dance on the bed of a waggon. 

Which is exactly what happened at “The War in Heaven” rehearsals this weekend. We have a fairly large cast, and only so much square footage The waggons seem big until you actually mark them out on the floor with tape, and then try to fit all your actors onto that rectangle. All of a sudden, things are very crowded. It’s “Mary, your foot is actually off the waggon!”, “Bob, your wing is poking someone in the face”, and the best laid plans just don’t… quite… work. So you change things, and change them again, and together with the cast you work through figuring out exactly how to bridge the gap between how you want things to look and how things can look. Our minds are awfully good at imagining that something is possible, even when it’s not, so you can’t be too hung up on everything going exactly the way it did in your head!

This can be either really challenging for a cast (“but I already learned it the other way!”), or satisfying (because their input is valued and they aren’t treated like a movable object), or both in turns. And sometimes working through a part means anyone not actively in that scene can spend quite a bit of time sitting on their hands. Our cast were really fantastic about being patient and walking through different solutions to the problem, which I thoroughly appreciate, and it’s my absolute belief that an end product that is the result of multiple people’s input is invariably better than what any one individual could come up with on their own.

The blocking is the physical manifestation of all the characters together interacting, but the acting itself is naturally a more individual matter, where each person has to find their own ideas about who they’re portraying and what makes them tick. We’ve been starting rehearsals by talking about and playing with the characters; I know “theatre games” have a reputation for being cheesy and unpleasant, but I’m not interested on some sort of “pretend you’re a toaster” nonsense, I want to see people really thinking themselves into their parts. One of the silly things we did last time was make our breakfast in character, and as nuts as that sounds, the results were great. God didn’t have to do anything- he could just make it appear. Lucifer had one of the fallen angels scrambling to make his eggs, rather than doing it himself. The fallen angels complained that their eggs cooked too fast, because hell is so hot, while at least one angel found that fire is a problem in heaven and so made porridge instead. Obviously the great Breakfast Scene is nowhere to be found in our play, but especially when working on amateur theatre, people understanding their world enough to make those choices- choices that technically go against the direction “cook some eggs” but are entirely character/situation appropriate!- is exactly the point of the exercise. 

These are just some of the pieces “in motion” as we get ready for the Mystery Plays. It’s a phenomenally complicated undertaking, and it’s a bit like Russian nesting dolls: the character work and the blocking are just two of the pieces which make up our play; there are nine other productions doing the same things, which together make up the whole; and at the top level there are all of the logistics, as well as making sure it all hangs together coherently. That’s not even to mention the festival events adjacent to the Plays (which you should definitely check out)! I hope by the time you see it all in performance that what you’ll see will be a seamless whole, an organism that lives and breathes as one entity… but know that it’s made of all the million little cells of people and work and ideas that we’re creating right now.

First Rehearsals! and the Questions They Bring Up

Posted on by under Drama, Musings, Mystery Plays, York Mystery Plays 2026

A report from the wilds of Mystery Plays! It’s #MysteryPlaysMonday and our director for “The War in Heaven” has finished the first in-person rehearsal with some of our cast….

When does a production begin? It’s not like sports, where there’s a buzzer or a whistle or a bell, something to tell you, “They’re off!” Maybe it’s the moment the first idea arrives in someone’s head, or the first meeting where two people planning it sit down to swop ideas. Is it the first creative team meeting? The first call for auditions? There are many metrics you could use to help define it, and in almost all cases the beginning isn’t really when the work starts- certainly, by the time the actors walk through the door the first time, scripts in hand, ready to rehearse, a hell of a lot of work has already gone happened.

But emotionally, the first rehearsal still feels like a starting point. I won’t say it’s true of all productions, but in most cases the performers are the centre of the event. There’s that old line about drama, that all it takes is two planks and a passion, but you don’t even really need the planks: the passionate people who make up a performance are what you can’t do without.

Our Mystery Plays journey with “The War in Heaven” thus began with our reading, online, with everyone involved, just to get a sense of the text and the characters, just to dip our toes in the water. Online wouldn’t normally be the ideal way to do things, but it made it possible for several people to be “there” who couldn’t have been otherwise, and ideally everyone is involved from the very beginning and given a chance to feel welcome and a part of things. The truth is that not all parts of the Mystery Plays are equally involved- waggon crew comes in quite near the end, for example, and costume or prop makers may toil behind the scenes and rarely get to spend time with the cast, and yet we absolutely could not do this project without them. There may be small parts, but there are no expendable parts; even the smallest role in terms of time and effort is crucial. That’s the upside to starting online and easily accessible, it gives more people a chance to start from the same place.

The down side is that it is inevitably less dynamic, and getting to a rehearsal room is… well, there’s just nothing else like it! As we finally got to do today, when our Heavenly cast arrived (we’ll get to meet our Hellish denizens next week). We started off by talking a bit about our characters, brainstorming some different questions to ask of them, so that our angels in particular can start seeing their characters as individual, rather than generic.

If the angels have to work to create unique personalities in relatively few lines, Lucifer is almost too well-known, because it’s hard for us to forget what we know about him: that he winds up as God’s greatest adversary. He can’t start out that way, though, he has to begin virtuous and holy, like his brethren. We have to start by liking Lucifer, as we might any other angel; while the pace of the play means that the rot sets in quickly, we have to remember that it wasn’t always there, and that’s difficult when, culturally, we have the baggage of foreknowledge. Lucifer therefore has to really seduce the audience- not in the “sexy daemon” trope that I know exists, that’s not the choice we’ve made in this case- but convince them against their knowledge that he’s a normal angel, until he isn’t.

God’s character is, I think, quite clear in the text, and obvious in who he needs to be. His challenge is more about theology. I don’t want our play to become about theology, for although the story is Biblical the goal is not to preach but simply to tell a story about some characters, but it’s hard to avoid some of those thorny questions in imagining God. Why doesn’t he smite Lucifer down the very second he gets out of hand? Why does God pick Lucifer in the first place? (“God made a bad call” was one  brilliantly blunt answer that came out of rehearsal today.) If God is all-seeing, all-knowing, how does he miss the obvious point that Lucifer is going to go off the rails? There’s no way to answer these questions for our  character, without also acknowledging that these are questions that scholarly theologians have struggled with for centuries. If they haven’t been able to agree upon the answers to our questions, we’re unlike to do so in the short course of our rehearsals! And yet answers which make sense within the context of our play have to be found.

I’m sure everyone had been thinking about these things, but they really surface at early rehearsals, because they can make a difference in material ways. One of the things we toyed with was the question of where God is, while Lucifer is growing in arrogance. Surely, if God is sitting right there, next to him, he might tap Lucifer on the shoulder with a swift, “Hey, knock it off! Too far!” But he doesn’t… so at least from the standpoint of visual narration, God can’t directly see what’s going on, or else his inaction makes no sense. So where is God? When does he leave, and where does he go? This is a real, physical issue we have to solve because the audience has to understand what’s going, but the core of the question- why does God let Lucifer fall?- is also a pretty deep matter of theology and faith.

All these questions are swirling around in my brain after our first rehearsal- and we’ve only worked on half the play! The Hell cast will be in next, which will make for an interesting contrast; Hell is less of a theological thicket and more of a pure staging challenge for us. But, as just shown, that’s what I’m saying now. I may have many different thoughts and questions about Hell and its inhabitants once they’ve leaped off of the page! And those questions are how I know: we’ve officially, really and truly, begun.