Tag Archives: angels

An Assembly of Angels

Posted on by under Academic Curiosity, Musings, Mystery Plays, York Mystery Plays 2026

Continuing last week’s #MysteryPlayMonday theme of heavenly beings, this week our play’s director looks at the angels in “The War in Heaven”.

What is an angel?

I suspect most people have some quick answer on this one. A basic concept of something like an angel, even if it doesn’t go by that name, exists fairly cross-culturally, and you’d be especially hard-pressed in the Western world for “angels” as an idea to have escaped your notice. Yet when I thought about it, I realised that I had a couple conflicting answers within my own sphere of reference. Angels are, in general, God’s messengers, the intermediaries who communicate with humans on his behalf. Some may serve a guardian function, and some are reputed to escort the recently deceased into heaven. These angels, therefore, are a part of heaven that is and always has been supernatural. Contradictorily, however, the idea that people become angels upon their death is also in circulation, something children are told as a way of helping them make sense of their early experiences of personal loss. And then, to compound matters, some angels seem to get mixed up with saints.

Though the modern world is not immune to the lure of angels as a phenomenon, they rarely come in for the sort of in-depth study that was in vogue among theological circles in the Middle Ages, hitting a high point in the thirteenth century. “Angelology” was considered a genuine branch of science, a rigorous, academic study of the beings who are God’s attendants and helpers, and those who studied them went incredibly in depth in trying to make sense of what angels were and were not. 

Although there was much debate about it, for our purposes, angels are embodied beings, complete with wings (the evolution of angels, their wings, and ideas about what they look like could be an entire separate essay!). At the time-out-of-time of our play, they are only future emissaries to humanity, because humanity does not yet exist; for the same reason, they cannot be the heavenly incarnations of the earthly deceased. Our angels have two clear functions: they are to be companions for God, and to worship him.

This is, presumably, in addition to any specialised duties they might possess, for the same theologians who argued for or against angels possessing corporeal bodies also devised a system for organising varying species, if you will, of angelic beings. The Bible mentions ‘angels’ and ‘archangels’, ‘cherubim’ and ‘seraphim’ in both testaments; these are clearly angels that are different from one another in some way. Colossians 1:16 may add to their ranks: “For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers…” I confess that I struggle to see this as a listing of further supernatural beings and fail to see why this can’t reference earthly things (read in place of those words: ‘whether they be governments, or kingdoms, or states, or rulers’ to understand what I’m getting at), but medieval angelologists read that passage as listing more angelic types. And thus was born the Nine Order of Angels, a hierarchy of heavenly beings who served distinct functions for God. That seraphim and cherubim were in the “top tier” of this, while archangels and angels were at the bottom, is the one thing theologians more or less agreed on; the rest- thrones, powers, dominions, principalities, and virtues (the last of which seems to have been added outside of Biblical precedent, perhaps simply to make up the number nine)- are ranked differently by different theologians, in the middle. Most of them are depicted as feathered and winged human forms, but Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones (usually the highest trio) look least like humans, possessing multiple wings, faces, and hands. 

There are two implications for all of this with regard to our play. The first is that our angels do not need to- in fact, probably shouldn’t- be identical. We can represent different types of angels, including angels that don’t appear as humans. The second is that our angels can be not only distinct physically, we can look at the script and see how it might suggest different characters. This latter is especially important for actors, but also uniquely challenging: how can you be an individual when, by definition, you exist with the purpose of “praising God”? I would argue that it’s in how you choose to read the script, and what subtleties you can create out of it. One angel seems to praise God for the beauties and blessings of heaven, while another finds their own angelic existence awe-inspiring. A third simply feels grateful to be proximate to the deity. These are different focuses and can suggest different personalities. And let us not forget the fourth angel, at the start of the play: Lucifer begins as an angel (some angelic hierarchies consider him a tenth type; others suggest that he was either a cherub or a seraph), so there must be something different about him which makes him vulnerable to his own ego, while the angels who follow him must also possess, or be lacking, some essential quality that leads to their downfall.

In addition to their relationship with God, we may consider how the angels relate to one another, in trying to make sense of them as personalities. The good angels must be bewildered by the abandonment of their brethren, an abandonment which takes place both in presence and in ideology. If you are an angel whose greatest character note is “grateful to be near God”, how would you feel about a sibling angel who deliberately chose to turn away from God and worship someone else? Does heaven feel strangely empty without the angels who have fallen? What does the fact of their fall mean for you own angelic capacity to fail? Sorrow, anger, confusion… these are emotional options for the post-fall angels that actors can pick up and run with. I don’t buy these angels as mindless drones who can only praise God and nothing else; if that were the case, either the fall itself would be impossible (which it clearly isn’t) or it would be meaningless, for if the angels have no choice there is no virtue in their decision to follow God rather than Lucifer. The question of angelic free will is another favourite among those who study them and their biblical precedents, but in our play I think it has to be read as present.

For our angels, the answer to “what’s my motivation” may start with “to paise God”, but it doesn’t end there. And that’s what makes “The War in Heaven” a little bit different, and hopefully for those actors a whole lot more fun.

Director’s Notes: Designing the Mystery

Posted on by under Academic Curiosity, Design, Mystery Plays, York Mystery Plays 2026

Happy Easter #MysteryPlayMonday! We’ve been busy designing our production of “The War In Heaven”, and our show’s director reflects on what it means to imagine portraying heaven, hell, and their inhabitants.

What does an angel look like? How about a daemon? Or Heaven, or Hell?

I’ve been designing this week, getting the answers to those questions get out of my brain and on to paper, so that they can eventually be brought to life on our Mystery Play waggon. The week when I sketch and model, putting to paper what has been evolving in my brain for months, is always fun. And it tends to be when observations that have been quietly bubbling under the surface coalesce into coherent thoughts.

One of the things that I’ve been ruminating on, both from a directorial standpoint concerned with characters, and an visual one concerned with design, is, wacky angels aside, the discrepancy in visual stability between good and evil. I don’t mean in a philosophical or moral sense, I mean in terms of how we picture them. To whit: if you grew up in a western, Christian-dominant society, I bet when you picture God, you envision an old man with white hair and a beard sitting on a throne, gesturing down from a sunny, white-clouded heaven. Your idea of Hell is probably full of fire. If I say the word “angel”, you’re almost definitely picturing wings. (The latter, I have learned, actually has an interesting history, but the development of angels was mostly pretty early in church history, and the idea of a human-based angel was well in place by the time our Mystery Plays were first being performed.)

Hell and daemons seem to offer much more flexibility to people wanting to get creative. If I had to theorise, I’d surmise that it’s because what the biblical texts offer up in terms of Hellish descriptions are among the more… trippy… parts of that literature. And who can blame Christians of the first thousand years of that faith if they felt that, since canonical texts went well off into the creative weeds when describing Hell, they had license to do so as well? If Ezekiel gets credit for the strange angels (I’m planning to write more about them in an upcoming essay), the John who wrote the Book of Revelation can be given the palm for kicking off the creativity of designing Hell. But it was probably Dante Alighieri who sent the ball well and truly rolling. His Divine Comedy was wildly influential throughout the medieval world, probably because his depictions of Heaven and Hell were so detailed and intriguing. Even today, much of what we colloquially think about Hell is based on his writing. But it’s worth noting that, although he wrote both, you hear a lot more about “Dante’s Inferno” than about “Dante’s Paradiso”. 

I am not an expert in the psychology of medieval people or medieval theology, but my guess is that this is in line with why people find the demons of Mankind compelling: it’s easier, as humans who know ourselves to be flawed, to relate to the troublemakers and their world than it is to relate to the idealised space and beings that the angels can offer. Everyone might want to imagine that they align with the angelic sphere, but deep down suspects that they share more in common with the minor devils and their mischief. Additionally, I wonder if there isn’t a bit of a fear of stepping on toes if one gets God or the angels wrong. (Anybody else thinking of the “Monkey Jesus” incident?) You can’t sin against a demon or the Devil by making wrong choices about how they look or where they live, but perhaps people feel that they could do so if they mess up on Heaven. Or perhaps they just recognise that when something exists to be The Ideal, The Perfect Place, no human imagination could begin to create a vision equal to that perfection. You can’t screw up with demons because, by definition, they’re already messed up.

So where does this leave us with designing these characters and their spaces? With opposite challenges! Hell is so wide open, there are almost no limitations, and that can be harder to imagine than something with parameters. Heaven is so constrained by the need to be pleasant and appealing, but it can’t be boring, since boring would be off-putting, which is why (spoiler!) I’m leaning on the “Heaven” panel of “The Garden of Earthly Delights” for inspiration. With our angels, some practical facts are brought into the equation: we had angels in 2014’s “Baptism” so we already own purpose-built angel costumes, although I plan to add to those. Angels with feathers are depicted in so many places throughout medieval art, particularly in architectural spaces, that I remain comfortable with that choice. Would they have been white? Probably not! But this is where the bridge between the historic and the modern come in contact: people today expect angels to be white and would struggle to understand a red-and-gold feathered person as an angel. Historic drama needs to speak across the divide of time, not steamroll past it, and finding the balance between them being able to follow the familiar symbols of stories that they know, and creating something new and memorable, is a fine line to walk in designing.

I don’t know yet if our set for Hell will feature my favourite item from medieval Hell: the Hellmouth. There are practical considerations that might make the decision. But I absolutely love medieval Hellmouths, and I don’t know why they fell out of fashion as embodied things. We still hear the term “hellmouth”, but we’re not usually picturing the wide-mouthed, grinning, surprisingly benevolent-expressioned creature of medieval manuscripts. (I think I wrote years ago that they remind me of dogs asking for belly rubs, and I stand by that!) I do know that our demons are planned to be interesting and multi-faceted. In keeping with the observation that Hell brings out creativity in ways Heaven doesn’t, Hell will be populated by more variety of creatures than Heaven.

And of course, there is God! God is, literally, impossible to design in the way that the character demands, which means we first have to dispense with seeing the character as representing in any way the actual idea of the theological “God”. The God of the Mystery Plays is first and foremost a human being (there’s probably some serious theological layering about Jesus in this- ironically I am writing this on Easter!) and does not have to be what he also cannot be: all things to all people, perfection and omnipotent. One of the really brilliant things about the Mystery Plays over the past 75 years, however, is that God has been: male, female, white, brown, old, young, a child, Christian and, yes, not Christian! Our depiction has always been and probably will be medieval-inspired, but final decisions will probably me made after casting, so that “God” has a chance to influence “who” they will be onstage. One wants, after all, to be at least a tiny bit creative for the creator!

The brilliant thing about the Mystery Plays is that no two groups, either in the same year or across the past seventy five years, have come up with the same answers to these questions. And all of the modern iterations are wildly different from what was going on in the Middle Ages. When I think about the thousands of different minds that have gone into trying to make sense of these characters and their world, for these plays alone, it’s mind-boggling. One of the seminal books on modern mystery plays is titled “Playing God”, reflecting on the literal practice of the actor doing so, but I think it’s in the way all the different teams create their own little slice of the story, in a way that’s uniquely their own, that is truly a miracle of creation.