Our understanding of early play texts today depends not only on literary and archival research, but also on practical research — on the present-day live performance of early plays. Some early drama scholars call it “performance-based research,” since the revival performances can yield crucial insights on which to build our academic writing; some scholars call it “performance-as-research,” because they consider the performances in themselves to be equivalent to, and as valuable as, academic writing. If done right — and, most importantly, done well — these revival performances can bring a deep, personal understanding of early plays into, or close to, our living bodies and voices.
Below, this page includes information about, and archival recordings of, productions of early English plays that I have directed (for a narrative of my other work as a performer, playwright, and deviser, prior to 2014, click here).
The Strong Man/Soul and Body
(inscribed early 16th century, Wales; performed 2025)
The Strong Man is a 15th-/16th-century Welsh morality play, with a lot of surprising resonances with our growing culture of materialism and celebrity billionaires (the main character is kind of like a camp-tyrant Elon Musk), which then, in medieval style, unexpectedly turns into something amusingly different at the end. We ran a shortened version of it (30 minutes), in a new translation from the Middle Welsh by Morgan Moore, at the Oxford Renaissance Faire, with four showings per day on Sat 27 Sept and Sun 28 Sept. Then, for the Toronto run, we ran it at mostly full length (45 minutes), appending to it a complementary but more overtly religious piece, the 15th-/16th-century Welsh Soul and Body (25 min), which follows what happens to the sinful but penitent soul of a powerful man (and the corpse it leaves behind) after death. In medieval style, we wove into the play quite a bit of live music (mostly set to tunes from the Ap Huw manuscript, drawing particularly on Peter Greenhill’s arrangements) and audience participation — and, in Soul and Body, we used puppetry.
For various reasons, small-cast medieval plays like these suggest portable production values, ready to drop in and play at a variety of locations. So that’s what we did — outdoors, indoors, at a fair, a university, a theatre, a lounge, a living room — always building the game around what (and who) happens to be there. The show was visibly and audibly different every time.
Sat 27 Sept and Sun 28 Sept (Strong Man only, 4 shows per day), Oxford Renaissance Faire
Tues 30 Sept, 7:30pm, Social Capital Theatre
Thurs 2 Oct, 8pm, Jackman Humanities Building
Fri 3 Oct, 8pm, Jackman Humanities Building
Sat 4 Oct, 2pm EDT, “feast-streamed” on Zoom from a small Department of English meeting room
Sat 4 Oct, 7:30pm, Victoria College’s Alumni Hall
Wed 8 Oct, 7:30pm, Social Capital Theatre
Thu 9 Oct, 7:00pm, a living-room show at a private residence
featuring
Lochlan Moorlag as The Cleric in The Strong Man and Michael/Jesus in Soul and Body
Morgan Moore as The Reader/The Wife in The Strong Man and Soul/Angel in Soul and Body
Deval Soni as The Strong Man in The Strong Man and Body in Soul and Body
Tallulah Valliere-Paul as The Clown/The Manservant in The Strong Man and Devil/Strong Man in Soul and Body
in a new translation from the Middle Welsh by Morgan Moore
directed by Matt Sergi
assistant directed by Dylan Coley
costumes by Linda Phillips
banners by Angie Lo and Kurt Jiang
with new music in medieval style arranged for Soul and Body by Andrew Albin
York Plays 2025
(inscribed late 15th century, York; performed 2025)
There will be archival video footage of York 2025 available sometime soon — but it’s 18.5 hours of content, so it takes a while to process! Check back here soon.
Imagine the medieval York Corpus Christi Plays: fifty short play scripts, each one based on a different Bible story (or on medieval “fanfic” of the Bible), each one produced and performed by a different craft guild (or other group), all on one day. Nearly every year, from 1376 to 1569, the playmakers of York put their plays on wagon stages and pulled them across the whole city, with each of the fifty plays repeating at each of twelve different stations, from sunrise well into the night. Their massive biblical drama focuses primarily on the lives of Jesus and his mother Mary, but the story extends all the way back to God’s creation of the universe, and continues forward to the Last Judgment.
On Saturday, June 7, 2025 (rain date Sunday, June 8), starting at 6:00am — and continuing past midnight — seventeen performance groups from across North America, organized and hosted by PLS and the CRRS, converged on Toronto to present all of the York Plays in medieval style, building from new editions of the text by Christina M. Fitzgerald. I was General Manager for the entire event and directed the Last Judgment finale (pictured above).
To learn more about what went on, on that beautiful day in June 2025, visit the official event page (click here).
PLS/MWDWG Staged Reading:
The Infatuated and the Ravishing
(inscribed late 13th/early 14th century, Cairo; performed 2024)
Offered as part of the yearly programming, co-sponsored by the Jackman Humanities Institute, of the Medieval World Drama Working Group. This year’s staged reading was of Muhammad ibn Daniyal’s sexually explicit shadow play, The Infatuated and the Ravishing, in a new translation by Li Guo, set into verse and rhythmic prose by Matthew Sergi. Directed by Matthew Sergi. Featuring Alexandra Atiya as Mama Ravishing/Youngster/Multi Vers, Dylan Coley as The Ravishing/Davey Cock-Grip, Li Guo as Tallboy the Party Crasher, Michalla Mairi Kinloch as The Presenter/Zayhoun the Referee, Dawn Nearing as Errand Boy/Messenger/Tricky Mickey Slipper, Aras Pabedinskas as Papa Bear Bayram/Tight-Ring Chokerson, Jane Smythe as Narcissa/Cub Loose/Lurker Alert, and Matthew Sergi as The Infatuated.
PLS/MWDWG Staged Reading:
Very Raunchy, Very Gluttonous, Very Late Medieval
(inscribed late 15th/early 16th century, France and Spain; performed 2023)
Offered as part of the yearly programming, co-sponsored by the Jackman Humanities Institute, of the Medieval World Drama Working Group. This year’s staged reading was a series of six new short-play translations — three from the Middle French by Jody Enders, three from the fifteenth-century Spanish by Alexandra Atiya. Directed by Matthew Sergi. Featuring, in various roles, James Hyett, Marlow Stainfield, Michalla Mairi Kinloch, and Jane Smythe.
Mankind
(composed late 15th century; performed by PLS 2015-16)
Directed by Matthew Sergi and Ara Glenn-Johanson, with assistant direction by JP Faienza. Featuring Debra Stables as Mercy (2015 productions), Nicole Wilson as Mercy (2016 productions), Mandy May Cheetham as Mischief (2015 productions), Ara Glenn-Johanson as Mischief (2016 productions), Polly Phokeev as Mankind, Heather Sanderson as Nowadays, Cassidy Sadler as New Guise, and Tricia Postle as Nought. Stage management by Dawn Nearing; costumes and props designed by Linda Phillips.
In our touring production of the fifteenth-century morality play Mankind (click here to read the text in the original early English), we sang, ad libbed, and rollicked our way through medieval poop jokes, puppetry, and camp — and its misogynistic humour and performative masculinity — with a cast of six non-male performers.
at the Cloisters Museum (Fuentidueña Chapel), New York City: 23-24 May 2015
at the University of Toronto (Vic Quad, PLS Festival of Early Drama), Toronto: 6-7 June 2015
Click here for a fan video of the 2015 Toronto production.
at the University of Leeds (Beech Grove Plaza, Int’l Medieval Congress), Leeds: 6 July 2016
Click here for a teaser video of the Leeds production.
at Durham Town Square, in conjunction with the SITM/REED-NE Colloquium, Durham: 9 July 2016
Click here for photos of the Durham production.
at Queen Mary-University of London (Library Square, NCS 2016), London: 14 July 2016
as a co-production with Stan’s Cafe at their Courtyard @ A.E. Harris, Birmingham: 16 July 2016
at the Majlis Art Garden, Toronto: 29 July 2016—7 Aug 2016
Here’s what James Yarker, Artistic Director of Stan’s Cafe, had to say about our Birmingham showing of Mankind:
There was a good turnout for Saturday’s performance. This felt very successful. The show’s use of the space felt good and it was great having that shift because of the rain so we all got a different perspective. I found myself wondering if the original shows would have be announced in advance whether they would just have interrupted everyday life. Presumably we ‘should’ have been perched on anything we could find. The performance style felt very engaging, there was an edge given to it by not knowing what the etiquette of these performances would be and knowing that there was an improvisational layer to things, but there was a warmth to the performance that prevented it feeling scary. The use of language was rich and evocative, I loved the costumes, particularly the nightmare devilish creation. The musical elements were great. I very much enjoyed this show, I would love to see it again. I haven’t seen any other productions but this seemed to hit the mark of contemporary accessibility with the unfamiliarity of historic strangeness... So over all with this one, I think it was a tremendous success.
The Pride of Life
(composed late 14th century; performed by PLS 2016)
(Photo credit: PLS)
Directed by Matthew Sergi. Featuring Heather Sanderson as King Life, Cassidy Sadler as the Queen, Polly Phokeev as Strength, Ara Glenn-Johanson as Health, Nicole Wilson as Mirth, and Tricia Postle as the Bishop, with musical accompaniment by Gaven Dianda and Eleanor Verrette of Pneuma Ensemble, and a different person at every show as Death. Stage management by Dawn Nearing; costumes and props designed by Linda Phillips.
With generous support from the Connaught Fund’s New Researcher Award, we were able to add the fourteenth-century morality play Pride of Life (click here to read the text in the original early English) to our touring production of Mankind (see above), using the same troupe of actors, but this time for a play that only survives in a damaged, fragmentary manuscript. Rather than fill in the various holes in the script ourselves, we asked each audience to call out how they thought we should fill in the blanks—and since the entire second half of the play is missing, we let audiences direct us (in a structured improv) to determine how each showing of the play would end.
at Durham University (Joachim Room), in conjunction with the SITM/REED-NE Colloquium, Durham: 10 July 2016
at Queen Mary-University of London’s People’s Palace Great Hall (NCS 2016), London: 13 July 2016
as a co-production with Stan’s Cafe at their Theatre @ A.E. Harris, Birmingham: 17 July 2016
at the Majlis Art Garden, Toronto: 29 July 2016—7 Aug 2016
Click here for a compilation video of all four productions of The Pride of Life.
Click here for a compilation video of all four improvised “second halves” of the play from those productions.
When we presented Pride at the 700-seat People’s Palace Great Hall, part of the Queen Mary University of London campus (and of the New Chaucer Society Congress then being held there), our production style drew raves, including from Gail McMurray Gibson, one of the most preeminent scholars of medieval drama:
Your production of The Pride of Life was the most brilliant thing I have ever seen. I’ve been going to medieval drama since the medieval drama scholars’ Woodstock – 1977, the York Cycle — but this was the most brilliant thing I’ve ever seen. I loved it. I loved what they did. I loved the mesmerizing way that the words that are there are repeated; the terrifying way that I realized ‘well, it’s one thing to be part of the audience of Mankind or Everyman,’ but to be Death, to be the one who decides who dies, I mean, that was brilliant. I just can’t tell you – I mean, it was fabulous. I loved it… It just blew me away… I could hardly breathe. I just thought it was so fabulous.
Fulgens and Lucres
(composed late 15th century by Henry Medwall; performed by PLS 2014)
Directed by Matthew Sergi. Featuring Don Johanson as Fulgens, Cassidy Sadler as Lucres, Chris Tsujiuchi as Joan, Marlow Stainfield as Cornelius, Austin Leggett as Gaius, Lauren Shepherd as “A,” and Catt Filippov as “B,” with musical accompaniment by Tricia Postle, Gaven Dianda, and Eleanor Verrette of Pneuma Ensemble. Stage management by Dawn Nearing; costumes and props designed by Linda Phillips.
A co-production with the University of Toronto Drama Centre in November 2014 (and staged with dinner provided) our production of Henry Medwall’s Fulgens and Lucres played for one weekend at University College’s West Hall (a beautiful space we got into at the last minute, but one whose acoustics turned out to make much of the performance barely audible, ruining all the comic timing!), and another weekend at the Drama Centre’s Luella Massey Theatre (with much better results). Even with its short university run, the production received a review — and a glowing one, thankfully of the Massey Theatre version — from Christopher Hoile at Stage Door:
While it is a text that can seem rather unengaging on the page, the new PLS production directed by Matthew Milo Sergi brings it so much to life that it should appeal even to those outside of academe... Sergi’s direction thus emphasizes that important side of early drama, interaction with the audience, that may be implied by the text but tends to lie hidden from readers of the text alone. If the servants are a bridge between the audience and the play, Sergi also uses them as a bridge between the present and the past... For anyone with an interest in early English drama, Fulgens and Lucres is a must. There’s no use waiting for the Stratford Festival to do it. In 60 years it has not staged even one pre-Shakespearean English play. Even the PLS has not staged Fulgens and Lucres since 1973. But, more important, what this production so ably demonstrates is that an early play like this, when well directed, designed and performed, can appeal to anyone who loves the theatre. Not only is this Fulgens and Lucres a window into the past but a joyful feast of entertainment for the present.
Beer Theatre (the Chester Shepherds and Innocents)
(composed late 15th or early 16th century; performed by Impact Theatre 2010)
In my earliest explorations of the records of early drama at Chester, I kept noticing how much money had been spent during biblical play productions… on alcohol. I ended up writing my first published article on the use of real food and drink in Chester’s biblical plays; during that process I collaborated with Melissa Hillman of Berkeley’s Impact Theatre to see how well the medieval play texts would hold up if the actors were performing under various states of inebriation. We recruited local performers for a whirlwind 24-hour rehearsal process, culminating in three showings each of two twenty-minute biblical plays from medieval Chester: the Shepherds and Innocents plays, once with the actors sober, once with them tipsy, and once with them absolutely plastered. The audience were invited to drink too — and they did. As it turns out, the plays were far better when all the actors were visibly tipsy than when they were sober (though they got a bit too sloppy in the third showings). My plan was to use feedback surveys and breathalyzer tests, alongside video documentation, for an in-depth study of the effects of alcohol on the plays in live performance, but since the directors were drinking too, by the end of the evening I had lost (or simply forgotten to gather) all of my data. All that remains is this archival teaser video (click here).