PLS York Plays 2025 at the University of Toronto

Group applications to join the PLS York 2025 production are now closed — and we are happy to report that we had more applications than expected, and now have a full roster of producing “guilds”, to be announced in the coming weeks!

The medieval York Corpus Christi Plays: fifty short play scripts, each based on a different Bible story (or on a later medieval embellishment of Bible stories), each produced and performed by a different local group, in the city of York in the north of England, all on one day.  Nearly every year, from 1376 to 1569, the guilds of York put their plays on movable stages — pageant wagons — and pulled them from station to station across the whole city, which each play repeating at each station, from sunrise to midnight. 

On Saturday, June 7, 2025 (rain date Sunday, June 8, 2025), starting at 6:30am and continuing past midnight, we will be staging all of the York plays in medieval style, across three or four performance stations, outdoors on the University of Toronto campus. We want to involve multiple different production teams: each of sixteen groups will be assigned to a different “cluster” of the short medieval play scripts, totalling about 50 minutes of content; using those scripts, each group, on its own, will produce and rehearse two separate 25-minute play-cluster productions, then we’ll all convene on campus to present the plays, in order, from sunrise through midnight. Then, at the very end, the final play of the series (directed by our seventeenth group, PLS) will bring all the other groups together into one massive finale. (For more information on, and the rationales behind, the clustering system, click here).

We will put each group in contact with a drama history specialist to help train and inform your group about early performance practices, we will handle publicity and outreach around the event to build audiences, and on the big day we will provide performance space on campus, overseen by support staff from our team, spread across four different performance stations (we hope to provide movable stages, just as the medieval players did — but that’s TBA for now, depending on whether our current funding applications go through; if not, we will play at ground level across the three or four stations). Your group will be responsible for covering all other costs related to the production and rehearsal of your play cluster (including rehearsal space, casting, costumes, props, set dressing, remuneration of collaborators, etc — and, if you’re not local to Toronto, you’ll need to cover costs for travel and lodging as well).

The Play-Clusters

All participants in our 2025 production will use Christina M. Fitzgerald’s new, lightly translated modern-spelling editions of the York plays — you can find most of Fitzgerald’s editions in The York Corpus Christi Play: Selected Pageants from Broadview Press (2017). Potential participants in the York Plays 2025 can buy the Fitzgerald edition in paperback or eBook at a 20% discount: use discount code York20 at checkout .

However, not all of the York plays we’re performing are in that Selected Pageants edition! Fitzgerald herself has now joined our production team — and she is currently working on editing the remaining 20 pageants specifically for our use! In the meantime, we encourage interested groups to consult the Scoville-Yates modernization and Davidson’s non-modernized edition to read the plays Fitzgerald hasn’t finished yet. Remember: we’ll be using only Fitzgerald versions in the actual performance.

IMPORTANT: A few of these medieval plays include antisemitic content — and we’re not interested in reviving that. York’s medieval players often didn’t know much about other religions, except that they didn’t believe in Christ: so, in nearly every case, replacing the word “Jew” with “non-believer” solves the problem neatly without distorting the original text in any meaningful way. We’ll be asking all participants to make that one-word replacement.

Current Participants in York 2025

We are proud to announce the following play assignments to groups already committed to participate in York 2025: Fordham Medieval Dramatists, led by Prof. Andrew Albin, will take on the Creation of the Cosmos / Thomas and the Ascension cluster (pageants 1, 2, 41, 42); City University of New York (CUNY) and Claremont McKenna College, led by Prof. Lauren Mancia and Prof. Ellen Rentz, will take on the Adam and Eve / Temptation and Transfiguration cluster (pageants 3-5, 22, 23); University of Calgary, led by Prof. Jacqueline Jenkins, will take on the Abraham and Isaac / Purification of the Virgin cluster (pageants 10, 17); Radford University, led by Prof. Frank Napolitano, will take on the Moses and Pharaoh / Dream of Pilate’s Wife cluster (pageants 11, 30); Loyola Marymount University, led by Prof. John Sebastian, will take on the Annunciation / Mary in Heaven cluster (pageants 12, 45, 46); Centennial College, led by Ara Glenn-Johanson and Prof. Matt Sergi, will take on the Nativity/Crucifixion cluster (pageants 14, 15, 35); Shenandoah University, led by Prof. Carolyn Coulson, will take on the Slaughter of the Innocents/Remorse of Judas cluster (pageants 18, 19, 32); University of Illinois—Urbana-Champaign, led by Prof. Carol Symes and Prof. Robert Barrett, will take on the Entry into Jerusalem/Road to Calvary cluster (pageants 25, 34); Missouri State University, led by Prof. Kyle Thomas, will take on the Last Supper/Harrowing of Hell cluster (pageants 26, 27, 37).

Each of the above groups is headed by a scholar who specializes in medieval drama studies, with proven prior experience in practice-based research — that is, in creating live productions of medieval plays in order to share, embody, and understand the plays we study (and most of us are prior collaborators in PLS productions!). We came together informally in the early planning stages of this project, as a network of friends and colleagues; now, we’re very eager to welcome new voices and ideas into our collective.

Any questions? Email sergi.utoronto@gmail.com and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can!