The Radford contingent participating in the York Plays Festival included students and faculty from both Theatre and English. From top to bottom, left to right: Brandon Smith and Bryce Helbert; Wesley Young, David Beach and Frank Napolitano; Molly Hood and Robyn Berg; Gwendolynne Arnold and Mazie Wakefield.
Radford students and faculty recently participated in a remarkable marathon performance of Medieval plays as part of the University of Toronto’s annual York Plays festival. After a long drive to Canada, theatre students, along with theatre and English professors, had little time to settle in before repeatedly performing “Moses and the Pharoah” and “The Dream of Pilate’s Wife” as part of the event, which began at 6 a.m. and ended past midnight.
The event is patterned after a similar annual performance of 50 plays in York, England in the Medieval period. Various guilds produced short plays based on Biblical stories on “pageant wagons” pulled through town, each stopping at 12 different stations. It brought religious doctrine to a largely illiterate public for at least 193 years, with the first recorded performance in 1376.
According to producer and director David Beach of the School of Writing, Language and Literature, Radford’s contingent of performers was one of just 17 performance groups from across North America and Europe selected for this project.
“This experience showed me how transformative it is for students to take their academic work into the world and see it resonate with international audiences,” Beach said.
“The project blended literature, theatre, history, and theology—truly interdisciplinary, with students working as researchers, performers, and creators. Performing alongside global peers and previewing our work for the Radford community made the value of the liberal arts unmistakably clear.”
Radford University
