The York Mystery Plays as Bricolage

This thesis and its associated performances uses creative practice research to explore adapting the York Mystery Plays: medieval plays typically performed by amateur casts. My creative practice between 2020-2022 involved three productions of the Plays. Each was affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and its restrictions, which limited available resources. I draw on Lévi-Strauss’s concept of bricolage as a response to these limitations, using it as a versatile framework for devising and directing amateur theatre. Bricolage here is defined as the use of whatever is immediately to hand. I apply this to adapt the Plays to different spaces: my own home, a temporarily closed church, and a marketplace. In doing so, I identify sustainability as an underlying concern of theatrical bricolage.

Each chapter focuses on a specific aspect of bricolage: identity, process, and assemblage. These resonate with the concerns of amateur performance studies, particularly regarding the role of sites and their contents in rehearsal and performance. The participants in the productions include amateur performers, with a focus on their agency and aesthetic contributions, and the ways in which bricolage enables this. My involvement in these various performance traditions and communities informs the analysis.