touch me now
york plays 2025
we did it!
saturday, june 7, 2025
Toronto
start time 6:00 am
50 short MEDIEVAL plays
each one repeating
at 3 different stations
“we go until we’re done
(likely past midnight)”
[the run ended at 12:20am]
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. We repeated each play on replica wagon stages, across three performance stations, outdoors (no chairs!), at:
BURWASH QUAD
AT VICTORIA UNIVERSITY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO
89-93 CHARLES STREET WEST
TORONTO, ON, CANADA M5S 1K6
FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC
(CLICK HERE FOR THE IMPORTANT INFORMATION WE SHARED AHEAD OF TIME)
PERFORMANCES SATURDAY JUNE 7, 2025, 6:00AM TO PAST MIDNIGHT, OUTDOORS
WITH ADDITIONAL WORKSHOPS, TALKS, AND DISCUSSION (FOR REGISTERED PARTICIPANTS ONLY)
ON SUNDAY JUNE 8, 2025, 10AM TO 6PM, INDOORS
Now that our performance is over (great job, everyone!), we’ll leave this site up for a while in case anyone has use for the resources we shared here. The pages linked here, of course, will often refer to the show as if it has not yet happened — they’re now added to the centuries-long archive of traces left behind by York Plays productions. In time, we’ll migrate all these pages over to plsplayers.com, but until then, enjoy!
HOW TO BE A MEDIEVAL SPECTATOR (NEW VIDEO)
Ay be thou blessed,
Such grace hast thou showed to me
York Plays 2025, as an academic and performance event, was co-sponsored by an academic organization — the CRRS (Centre for Renaissance and Reformation Studies) at Victoria University in the University of Toronto — and by PLS, a Canadian non-profit company that sponsors Performance-Led Scholarship in live productions of early plays. PLS was the primary organizer of the event and provided the replica wagon stages; CRRS hosted the event on the Victoria University campus (in addition to myriad other contributions that both organizations provided!). The academic side of the event was made possible by generous contributions from the Medieval Academy of America Centennial Grant, the University of Toronto Department of English, and the University of Toronto Centre for Medieval Studies.
Since PLS is a non-profit company, its contributions to York 2025 were made possible by generous donors, to whom we are deeply grateful:
(Donors, if you don’t see your name credited where you expect it to be below, contact us and we will fix!)
Supporters (at least $50): D. Jerry White, Daniel Coo, Tyler Gunther, Jill Carter, Paula Greco, Sheilah O'Connor, Nancy Conn, Ruth Wehlau, and three anonymous donors.
Patrons (at least $100): Renée Trilling, James Hansen, Glen Moltó, Clyde Whitham, Carol Percy, Kimberley Yates, Sean & Evi McGrath, Fabienne Michelet, Stephen Johnson, Nicole Rice, Cornelia Schuh, Cynthia Piccolo, Janet & Mark Webber, Gyuszi Berki, John Gregory, Maria Erskine, and Lawrence Kerslake.
Benefactors (at least $500): John & Susan Goddard, Arlynda Boyer, Linda Phillips, and an anonymous donor.
Champions (at least $1000): Paul Tevis, Joel Kaplan, Barbara Tangney, David Klausner, and two anonymous donors.
Visionaries (at least $5000): Robin Phillips (in-kind donation)