PAUL Toy reaches for the image of a juggler to convey his role as artistic director of the 2010 York Mystery Plays.

“I have to keep all the balls in the air,” he says, assessing how he has overseen the progress to York’s streets of 12 plays, “brought forth” by the York Guilds and Companies for performances on Sunday and the following Sunday.

The son of Canon John Toy, former chancellor of York Minster, Paul made his first appearance on a waggon at the age of 16 and, whether as a student, performer or director, he has been involved in medieval drama ever since, not least as an assistant director of the Millennium Mystery Plays in York Minster and as musical director of the 2002 and 2006 waggon plays.

Now he has risen to the post of artistic director, selecting the dozen plays and adapting the medieval texts for performance in 2010. “When translating, I found that the meaning of the words was most important; I worked to deconstruct the original text in order to reconstruct it again for a modern audience while preserving the rhyme scheme,” he says.

Six of the plays he has picked are new to waggon presentation by the Guilds. “Good drama, that has to be the primary reason for choosing a play,” says Paul, explaining his selection policy. “Providing contrasts is important too; Abraham And Isaac and The Massacre Of The Innocents are very serious plays, whereas The Prophetic Dream Of Pilate’s Wife and Joseph’s Troubles About Mary are humorous.”

One of Paul’s most significant choices is The Transfiguration Of Christ, presented by The Lords Of Misrule. “The reason for choosing The Transfiguration is that there aren’t many ministry plays before the Passion sequence, and I wanted to choose from the various phases, so that you have the arc of a mini-cycle of plays during the day,” he says.

“Essentially, we’re doing a quarter if the York Cycle and within that you will have a sweep of the full story.”

The Glovers’ Pageant of The Tragedy of Cain And Abel is rarely done but Paul has found a way to include it alongside The Expulsion Of Adam And Eve, brought forth by the Gild of Freemen. “There’s a gap in the manuscript, so I’ve filled it with the equivalent story from the Wakefield Cycle,” he reveals. “There are a lot of connections between the two cycles, so I thought it would be appropriate to use it.”

Paul has seen all the plays take shape, once in the early stages of rehearsal, and later when they had settled down. “You have to avoid trying to direct all 12 plays; as artistic director, you set the parameters for the plays and act as a general outside eye,” he says.

“The main thing is that there’s not one way of doing them. They’re flexible enough to be effective in all sorts of formats. St Peter’s School, for example, are new to the Mystery Plays; they’re doing one of the ‘new’ plays, The Massacre Of The Innocents, and they’re approaching it in a more experimental way.

“In fact, it looks like three of the plays will be in an experimental style, which is right for balance, because equally the companies learn a lot from doing them in a traditional way, as they know the traditional way works.”

Although York Theatre Royal may return the full-scale Mystery Plays to the Museum Gardens for the first time since 1988 in a site-specific production in 2012, Paul believes the waggon presentations are vital too.

“The waggon approach is a useful way to do them, not only artistically but also economically, particularly in times like these, though that doesn’t mean that other ways that require much more finance aren’t equally valid, so I’m looking forward to what may come about in 2012,” he says.

Meanwhile, the Guild productions will continue to work their way through all 48 plays – more than three quarters have been staged since the street plays were revived in 1994 – and the companies will look to build up the stock of waggons too.

The Butchers, the Builders, the Merchant Taylors and Merchant Adventurers all have their own waggons now, and hopefully others will follow. “Sadly, it’s becoming progressively more difficult to source farm carts, and in the intervening years they don’t necessarily become any more roadworthy, so one of our very long-term ambitions is to have more play-specific waggons – but we’re talking in the region of £2,000 to £3,000 to build a waggon from scratch,” says Paul.

Waggons may come and go but the Mystery Plays live on. “They still matter, not only because the best of them are fantastic drama, but they’re also a rare form and the playing of them in York is almost unique.

“It’s an exciting form of theatre that can be epic and intimate in very quick succession. They have a broad sweep of times, characters, subject matter, comedy, tragedy; there’s everything in them, at all extremes and all levels,” says Paul.

“Some of the poetry – I’m not making a claim for all of it – is beautiful; some of the dialogue is very funny, and plenty of it is very effective. A lot of writers, whether it’s Shakespeare or Brecht, have been influenced by these plays.”

Long may the Mystery Plays take to the streets of York, says Paul. “It’s an important contract with the people of York that they can see the plays in their city – at York’s favourite price.”