THE York Mystery Plays could once again be performed amid the Gothic splendour of the Minster, The Press can reveal.

Cathedral officials have been involved in lengthy discussions about the possibility of staging another major production, more than 15 years after the stunning success of its Millennium Mystery Plays.

However it is understood that a number of issues have still to be resolved before a final decision can be made on whether to press ahead with the Plays, possibly in 2016.

The Minster said in a statement that its staging of the Mystery Plays in 2000 was a landmark event in the cathedral's and city's recent history.

"We are currently considering how to stage such a significant event at the same time as maintaining our core purpose as a place of worship and welcome," it said. "We will make a formal announcement in due course.”

The 2000 production on a purpose-built stage in front of a specially-built stand of tiered seating was originally intended to be a one-off but , after attracting sell-out audiences totalling more than 28,000, including people from as far away as the USA, Australia, Japan, South Africa and even Papua New Guinea, the Minster decided they should be staged again in 2010.

But in early 2008, The Press revealed that the £1 million production had been put back by 15 months to autumn 2011 to give it more time to raise the necessary funds, after Yorkshire Forward had turned down a request for funding.

By November that year, the then Dean of York, the Very Reverend Keith Jones, who chaired the Minster Mystery Plays Board, revealed that because of the economic climate, it had proved impossible to obtain vital assurances that corporate and individual funding would be available.

He said there were also anxieties that major restoration and construction work at the Minster – which included the creation of a new piazza at the south entrance – might have clashed with the event. He said he hoped it would still be possible one day to stage the plays again.

A very successful production was then staged in the MuseumGardens in 2012, leaving the way open for the Plays to be staged somewhere else in 2016, a date which would be in line with the traditional four-year cycle of the Plays.

In the meantime, the guilds, companies and groups of York successfully staged the quadrennial plays on pageant wagons at several spectacular outdoor locations across the city centre in July this year.

Kate McMullen, head of the tourism organisation Visit York, said the Millennium production of the Plays had been an international event, attracting visitors from across the globe.

"We would be delighted to see a future production of the Plays returning to York’s cathedral once more, since this would again offer us the opportunity to profile this world-class event not just to our UK audiences but to visitors from Europe, the United States, Australasia and Asia," she said.