A CONFERENCE about York's Mystery Plays will be staged in the city next month, with delegates and speakers coming from across the country.

Titled ‘Performance in the changing City: taking the plays to the next generation,’ organisers say it will be a day of celebration of past plays and a look ahead to performances in future years.

Confirmed speakers include Ged Cooper and Ruby Clarke, who will be talking about their experiences of creating a new chorus for the Plays, including the obstacles and rewards involved in introducing something new to such a traditional form.

Jill Taylor will be speaking about the Lichfield Mysteries and encouraging people to look at possible new performance models for the future, and Mariana Lopez will be talking about using digital audio technologies to study and disseminate the York Mystery Plays. Other speakers will include Jane Oakshott MBE, Dr Mike Tyler, past director of the York Plays and Laura Elizabeth Rice, medieval dramatist.

A spokeswoman said that in 1994, Jane began a tradition of community productions of the Mystery Plays on pageant waggons at locations across the city centre, with the next taking place in 2018.

"Over the past 20 years, Yorks' Guilds and Companies, through their charity York Festival Trust, have created a Mystery Play tradition for the 21st century and is the only organisation currently staging large scale productions on a regular basis," she said.

"As well as producing the Mystery Plays on the wagons every four years, York Festival Trust is also held in high regard within the academic world and has regularly held conferences to bring together both academic and practitioners to share insights and ideas.

"The first of these conferences took place in 2007, following on from the 2006 waggon plays, the proceedings of which were published in a popular and well reviewed book."

Roger Lee, chair of the festival trust, said that over the last 21 years, so much had changed, from the physical streetscape and the digital technologies available to engage new audiences to the participants themselves.

"All these changes contribute to the way in which productions of York's Mystery Plays will develop," he said. "We invite anyone with an interest in this unique heritage to join us at the conference to help us shape the future."

Mr Lee has got together with previous directors from the past 21 years of Mystery Plays to look at old records of the plays.

The full delegate rate for the conference is £23 to include refreshments and a performance, with concessions. To book visit www.yorkmysteryplays.co.uk