At last the wait is over. But before the first performance of York's Mystery Plays, MATT CLARK went behind the scenes.

AFTER years of planning, months of rehearsing and weeks of construction the stage is finally set for the 2016 York Mystery Plays, which open tonight at The Minster for only the second time in their near 700 year history.

And that's called for a fair bit of upheaval.

'I bet you weren't expecting that', a guide asks a group of tourists. None of them were. The Nave has been transformed into a 1,000-seater auditorium; Lantern Tower is now the stage leading up to heaven and ironically the space beneath has been turned into Hell. Then there is the North Transept, temporarily acting as a dressing and make up room, while the Chapter House has been turned into a repository for more than 450 costumes.

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Where one of the wardrobe assistants is Victoria Holland.

“This is my office for a month, who gets a view like this,” she says. “In here a lot of the costumes have been made by volunteers, how amazing is that? You see the actors on stage, but behind the scenes there’s lot of people putting in hours of their own time, every single day.”

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Wardrobe assistant Victoria Holland. Picture: Matt Clark.

The spectacular stage boasts some equally spectacular statistics. It dominates an area of 1,700square metres, weighs more than 60 tonnes and took more than 2000 man-hours to complete. Then there is the scaffolding used to build it and the lighting towers, which together laid end to end would go three times round York’s city walls.

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Dr Richard Shephard is even further behind the scenes. He composed the score and will conduct it from an orchestra pit deep beneath the stage that has been built around the Nave organ.

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Dr Richard Shephard in the orchestra pit. Picture: Matt Clark.

To help coordinate the music and performance, monitors have been placed on columns for the actors to see Mr Shephard and for him to see them.

“That means I have to be careful what I say and do,” he says. “It’s a great honour to be asked again. I wrote the score in 2000 and this is a new one. But the music is incidental, providing what the director needs to bridge gaps between scenes or to underscore them,” says Dr Shephard. “You have to be self-effacing, this is not a great concert piece.”

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That said, there are some very dramatic moments A chorus at the end of both acts, while Satan being cast out of heaven involves a cacophony of drums, anvils and anything that comes to hand.

“The sound is all run through microphones and speakers, so the band can be regulated by the man on the sound desk,” says Dr Shephard.

But what about the organ?

“Well we just tell them to play a bit quieter.”

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About the York Mystery Plays The York Mystery Plays date from medieval England and dramatise the Christian message from creation to judgement through 48 short plays. They were financed, organised and produced by the city’s craft guilds, which represented York’s various trades and skills. In medieval England, the word ‘mystery’ meant ‘trade’ or ‘craft’, and it also refers to a religious truth or rite – hence the name Mystery Plays.

They were traditionally performed in the city’s streets on the feast day of Corpus Christi – which occurs annually sometime between 23 May and 24 June. The guilds would often perform plays appropriate to their craft, such as the shipwrights Building of the Ark and the butchers Death of Christ.

There is evidence that the Plays were performed in York from the 1300s for around 200 years before their suppression in 1569. A manuscript of the York Plays dating from around 1463-77 still survives and is kept at the British Library.

The performances were revived in 1951 as part of the Festival of Britain and, in-keeping with the Plays’ heritage, cast members over the last 60 years have traditionally been amateurs drawn from the local community, with just one professional actor. Famous faces over the years have included Dame Judi Dench, Robson Green and Ray Stevenson.

Tickets can be purchased online at www.yorkminster.org/mysteryplays2016 by calling 01904 623568 or in person from the York Theatre Royal’s Box Office at the De Grey Rooms in St Leonards Place, York, and at York Minster’s visitor admission desks.