IAN Birkinshaw is not usually to be found in the spotlight on stage. He is more likely to be handling the lighting, just as he first did in 1977 as a “relatively shy sixth-former” when he joined the National Youth Theatre for one season in London.

However, Ian, the Rector of All Saints and St Andrew’s in Huntington, is at present part of the Tailors Guild ensemble for York Theatre Royal and Riding Lights’ co-production of Two Passions And A Plank.

He is the one man of the cloth in the community cast for Anthony Minghella’s play, set around a performance of the York Mystery Plays on Corpus Christi Day in midsummer 1392.

Ian has only one line, not the most godly it must be said. “I say ‘You Sod’,” he reveals. “At that point I’m playing a soldier sneering at Jesus’s crucifixion.

“Elsewhere, I’m part of the ensemble that creates the background to the key story, appears on the streets as servants and plays extras in the Passion Play.”

He explains why he is taking part in Juliet Forster and Paul Burbridge’s production: “The main motivation was that this is the forerunner to the bigger project next year, when the York Mystery Plays will be done in the Museum Gardens – in the year that Britain is hosting the Olympic Games and York is celebrating the 800th anniversary of its charter. So there’ll be more tourists than ever.

“The opportunity to tell these stories that I’ve enjoyed as literature in the past – and are part of the tradition of this city and our heritage as a nation – would be wonderful,” says Ian, who first studied the Mystery Plays when reading Middle English at Pembroke College, Oxford.

“The plays tell the story at the heart of my faith and that made me think I’d like to be involved in some way next year.”

Ian has enjoyed a long involvement in the world of the stage. He taught English and drama for 15 years at Birley School, in the south east of Sheffield, where he wrote, directed and lit shows.

"There wasn't much art or spirituality at the school when I arrived, but I successfully grew the drama department during my time there," he says.

On joining the clergy and moving to York to be assistant minister at St Michael le Belfrey, he was appointed chaplain to Riding Lights in 2002.

He not only takes morning prayers on Wednesdays for the Christian theatre company’s staff and actors at Friargate Theatre but also is the residential chaplain for the company’s summer theatre schools.

“I thought all my Christmases had come at once with Riding Lights; the chance to be involved in theatre was a real joy and it still is,” he says. “I went on the Living Stones tour to Israel, where we toured with a little posse of actors and performed around the Holy Land.

“I remember praying on the shores of Galilee, burning paper boats in a little fire and signing each other with water from the Jordan.”

Roll forward to 2011, and Ian is enjoying appearing in Two Planks, although it has presented him with one dilemma. “Stubble is required to look like a citizen of York in 1392, but in the first week I had a funeral on Tuesday afternoon and a wedding at the weekend, and I couldn’t have stubble for those,” he says. “So it’s been a bit of a challenge!”

His day job will remain his primary calling, of course. "My church role is to help people be the people they can be in the guiding light of God," he says.

Two Planks And A Passion runs at York Theatre Royal until Saturday, 7.30pm and 2.30pm Saturday matinee. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk