No religion has influenced the contemporary world as much as Christianity has. The resurrection of Christ is celebrated as Easter. And it falls on March 23 this year.

It was around Easter time that I happened to be in Chester (Cartra Devana), a town in Cheshire, which is located North West of England, bordering on Wales. It is one of Britain’s oldest cities, with a history dating back to over 2000 years. The city has preserved its medieval character and is rich in history and heritage. Here, apart from River Dee, what cannot be missed is the famous cathedral which was originally called Abbey of St Werburgh. Here, a place where what seemed like an open air theatre caught my attention. The story which was enacted there was familiar and as someone with an academic interest in all religions, I watched it not realising its importance.

The stage at different levels was set with a spectacular Cathedral in the background. The characters were dressed in costumes that seemed to belong to another age and time. Later, I came to know that it was the famous Mystery Plays Of Chester.

Drama, in Britain, originated in the churches. As the church services were in Latin, which the common men could not understand, a theatrical format of this was developed and the monks at the Abbey of St Werburgh enacted stories from the Bible to help those who couldn’t otherwise follow or understand. Papal edict forbade members of the clergy from appearing on the stage in public. It developed further when craft guilds took over, thus merging the secular with the sacred. This tradition was formalised and given a structure in the 13th century.

Ronald Higden, a Benedictine monk of St Werburgh’s Abbey, who died about 1364 is believed to have authored the Chester Mystery Plays.  After that, it was further developed during the time of Henry VIII. In the 19th century, the city got a makeover and in 1951, the play was revived for the Festival Of Great Britain.

The plays are performed at the Abbey Gate or Cathedral Green. The Cathedral was initially built on Anglo Saxon foundations. A Benedictine Abbey was founded on this in 1092 by Hugh Lupus Earl Of Chester and was dedicated to St Werburgh, the patron saint of Chester. Chester Mystery Plays include 24 plays that begin with ‘Creation’ and ends with ‘The Last Judgement’. The guilds staged the plays on open pageant waggons. Each waggon trundled through the streets to ‘stations' where the audience gathered. The first station was outside Abbey Gate – audiences today pass through the same place to see the modern version of the plays. The medieval route continued down Northgate to the Cross then along Watergate, cutting next into Bridge Street then Eastgate.

The performance of these plays in the vernacular, laced with wit and humour and staged on lavishly decorated waggons, became the highlight of the Feast of Corpus Christi, later stretching over three days at Whitsuntide.
 More recent times have seen the formation of Chester Mystery Plays Ltd, a company with charitable status committed to producing the plays every five years.