Croxton Play of the Sacrament St. John’s College Chapel, Oxford January 9, 2013 The Blood Conference St. Anne’s College, Oxford Cast Vexillator, Presbyter, Colle Vexillator, Clericus, Episcopus Aristorius, Brundycche Jonathas Masphat Malchus Jesus Sarah Anson Mairin O’Hagan Alex Mills George Gandy Aurélie Blanc Tamara Voegeli Jamie Whitelaw Director Choir Director Stage Manager Lighting Elisabeth Dutton Thomas Allery Tamara Haddad Al Dutton We are delighted to bring together a cast of professional actors, and students from the University of Fribourg, Switzerland and King Edward’s School, Stratford. We thank Perry Mills of KES, particularly, for training up and transporting Jesus! The Croxton Play is a miracle, rather than a Morality, play: it seeks to demonstrate Truth, through spectacle rather than persuasion. The play claims to be an authentic representation of a Host miracle at Heraclia (Spain) in 1461, although similar Host dramas predate this; stories concerning the Jews’ imputed abuse of the Eucharist had circulated in western Europe since the late thirteenth century. The play was performed in the area around Bury St Edmunds, although may have been part of a touring repertoire. The Jews had been expelled from Bury, then the seat of one of England’s wealthiest and more powerful monasteries, in 1190, and of course from the whole of England in 1290. The Croxton Play says a great deal of unpleasant and fantastical things about Jews which, in the history of anti-semitism, would go on to have an important role in the actual persecution and conversion of Jews: ideas of the ‘international Jew’, the ‘Wandering Jew’, the Jews’ relationship to ‘dirty money’, ideas of Jewish literalism, sensualism and immoderate appetite, are all rehearsed here. However, it would be a mistake to see the Croxton Play simply as anti-Jewish propaganda. Rather, the play uses the Jews to explore difficult and unresolved concerns of community and religion in East Anglia: concerns about international traffic and trade, concerns about the attendant fluidity of identity, and, most clearly, concerns about the efficacy of the Eucharist. These concerns are safely articulated through the Jews, who are not scapegoats but rather fantasies of dissenting voices within. Aristorius in effect sets up a shocking parody of the Last Supper, with ‘wyne of the best’ and a ‘lofe of light bred’, whilst the Jews argue that the Christians only ‘believe on a cake’; the Jews swear by Mohammed but never reveal of sound version of Christian sacramental doctrine, demonstrating the extent to which the Jews project Christian concerns. It has long been noted that the play’s Jews are similar to the Lollards, the proto-Protestant heretics in medieval England who questioned the true ‘substance’ of the Eucharistic wafer. The Croxton Play of the Sacrament stages a kind of competition between different ideas of judgement and salvation, the ‘real’ wealth is not jewels, the ‘real’ cure is not medicine, and the ‘real’ Christ is not the Jews’ Mohammed: all is made whole in the image of Christ which appears towards the end of the play. This, in turn, facilitates a procession, ‘O sacrum convivium’, which enables the Christian community to demonstrate its fantasy of coherence. In doing so, the play reveals how communities and their authorities are formed: through ritual and performance, victimization and fantasy. Anthony Bale, Birkbeck College, University of London Director’s Notes Our aim in staging the Croxton Play of the Sacrament is not to endorse its objectionable and fantastical images of Jews, but to expose them. In order to expose the Jewish caricature we have followed its exaggeration in the Croxton Play. We have adopted a self-consciously theatrical style in acting and costumes, which also play on medieval Christian symbolism: yellow, the colour of perfidy, was frequently used in portrayals of Jews. We have, however, clearly not attempted to look medieval. We have retained the play’s Middle English, and perform it with a lightly modernized pronunciation. We have cut the script, partly out of consideration for the audience sitting in a cold chapel, but also occasionally for practical theatrical reasons. We have reduced the number of Jews from five to three – we thus lose the symbolism of the five Jews inflicting Christ’s five wounds, but gain an ‘unholy’ Trinity which is also more manageable in the narrow chapel space. We have also cut one scene requiring special effects – including fireworks – which we feared St John’s might not be happy about us staging in their chapel. This is a play written for outdoor performance: in Oxford’s January floods we have to adapt! And we hope that you will enjoy compensatory atmospheric gains from the staging of this play in this beautiful early modern chapel. Although it has been suggested that early performances of the Play of the Sacrament might have ended with a procession of actors and audience into a church, this space was designed for worship, not for the staging of performances of this sort. We have tried to accommodate sightlines but there may be moments when those in the back rows need to stand to see what is going on – please feel free to do so. Elisabeth Dutton, University of Fribourg
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