n the Middle Ages, the Plays were presented on wagons that were pulled from one ‘playing station’ to another. In 1951 a very practical decision was made to present the plays in one static space - the romantic ruins of St Mary’s Abbey - but Canon Purvis, responsible for providing a playing text for the production, also produced the script for a ‘Wagon Play’ focusing on one of the stories not featured in the ‘main’ production. In each subsequent production, a different story would be presented on a wagon by youngsters from the Archbishop Holgate Grammar School.

In the 1970s two scholarly attempts were made to reconstruct the York Cycle in its processional form - in Leeds and Toronto. The University of Lancaster continued these ‘experiments’ in York and then in 1994 the Leeds-based historian Jane Oakshott worked alongside the Friends of York Mystery Plays, the Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of York and the York Early Music Festival to direct the first processional performance of the Plays in modern times. This innovative production involved nine amateur drama groups working at five playing stations and was a considerable success.

In 1998, Jane Oakshott returned to York to direct a second processional performance, this time bringing eleven plays to the streets, ambitiously re-creating some stunning theatrical sets and, for the first time since the 16th century, involving the York Guilds in their own tradition. By 2002 this initiative had blossomed and the Guilds themselves presented a cycle of ten plays at five playing stations under the direction of Mike Tyler.