I REALLY don't understand the fuss about the Mystery Plays.

Since Jane Oakshott revived large-scale waggon plays in 1994, the plays have been performed not every four years in York, but every two. Arguably this was too often, and even some of those most loyal to the plays were known to express feelings of "here we go again".

Much as I respect John Hall, I don't agree that the waggon plays are "entirely separate and different", and I write as someone who played Satan at York Theatre Royal in 1996, and Pilate in the Death of Christ, 2002.

Whether you perform them on waggons or in spaceships, they are the same plays, with the same problems of making medieval drama of variable standard relevant for a modern audience.

The last production in York wasn't in the Minster in 2000; that honour belongs to Mike Tyler's excellent waggon plays in 2002, ending in the Museum Gardens. While on a smaller scale, these were arguably truer in spirit both to the medieval original and the 1950s revival, than the professional millennium spectacular in the Minster.

Four years on from 2002 brings us to 2006, by which time we hope to have waggon plays again, hopefully on a larger scale if the council, police and shops are agreeable.

Another four years brings us to 2010, when we hope to be back in the Minster. This puts the plays back on a sensible four-year cycle, and in the meantime we can do other things.

Particularly welcome is the news that York Theatre Royal is considering a large-scale community production - after all, the York Shakespeare Project has proved we don't always have to do medieval drama!

Dave Parkinson,

Haxby Road, York.

...FURTHER to your numerous letters and articles about the Mystery Plays being put on in York, Stagecoach Youth Theatre York is happy to announce that we are in fact putting on a version of the Mystery Plays this year.

The original impetus for the Mystery Plays was as a community event put on by the local people of York to retell the stories from the Bible at a time when the Bible as read in the church was in Latin. It was therefore a contemporary version of an old tale, made more accessible, as it was written by the very same people who might make up its audience, that is to say, the common man.

We at Stagecoach have used the same process: we have taken the stories and, using song and dance from our own age, and numerous young people from the local community, we aim to take the stories back out and bring them alive again.

The first performances, thanks to the good services of our neighbours at Trinity Methodist Church, in Monkgate, will be from September 24 to September 27. Furthermore, I feel sure that our young members would be happy to perform the production again at other venues in the future.

Hugo Hildyard,

Chairman,

Stagecoach Youth Theatre York Ltd, Monkgate, York.

Updated: 11:42 Saturday, July 05, 2003