We are a volunteer troupe led by Dr. Ernst Gerhardt and based in the Department of English at Laurentian University.
We seek to research, reinvent, and reinvigorate the tradition of English medieval theater here in Sudbury. To date, we have performed three plays, all from the Towneley Manuscript's collection of plays--the Noah play as well as both shepherds' plays.
Once known as the Wakefield Mystery Plays, the Towneley plays were thought to have been performed as a cycle by guilds in the town of Wakefield. However, recent research has demonstrated that this was not the case. Instead, the Towneley plays appear to have been collected individually from Yorkshire, Lancashire, and Westmorland and then arranged in the form of a biblical cycle, perhaps on the model of the York cycle, from which several of the Towneley plays are derived.
Nevertheless, we've named our troupe after the Wakefield ghost-players.