Be a part of an epic theatre project—the York Cycle 2025: a festival-style staging of all fifty plays in the complete medieval York Cycle, hosted by the University of Toronto. As theatre practitioners dedicated to making early English drama accessible to modern audiences and invested in realizing large-scale multi-part dramas on stage, the chance to participate in a complete staging of the York Cycle is tantalizing.

We are responsible for producing two of the fifty plays, “Joseph’s Trouble about Mary” a poignant domestic comedy about the importance of trusting women, and Pageant 31, “The Trial Before Herod,” a dark satire showing steadfastness before in the face of a corrupt political system. The two pageants will be rehearsed in Cleveland and performed first for local audiences, before traveling to Toronto for the one-day festival. This project will culminate with a performance at an international venue for an epic, once-in-a-lifetime theatrical event, in collaboration with sixteen other teams made up of hundreds of participants from across North America. The result will be a massive production that is at once new and old, playful and sacred, unified under a common project and wildly multivocal—all contradictions which were equally applicable to the many-handed historical practices of medieval theatre, and which lead us to our chosen name Unruly Grandeur.

In order to pay the professional artists fairly for their time and cover the transportation costs associated with bringing a team to Toronto for the festival weekend, we need to raise around $16,000. Both individual support and organizational grants are vital to raise this money. Since we have fiscal sponsorship through Fractured Atlas, we must first raise $1,000 in order to be allowed to apply for two important grants due this fall. By giving today, your gift will multiply by allowing us to access these other funding opportunities.