The Drama Division's upcoming third-year (Group 33) production, opening February 19, has all the elements of an exciting, gritty, contemporary American drama. There's a scene in Central Park, where a woman finds she's been betrayed by someone she loves (and tells him to go to hell... really); a scene on the Lower East Side, where an angry young woman kills her sister in a fit of rage; a scene in Madison Square Garden, where a father comes dangerously close to killing his son; and a scene in post-apocalyptic Manhattan, where three doormen are led by a supernatural presence across the river to Brooklyn.

Playwright Anne Phelan Photo courtesy of Anne Phelan

However, The New York Play: An Adaptation of Four Plays From the Wakefield Mystery Cycle, written by Anne Phelan and directed by Michael Butler, has a twist: the woman betrayed in Central Park is God. Her betrayer? Lucifer. The angry young woman on the Lower East Side? Cain. The man in Madison Square Garden? Abraham. And the three doormen? The three shepherds who were led by an angel to witness Christ's birth. Creation, Cain and Abel, The Sacrifice of Isaac, and The Second Shepherd's Play are getting a makeover, Nueva-York style.

Medieval mystery plays, dating back to the late 1200s, were the first plays to be written in the English language. Based on stories from the Old Testament, they were written and performed by members of local craft guilds at the annual spring Feast of Corpus Christi, the celebration of Christ's presence in the Host taken during the sacrament of communion. Thirty-six plays were performed in one day, from Creation to The Last Judgement.

Beginning as early as the ninth century, the stories first appeared strictly as liturgical drama, performed and written in Latin by members of the church. This was the first recorded drama since the Dark Ages began some 400 years earlier. According to The Bedford Introduction to Drama by Lee A. Jacobus, the purpose of the performances in the church is debatable. Was the church answering the needs of the congregation or simply following their own? Either way, the impulse to dramatize is a universal human characteristic. Over time, the productions moved from the inside of the church to the outside (possibly because of increased production values, as Jacobus speculates). Once outside, they were seen by the general public, and with the later papal encouragement of Corpus Christi, the religious establishment in effect started the rebirth of live theater in Europe. Ironic, Jacobus points out, when you consider that the church officially banned all theater prior to the 1200s as a dangerous, even evil, activity.

By the 1400s, Corpus Christi and the plays had spread throughout Europe, with guilds from almost every town participating. According to Jacobus, "mystery" in Medieval times actually meant "trade" or "skill" and referred to those who had mastered their particular craft; it also refers to religious mysteries.

In the late 13th century, if you could read, you were either very lucky or very rich. Although most of the common people could understand some spoken Latin, their primary means of communication was in the vernacular, an early version of the English language. People truly made the mystery plays their own by replacing Latin with English.

"I think the best way to present these stories is by using the language we hear all around us every day," says Phelan. "The four plays were originally written by someone called the Wakefield Master. His poetry is good, but it's not Shakespeare. I felt that the stories would be more immediate to today's audience if they were written in today's language. After all, that's what people were doing when they were performing them hundreds of years ago."

The New York Play Studio 301 Wednesday-Sunday, Feb. 19-23, 8 p.m. A very limited number of free tickets are available through the Drama Division Office.

So don't be surprised during the show if you hear God (played by Damali Scott) complain how "the Holy Ghost is a spirit and a bird—she doesn't really lend herself to a bitch session," or Adam (played by Ben Davis) say to Eve, when he's discovered that she's eaten fruit from the tree of knowledge, "What did you do?! Are you whack? You've got to be crazy—maybe I can check you into Bellevue for observation and God won't go too ballistic."

Michael Butler, artistic associate at San José Repertory Theater and an alumnus of the Drama Division (Group 8), is very excited about the freshness of the adaptation: "I acted in a production of the original mystery cycle many years ago at Yale Rep. There were so many people involved—dramaturges and specialists on Medieval theater. We all became fascinated by this world, and we really immersed ourselves in Medieval culture. We thought we really had something that was going to excite the audience. But it really didn't seem to land with them. It struck me later that, in order for these plays to work, they needed to be infused with new blood."

To find a truly New York aesthetic, scenic designer Troy Hourie spent some time visiting construction sites and various other urban locales. "I liked the idea of the foreman on a construction site up above the other workers. I thought that would be a neat God-and-man relationship," he explains.

Rather than having separate performing areas for each play, Butler wants to have one space for all four stories, allowing the plays to exist in the audience's imagination. "The best way to describe the set is as a semi-apocalyptic, de-constructed, urban construction site/art installation mutant hybrid. It's metaphorically site-specific to the past, present, and near future. Things are being built, and these plays are about creativity and the act of creation," he says.

Butler is also very enthusiastic about incorporating contemporary music into the piece. Many members of Group 33 are current and former members of diverse musical groups, and many play at least two instruments very well. After all, this is a New York play, and it has to sound like New York, with all sorts of styles represented.

Despite the excitement now, Phelan was originally hesitant about the project. "A good friend of mine—a director, Mary Lisa Kinney—gave me the idea. We were out at a bar one night, and she told me that I should really look at these plays and write an adaptation of them. I thought it sounded crazy at the time. I had no interest in writing about religious themes or anything. But when I started to look into the plays, I became truly interested in these dense, evocative stories of human nature as pure drama, not religion."

Of course, it's hard to avoid the subject of religion or spirituality when talking about these plays, whether they're written in old English or hip-hop. Take the story of The Sacrifice of Isaac, for instance. God asks Abraham to sacrifice his son, Isaac. Abraham, at first hesitant, yet fearing God's wrath, prepares the sacrifice without further questioning. When Abraham holds the knife to Isaac's throat, God intervenes and tells him to stop; he has proven his faithfulness to God. Whether one is religious or not, there is at the core of this story the issue of faith—how far a human being will go on blind faith alone. Those of us in the arts, especially the performing arts, put a great deal of blind faith in our teachers and talent. Our passion for the work can fulfill some of us spiritually, and there is a certain "religion of art" that is undeniable in a place like Juilliard. These plays operate on many levels, and it will be interesting to see how the cast deals with the important, often uncomfortable questions of spirituality, faith, and sacrifice in this production.

Although part of the play was written prior to September 11, the tragedy has indeed shaped the final outcome of the piece. Audiences will find it difficult to hear a character say, "How many people have died on this island? Smallpox, Dutch and British imperialism, natural disasters, H.I.V. ...," without thinking of the events of that day. Even more chilling, though, is Isaac's plea to an angel, "Something horrible's going to happen in New York, isn't it? Worse than anything we can imagine." The angel coolly pretends not to hear him.

Kevin Kell O'Donnell is a third-year drama student.