Workshops Revive Interest in St Just Ordinalia Plays
- Workshops are being held in St Just to promote the St Just Ordinalia, a trilogy of medieval plays.
- The plays are significant to Cornish culture, with manuscripts dating back to the 14th century.
- The initiative aims to revive interest in these works and engage the community in the Cornish language.
In St Just, Cornwall, workshops are being held to promote the staging of the St Just Ordinalia, a trilogy of medieval plays that have not been performed as a complete cycle since 2021. These plays are significant to Cornish culture and language, with their original manuscripts dating back to the 14th century. The workshops aim to engage potential performers in the Cornish language, highlighting the importance of these works as the first written examples of Cornish, recorded by monks in Penryn. The community-driven performances historically took place across Cornwall, emphasizing the local cultural heritage. Plans are underway to stage the full cycle in 2026 at one of the original performance sites, an outdoor amphitheatre known as a 'Plen an Gwari.' This venue is one of the last remaining examples of such a 'playing place' in Cornwall. The workshops are designed to introduce participants to the joys of performing in Cornish, making the plays accessible to a wider audience, regardless of their religious beliefs. The initiative reflects a growing interest in reviving Cornish culture and language, aiming to attract new performers and audiences to these epic tales that resonate deeply with the region's history.