Body, Site and Memory in the Croxton Play of the Sacrament

Imagining a production in the churchyard of All Saints in Croxton, East Anglia, the essay draws on recent advances in cognitive science to illustrate how embodied experience of The Play of the Sacrament might have affected an audience’s relationship with the site of performance. The author argues that the first half of the play distracts from the spiritual and communal associations of both site and Eucharist, implicating the spectators in the Host’s torture through their instinctive, immediate responses to the physicality of performance. The devotional and social significance of Eucharistic belief is then reinforced through the audience’s physical participation in processions and prayers, their associated emotions and memories further uniting the experience of performance with the experience of ritual enacted within All Saints church.