These religious plays were developed from biblical texts; at the height of their popularity, they were allowed to stay within the churches, and special stages were erected for them.
[4] A few centuries later in Florence, Filippo Brunelleschi (1377–1446) began to create theatrical depictions of religious texts and see them as a potential work of art.
[1] It was not until 1493 however, that the Sacra Rappresentazione, an earlier form of the Mystery Play, was presented on a scaffold in the church in which “hundreds of lights encircled the ‘Throne of God.”[1] This new form of spectacle based theatrical representation of both Old and New Testament texts spread throughout Europe and encompassed North and Central Europe, France, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, and England.
As the plays became more than mere pantomimes of biblical stories, they took on bigger texts and were performed at Christmas, Corpus Christi, and numerous other religious saints days or feasts.
Eventually the plays grew beyond the capacity of the interior of the church and moved its front steps while also making use of the length and width of the streets.
One such description comes from a late sixteenth- / early seventeenth-century manuscript entitled A Breviarye or Some Few Recollections of the City of Chester by David Rogers.
[5] This follows along with a description from the memory of an Archdeacon Robert Rogers who, in 1595, is quoted as saying "..pagiants weare a high scafolde with two rowmes, a higher and a lower, upon four wheeles.
In the lower they apparelled them selves, and in the higher rowme they played, beinge all open on the tope, that all behoulders mighte heare and see them."
A cart closer to the ground would be significantly easier to manage yet might not have offered such a vantage point as a two-story structure.
In Rome the ancient amphitheatres were used, and in places like Mons, France, and Frankfurt-am-Main in Germany, town squares were the primary auditorium.
Meanwhile, all along the predetermined route other wagons with their many varied scenes would follow in procession, each playing over and over its part in the slowly unfolding cycle.
It reached such a point that entire towns were in on the creation of these dramas, and specific guilds were created to devote themselves to the undertaking of the pageant construction.