First it was the Passion, now Colchester playwright and theatre-maker Rod Green has turned his attention to the Nativity.

Back in 2015, Rod staged his first production based on the medieval mystery plays at Christ Church with the Passion Play, which told the story of Christ from his triumphal entry to Jerusalem to his Resurrection.

A co-production between the church and the Colchester Theatre Group, with which Rod and wife Sara have been members of since the Seventies, he’s now turned his attention to the Nativity, which as the name suggests tells the story of Christ’s birth.

Rod says: “Everybody had such a great time doing the Passion, I thought why not try and do another one. There’s a lot of mystery plays that deal with the Nativity, so that seemed like an obvious choice.”

Mystery plays are among the earliest forms of theatre.They focused on the telling of Bible stories in churches usually over a number of days and were often performed by various craft guilds, hence the word ‘mystery’, from the Latin ministerium, meaning craft.

As with his Passion Play, Rod has based this new show on a number of mystery plays, such as the Chester and Coventry cycles.

“They’re all available online,” he adds, “so the texts are easily accessible, it’s just putting them together in some kind of way that a modern-day audience can understand and be entertained with. For example in terms of the knights, they were always given humourous names in keeping with the era, so in mine I’ve called them Sir Remain and Sir Brexiteer.”

Directed by Sara Green and featuring many familiar faces from the community theatre scene as well as church members, The Nativity Play is at Christ Church, Ireton Road, Colchester, on Thursday and Friday next week at 7.45pm. Tickets are £5, available by calling 01206 542307.