The Schola was founded in 1994 and operates under the auspices of the Wegajty Theatre Society, as well as the Centre of Education and Cultural Initiatives based in Olsztyn. The ensemble includes singers, actors, musicians, artists, theatrologists and musicologists from six European countries. The Schola is involved in the reconstruction of medieval liturgical dramas, presentations of musical theatre, research into the traditions of liturgical and sacred songs, as well as broadly-understood cultural anthropology.
Since 1996 the artists have been realising a project called the International Meetings of ‘Drama and Liturgy’ founded, on the arrangements and productions of medieval liturgical dramas, and their incorporation into an annual liturgical cycle. The meetings endeavour to create circumstances allowing all those interested in the question of the relationship between drama and liturgy to be engaged in the preparation and presentation of liturgical dramas within a contemporary liturgical context. The liturgical dramas enacted by the Schola can be categorised into thematic groups concerned with: the Nativity – Ordo Stellae, Lent – Planctus Mariae and Ludus Passionis, Easter – Ludud paschalis, the Old Testament – Ludus Danielis, Marian Ordo Annuntiatione and the Miracle of St. Nicholas – Miracula Sancti Nicolai.
For many years now the Schola has been conducting field research, in the form of exploratory expeditions and reconnoitres, into the traditions of song and paraliturgical devotions instigated in the 13th century by the mendicant Franciscan and Dominican orders, which have survived throughout Europe to the present day thanks to minstrel societies and word of mouth. Their concerts related to these traditions are entitled: Joculatores Dei and Chants and Psalms. One of the ensemble’s special initiatives is House of Dance, a programme of instrumental dance music combined with a cycle of workshops and dance get-togethers through which the scope of the ensemble’s activities is broadened by secular aspects of the archaic cultures; the concert Warmia Castle is the expansion of this idea. The ensemble’s latest drama A Play on St. Francis premiered in 2010 in Olsztyn.
