Chris Lloyd goes back stage to see the cast of hundreds pull the Kynren nightshow, at Bishop Auckland, together

“TONIGHT, this volunteer is going to be a Roman, a knight, and then a bishop,” says Anne-Isabelle Daulon, the chief executive at Kynren, running her finger along the show spreadsheet pinned to a shed wall. “He’ll fight in the First World War and then finish in the finale as a bishop.”

It’s nearly 6.30pm on show night on the edge of Bishop Auckland, and the cast members – both human and animal – are arriving back stage ready to have stars in their eyes. The humans of all ages mill around, chatting, drinking coffee, catching up. Some of the young girls rehearse a sword fight, with fingers for weapons, and then a Zumba warm-up breaks out.

In one of the sheds, Debra Willison and her 33 costume volunteers are surrounded by sewing machines and bits of cloth, preparing the night’s 3,000 costumes.

In the shadow of a large working model of Locomotion No 1, the props team are repairing miners’ helmets and patching up the quintains – the targets that the knights attack with their lances.

“The cavalry are very enthusiastic,” sighs Mark Rossi, looking at a hole made by an accurate jouster.

At the stables, Anna Warnecke, an international eventer who runs a riding school at nearby Hunwick, is preparing the 33 horses, and the flock of sheep and gaggle of geese are in their pens next to Neddy the donkey who will pull a kid’s cart across the stage.

As dusk falls, the audience take their seats in the tribune and an owl assumes its position on a post beneath Auckland Castle. It’s there most nights, deliberately casting its gaze over the arena.

It watches as the cast gets dressed. They all wear a base layer so they can slip from one character to the next, from one century to the next, without exposing any embarrassing flesh.

Steve Boyd, the creative director who has been involved in the last 13 Olympic ceremonies, tours the sheds, pointing out what worked, and what didn’t, at the last show.

“Over the summer, the show has become more sophisticated,” he says. “Next year, we want to elevate the level of the performances. The volunteers will be three years into it and will be ready for more rigour.”

It’s nearly eight o’clock and showtime. Back stage is a milling mass of history, a jumble of centuries and a mad mix of warring sides: Romans next to Anglo-Saxons, Scots alongside Englishmen, peasants beside centurions with a small posse of immaculately attired vestal virgins looking on.

The spreadsheets have done their job, because all the swords, spears and shields are in the right hands, and with the back stage clocks reading 1:00:00, the three young footballers kick the show off, dashing across the greensward and booting their ball through the bishop’s window.

In the wings, the “Go-team”, dressed in black, direct operations. They watch the clock, listen to the cues, and, once flying hoofs have passed and pyrotechnics have exploded, they tell the cast when to go.

“We make sure everything moves smoothly and on time,” says Jill Parkinson, a retired community nurse from Shildon and Go team leader, from the shadows.

Perhaps the horses need less prompting than the humans. They’ve learnt their cues: when the music in the scene before theirs comes on, they prick their ears forward, impatient to charge into the arena, regardless of whether the flaming torch in the hands of their rider is alight or not.

“I love being Boudicca’s daughter because the costume is so beautiful and you gallop full pelt into the audience’s cheers,” says Gillian McKenna of Esh Winning, beaming from ear to ear. Hers is a passion replicated in so many volunteers who give so much time to Kynren. “It’s just amazing,” she says. “You can’t put it into words what you get from it.”

“I love it,” says Craig Bates, a lecturer at New College, Durham. “It’s the social side, the comradeship between the guys.”

Twenty minutes in, Craig’s already been a Roman gladiator and now he’s in a diving wetsuit ready to lead the Norman invasion in one of the show-stopping scenes: a longboat with full sail miraculously rises out of the 18ft deep lake.

“Without giving our secrets away,” he say, “when the Vikings attack, we drop into the lake, we sit in the boat under the water and as it rises up, we drop off our diving gear and appear in our costumes.”

Last Friday's show seems to pass without incident, aside from a 21st Century light sabre cropping up in a medieval scene, and without snow – there’s no wind, so at the last minute deputy executive producer Damien Boissinot cancels the blizzard that adds a chill to the wartime trenches because, without a breeze, it wouldn’t drift properly.

The crowd don’t seem to care. They love the scurrying sheep and they give Winston Churchill a surprisingly warm reception. There are oohs and aahs at the firework finale and then a standing ovation.

By just after 10pm, the tribune has emptied. The volunteers are heading for home in their modern jeans and sweatshirts, trailers are taking the sheep back to their fields, and the 11 spotlights that penetrate deep into the Durham sky are turned off leaving the stage bathed in an orange glow.

But the divers are back on the lake, repositioning their gear before the longboat folds down into the water so that everything is in place for the next Norman invasion, and the 12 metre high backdrop of Auckland Castle silently slides down into the ground, ready to rise again tomorrow night. The show is over but preparations for the next show have already begun.

  • There are only two more chances to see Kynren this year, on Saturdays September 9 and 16. Tickets for adults are from £25 to £55, and for children £19 to £41. To book, go to elevenarches.org or call 0333-300-3028