Most medieval mystery plays staged the miraculous with paint, gesture and an audience willing to imagine the rest. The Mystery Play of Elche instead built machines. Two period mechanical devices carry the production's central action: the araceli, a platform structure, and the magrana, a pomegranate-shaped aerial apparatus, both used to physically raise performers and painted figures upward through the vault of the Basilica de Santa Maria during the play's assumption scene, giving a congregation watching from the nave a literal ascent rather than a described one.
The play unfolds across two acts staged on consecutive days rather than one continuous performance: La Vesprà , the vigil, on 14 August, covers Mary's final illness, the apostles' gathering at her deathbed and her death itself, while La Festa, the feast, on 15 August, covers her burial, her bodily assumption into heaven and her coronation there, the two days together tracing the full arc UNESCO's own inscription record credits with fifteenth century origins.
The entire text is sung rather than spoken, set to music preserved across centuries in scorebooks called Consuetas, and performed a cappella in Valencian, the language of the city itself rather than Latin or Castilian Spanish, by townspeople of Elche who have carried the production forward under a dedicated local patronage body responsible for its continuity.