English Folk Drama - Revival Teams and Modern Mumming
Revival Teams and Modern Mumming
With the 'folk revival' after the Second World War many new groups became interested in mumming plays, and there were numerous revivals across the country. At first, the impetus mainly came from morris dancers and folk clubs looking for a different kind of performance to learn, but schools, community groups and others soon picked up on the idea and sought out plays to perform.
As is to be expected, the custom was changed dramatically with this new interest. Even if the new team stuck rigidly to an old text, the types of people taking part, their motives for performance, the venues, reactions of the audiences, and so on, were radically different to how it used to be, and had little in common with the previous generations.
It was the style of performance which usually changed most, with the new groups often unconsciously modelling their performance on pantomime, or melodrama, and introducing ad-libbing, audience participation, slapstick and verbal by-play. This is not to criticise these developments, as each team can do whatever it wishes, but to emphasise that this is not how the plays were done in the past and to highlight the scale of the changes which occurred with the Revival.
It is also a warning to those who wish to claim that their custom goes back centuries – it does, but only in the loosest sense and no particular element of modern performance can be used as evidence of origin or past practice.
Many of the post-war revival teams lasted just a few seasons, but some have now been going for decades and, it could be argued, have built up traditions of their own. There is also a handful of teams, such as the Marshfield Paper Boys, the Antrobus Soulcakers and the Midgley Pace-eggers, who can claim a longer history, and who have not dramatically altered their styles in living memory.
