watervole: (Poole Mummers)
Judith Proctor ([personal profile] watervole) wrote2011-12-26 01:55 pm

Poole Mummers

 Think of this as a living Christmas card!

There's two lines missing at the start, so mentally add:
"In comes I, Old Father Christmas,
"Welcome in or welcome not, I hope Old Father Christmas will never be forgot."


I find the ad libs and alterations are half the fun of performing this.

Our normal Turkish knight was ill, so we had a substitute. Paul came up trumps and did the part perfectly.  I loaned him an old brass envelope opener, and I love what he did with it.  Then Graham (St George) worked it into his routine - did you spot what he did with it?  None of these things were actually rehearsed, they just evolved spontaneously over a couple of pubs!

This was also the first evening we'd included the morris dance as the sword fight in the middle of the play, rather than adding it at the end.  We stole the idea shamelessly off the New Scorpion Band, and it worked very well.  (For complexities due to English licencing laws, Public Entertainment Licences, Insurance and the fact that the powers that be forgot to exclude mumming when creating laws to deal with loud music in pubs, we have to include a morris dance as part of the performance - because they did remember - after much lobbying - to exclude morris from the act.)

kerravonsen: Three camels with riders: WISE MEN still seek Him (wise-men-seek-him)

[personal profile] kerravonsen 2011-12-26 06:53 pm (UTC)(link)
(huge grin)
Oh, these amazing traditions.
kerravonsen: Jarod investigating ice cream: Genius at work (icecream)

[personal profile] kerravonsen 2011-12-26 08:10 pm (UTC)(link)
BTW, my sister reports good results with the ice cream on Xmas day.

\o/

[identity profile] vjezkova.livejournal.com 2011-12-26 07:01 pm (UTC)(link)
Splendid! Thank you very much for this video. The atmosphere must have been great. Very Christmassy, people enjoying themselves.
Of course I was not able to catch everything but thanks to your previous entries I do have a gist. Ah, your St.Georege is very brave, hee hee...and did he sharpen his "sword" with that opener? The boy is really very good, and your devil horns suit you:-):-).
As usual, I would be happy to be there with you, I would enjoy your performance to pieces!
I wish the Anonymous a nice Yuletide and very happy New Year!!!
*Big hugs*
ext_15862: (Default)

[identity profile] watervole.livejournal.com 2011-12-27 09:35 am (UTC)(link)
Indeed, he was sharpening his sword.

[identity profile] predatrix.livejournal.com 2011-12-30 05:10 pm (UTC)(link)
Sounds tremendous fun. I keep mentioning to people that Santa Claus isn't the native tradition for here (and hasn't been going for that long over there either), but it took Wikipedia to validate my intuition that mummers' plays in which Father Christmas is a sort of Yuletide spirit have been going for an Awfully Long Time.

I loved the Aardman Christmas film this year because it didn't Americanise the idea too much (and had scads of good, funny British actors -- particularly Jim Broadbent playing a very nice bumbling idiot), and the title of __Arthur Christmas_ is a Pune or Play on Words not using 'Santa Claus' (the Yanks have got any number of 'Santa...' films; let them keep them, say I!

PS Hope you got the sweets. Julia seems to have liked hers.
ext_15862: (Default)

[identity profile] watervole.livejournal.com 2012-01-06 10:56 am (UTC)(link)
The sweets were good - thanks!

Mummers plays are hard to trace further than 250 years back, but I'm still following up on various details.