May Day Mumming
English folk plays, also called Mumming Plays or Mummers' Plays, are short traditional verse sketches performed at Christmas, Easter, and other seasonal festivals. Traditionally the performers took them door to door to pubs and private houses. In Syracuse, not having a context for the traditional scenario, we instead trot our Mumming Plays out on May Day. Although based loosely on the characters and plot structures found in eighteenth century plays, the Syracuse version is highly topical (that much has a basis in tradition) and more skit-like. Syracuse audiences have enjoyed performances of our plays for over twenty years.
Recent Scripts
If you perform these plays or adapt the texts for your own, please first obtain permission from the primary author, Susan Galbraith.
- The Queen of Winternet (1995) by Susan Galbraith (HTML 13 K) [Note: this play was also performed by the Burlington (Wisconsin) HS Drama Club in December 1996. See the blog entry.]
- In Which Matters of Consanguinity Become a Subject for Explication and Expostulation (2000) by Susan Galbraith and Laura Waterstripe (PDF 160 K)
- Mumming for the New Millenium - Kingdom Dot Com aka "Spurious George" (2001) by Susan Galbraith and Dan Clark (PDF 644 K; includes photos) [See also Photo Album]
- Part Live Was I 'Ere I Saw Evil Trap (2002) by Susan Galbraith and Dan Clark (PDF 32 K) [See also Photo Album]
- St. George and the
Turkish Knight (2003) by Susan Galbraith, et al (PDF 148 K) [See
also Photo
Album]
- See also The Annotated Griffin Road Mumming Play (2002) by Rich Holmes
For Further Information
- Traditional Drama Research Group. English Folk Play Research Home Page.
- Peter Millington and the Traditional Drama Research Group at the University of Sheffield, England have put together this comprehensive website with a collection of over 180 traditional folk play texts drawn from the oldest available texts, and their literary and ballad relatives; bibliographies and journal references; and over 900 links to online research resources, including performing folk play groups, photos, and modern compositions.
http://www.folkplay.info/ - Peter Millington. "This is a Mummers' play I wrote" Modern compositions and their implications.
- This paper was originally presented at a conference on 'Mumming Traditions in Cross-Border and Cross-Community Contexts' held in Derry, 9-13 June 2003.
This study examines the textual characteristics of the rewritten plays in an attempt to determine what it is that makes the authors think that they have written a mummers' play, comparing play texts with a historical database of "authentic" Quack Doctor plays. It is suggested that similar processes and criteria have existed throughout the history of the plays, and may indeed have been the prime factor in their evolution.
http://freespace.virgin.net/peter.millington1/Modern/index.htm