Model and Text in Folk Drama

Abstract

THE CONCEPT OF FOLK DRAMA is one which has long been in need of clarification and refinement. As Thomas Green noted in a recent article, anthropological use of the term has become increasingly lax in recent years and consequently less meaningful. In an attempt to correct this situation, he has suggested that it be applied only to those folk-level performances incorporating mimesis and role distribution among two or more players.1 Though the precision with which he has defined the second half of the term is commendable, and a major step towards its rehabilitation, the first half remains to be discussed. With this in mind, my aim is to examine our current definitions of folk drama and to suggest a new way of conceptualizing the genre. Past studies of folk drama have concentrated on certain specific types of events. These events have usually been of a kind which could be considered survivals, for example, British mumming plays in their varying manifestations or Spanish religious productions in the American Southwest. Folk drama is seen as an activity which has its roots in the usually distant, rural past, and which often seems somewhat out of place in a contemporary cultural context. In addition, folk productions are considered to have basically fixed texts which were handed down unchanged from year to year and generation to generation. While improvisation around the basic script has been noted to play a greater or lesser part in the total event, the orientation of our scholarship has still been towards a traditional script as the heart of the production. The search for the historical roots and geographical relations of this script have consumed most of the energy of folk-drama scholars. The work done on mumming is a case in point. Here, the historical and