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.)
This entry was originally posted on Dreamwidth where it has
comments.
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."
Click to viewI 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.)
This entry was originally posted on Dreamwidth where it has
comments.