A Diachronic Approach to Folk Drama Performance

It is intended to stress the necessity of a performance orientation in understanding extant traditions of folk drama while offering a critique of the 'new folkleristics' exclusivity of perspective. If we accept the need for better documentation of traditions as 'total behavioural events' then a working methodology needs to be constructed. A discussion is made of one such methodology developed from my own initial fieldwork in three centres; Antrobus, Bampton and Ripon, which relates contemporary form and function in terms of the dramatic event while stressing the need for a diachronic perspective.