Introduction to the Symposium

The paper will identify emerging themes from the four International Mumming Unconvention symposia held in Bath (2011 and 2012) and Gloucester (2013 and 2014).  The conference series has encouraged contemporary mumming performers to describe their own ‘embodied ethnography’ and I draw on these to illustrate a wider co-existence of ideas, beliefs, intentions and performance practices than usually acknowledged.  Last year I described these trends and tensions as creative plagiarism and home spun mutations; traditions, revivals and polite evolutions; migrations; performative antecedents, blurring’s, printed histories and exemplar texts.   The paper will continue to examine the interplay of the ‘folklore’ dimension – from morris to mumming; the ‘theatre’ dimension – theatre history and reconstruction, street theatre technique and popular traditions and the current rediscovery of ‘located’ performance.