New Folk Old Lore: The Coventry Mummers and the Alberta Avenue Mummers Collective

This video, New Folk Old Lore, will present comparative ethnographic footage I have compiled while working with two groups of mummers separated by the Atlantic Ocean but connected through lines of discourse about “what makes a mummers’ play a mummers’ play.”   The Coventry Mummers have been mumming for decades in villages with plays that are, well… considered tradition. The Alberta Avenue Mummers Collective has been mumming in a Western Canadian city called Edmonton that, up until a few years ago, was an unlikely place to find a mummer at all. And yet both of these groups experience similar tensions between tradition and innovation, revival and loss, performer and audience. Likewise, both groups demonstrate an earnest love and passion for what they do. By comparing costumes, performance locales, performance styles, personal interpretations, stories and histories, this video will likely raise questions relating to authenticity, authority, and just what makes a mummers’ play a mummers’ play. Answers may not be forthcoming, nor do we necessarily want them?