New Folk Old Lore: The Coventry Mummers and the Alberta Avenue Mummers Collective
Abstract
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?
About the author
Mat Levitt was born and raised in Alberta, Canada. He received his MA in Anthropology from the University of Alberta in 2011. His MA thesis, "The Laughing Storyteller: Metafolklore about the Origins of Mummers' Plays" focused on the metafolklore - or stories about folklore - told by writers, scholars, mummers and audience members about where mummers' plays came from and how they developed over time. He is currently a PhD candidate in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Alberta, still working with the Coventry Mummers and the Alberta Avenue Mummers Collective, and some Newfoundland Janneyers too.
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