Medraut is almost exactly 14 years older than Lleu and Goewin. Just so you know.
The play was inspired by a Mummer's Play that they used to do in the Folklore Dept. at Penn as a surprise to the first year grad students. The players would come bursting into one of the early December introductory folklore classes, and they just Blew Me Away my first year. I think I took part in three productions myself after that--it seems to me that there were 2 characters that got killed and brought back to life and I played them both, and also "the Lady," who gets left out of my very simplified version. I wrote the version for TWP not thinking I would actually include it in the book, but just so I could reference it--and then it turned out too wonderful to leave out. I wrote it in December, while I was also *acting* in a version of it.
We used a Yorkshire play in the Folklore dept., and I based my own version on that & the song "Rise Up Jock" and the version of the play used in the first Christmas Revels tape organized by John Langstaff and Susan Cooper. If any of that resonates with you, which it may not.
Incidentally, there was a question on Mummers' plays on my doctoral exams. It's one of these themes that keeps coming back to me.
I miss it. It was the VERY BEST THING about being a folklorist at Penn.
sorry this is such an incoherent response--I have too much to do. But I love talking about the construction of books.
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branchandroot
Re: Hello!
Date: 2007-12-14 12:55 pm (UTC)The play was inspired by a Mummer's Play that they used to do in the Folklore Dept. at Penn as a surprise to the first year grad students. The players would come bursting into one of the early December introductory folklore classes, and they just Blew Me Away my first year. I think I took part in three productions myself after that--it seems to me that there were 2 characters that got killed and brought back to life and I played them both, and also "the Lady," who gets left out of my very simplified version. I wrote the version for TWP not thinking I would actually include it in the book, but just so I could reference it--and then it turned out too wonderful to leave out. I wrote it in December, while I was also *acting* in a version of it.
We used a Yorkshire play in the Folklore dept., and I based my own version on that & the song "Rise Up Jock" and the version of the play used in the first Christmas Revels tape organized by John Langstaff and Susan Cooper. If any of that resonates with you, which it may not.
Incidentally, there was a question on Mummers' plays on my doctoral exams. It's one of these themes that keeps coming back to me.
I miss it. It was the VERY BEST THING about being a folklorist at Penn.
sorry this is such an incoherent response--I have too much to do. But I love talking about the construction of books.