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A christmas play with mummers in costume

How to put on a Mummers’ play

Got an event? Grab your friends, some archetypal and silly costumes, and do some mumming! What is mumming? Mumming arises out of the same tradition as sword dances, and ethnohistorians believe they both grew out of ancient agrarian societies. They have their origins in ritualized sacrifice to ensure the renewed fertility of the land and the people as well as the battle between the eternal opposites — the old and new year, winter and spring, the darkness and the light. In the past 200 hundred years, a group of Mummers might perform for members of a household, people on the

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Holly and JR in Melodrama and Murder by Mystery & Adventure Agency

A Mini-history on the Mis-Maligned Melodrama

You must pay the rent! I can’t pay the rent! I’ll pay the rent. My hero! I admit I LOVE melodrama — the true stuff, the new stuff, and the mustachioed tongue-in-cheek stuff. That being said, I weep copious tears, gnash my teeth, and rend my garments when folks use “melodrama” in solely disparaging ways. In truth, melodrama grew from the dance hall, cheap entertainment (thrills, chills, and crazy love stories!), into a means to forward a progressive social agenda and large-scale cultural and system reform. WHHHHAAAAAT?!?!?! NO!!! Yes, my friends, yes. The history of melodrama In Victorian England, if

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