folk drama

folk drama noncommercial, generally rural theater and pageantry based on folk traditions and local history. This form of drama, common throughout the world, declined in popularity in the West (although not in Asia) with the advent of printing, general literacy, and the increasing emphasis on the individual contribution to the drama of playwright, director, and actors. The mid-19th cent. witnessed a revival of folk drama in the United States and parts of Western Europe. Some of the major figures responsible for this resurgent interest were the Americans Percy McKaye and Paul Green, the Englishman Louis N. Parker, and the French actor-manager and poet Maurice Pottecher. American universities, including North Dakota Agricultural College (now North Dakota State Univ.) and the universities of North Carolina and Wisconsin, sponsored much experimental work in producing regional history plays. One yearly drama presented outside the university environment is the Trail of Tears history play performed by Native North Americans of Cherokee, N.C.

Folk Play, rough-and-ready dramatic entertainments given at village festivals by the villagers themselves. They were derived from the dramatic tendencies inherent in primitive folk festivals, and were given on May-Day, at Harvest Home, or at Christmas, when to the central theme of a symbolic death and resurrection, which comes from remotest antiquity, were added the names and feats of local worthies. Later, though not before 1596, these were replaced by the Seven Champions of Christendom or other heroes, probably under the influence of the village schoolmaster (cf. Holofernes in Love's Labour's Lost). As patron saint of England, St George may have figured among them from the earliest times. With some dramatic action went a good deal of song and dance. Practically no written records of the folk play survive, and it contributed very little to the main current of modern drama, but its early influence should not on that account be entirely disregarded.