Traditions of folk drama exist throughout the world, ranging from simple forms that involve few people, rudimentary texts, and crude performance practices, to complex forms involving entire towns, highly elaborated texts, and performance practices that have developed over hundreds of years. Yet folk...

Traditions of folk drama exist throughout the world, ranging from simple forms that involve few people, rudimentary texts, and crude performance practices, to complex forms involving entire towns, highly elaborated texts, and performance practices that have developed over hundreds of years. Yet folk drama lacks, to this day, a full-length study from the perspectives of either folkloristics or drama studies. This work seeks to fill that lack by undertaking a bi-disciplinary study of the idea of folk drama, drawing on examples from around the world, including Yangge (China), Ta'ziyeh (Iran), Bhavai (India), Karagoz (Turkey), Apidan (Nigeria), and the Mummers' Play (England). It examines the meanings of "folk" and "drama," the significance of ritual and performance in folk drama, the frequently encountered problem of Eurocentric bias, the conventional tripartite division of drama into elite, popular, and folk categories, the need for a methodology capable of describing all aspects of folk drama performance, and the taxonomic place of folk drama in both folkloristics and drama studies. On the basis of this examination, Rethinking Folk Drama establishes a new basis for understanding the ubiquity and variety of folk drama.

Nomai dance drama, an artistic expression combining sacred, communal, economic, and cultural spheres of community life in the district of Higashidorimura, is a performing tradition that provides an identity to agriculturally based villages. It has retained features characteristic of the music...

Nomai dance drama, an artistic expression combining sacred, communal, economic, and cultural spheres of community life in the district of Higashidorimura, is a performing tradition that provides an identity to agriculturally based villages. It has retained features characteristic of the music, drama, and sacred practices of medieval Japan. Nomai singing exhibits traits linked to Buddhist chanting. The instrumental music originates from folk Shinto. This study highlights the social and cultural value nomai has for the residents in villages that perform it by providing the historical context in which it is examined, as well as its current performance practices.