St. George and the Dragon (2006)

 

After a good many year’s of not performing the play we decided to resurrect St George and the Dragon for 2006.  The script for this play may be found here and is a classic Mummer’s play.  It has Hero / Villain and Death / Resurrection—good mumming themes.

 

What it lacked was props.  Most (all?) of the old equipment had either been lost, damaged or totally kna..  (Broken).  So we set about deciding what we needed from the new equipment.  First priority was to have a dragon that wasn’t cumbersome to wear and perform in.  Given the climax of the play is a longsword dance with the eventual decapitation of the Dragon we needed a dragon that had an easily removable head.   With the combined efforts of Jane G  and Malcolm  the result, as can be seen below, was very effective.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

….  Comes the sword dance.  It’s just as well that there aren’t any pictures of this.  Unfortunately there is a video—but enough of that.  Suffice it to say that even after weeks of rehearsal we managed to mess up the sword lock.  We know who turned the wrong way - but we aren’t going to point fingers (are we Jeff?) .

 

All in all a very good ‘first’ performance.  Some of the mummers hadn’t seen the play performed before, which may have helped!

 

The next performance will be even better -  well we would say that wouldn’t we?

 

Thanks to Kevin for the photo’s.  www.comberbach.com

Following the death and resurrection, where the doctor is ably assisted by a ‘volunteer’ (in this case my wife—it was her 50th after all!)  ……

Here is the hero doing combat with the Turkish Knight, apparently he doesn’t like to show his face.

This is a vast improvement on the older dragon that was difficult to operate but, apparently, it still suffers from being a little warm!  However when performing outside this may be an advantage.

 

After the dragon the rest of the kit was straight forward and thanks again to Jane G for her dressmaking skills and to other wives who also showed their  seamstress skills.

 

As the photo below shows - they are fairly colourful: