The Bradshaw Mummers

The Bradshaw Mummers are a street theatre group, performing traditional and contemporary plays based on the medieval mumming traditions of death and re-birth and the triumph of good over evil. Although most of their scripts are written by members of the group, the performances combine both old and new with the emphasis on entertainment – presenting the plays to modern-day audiences while remaining faithful to the origins of a unique form of theatre including the masking of faces, echoing the tradition that actors believed themselves cursed by the Devil if they were recognised.

Our Plays: For practical reasons, only two of the team’s 15+ scripts are ever current. While the full list includes a handful of traditional plays, the majority are self-written and include such diverse subjects as the Battle of Trafalgar, the Civil War Siege of Bradford, John Bull, the Spanish Armada, Robin Hood, the Witchfinder General and Jack Frost plus a wide range of characters ranging from Roman generals to a 15 foot high giant, an exploding dragon, an elephant with a fondness for buns and a rebellious boar’s head.