The practice of meetings of traditional transmission of Nativity play in Debrecen

The meetings of Nativity play in Debrecen is organised with call in the experts in the Community Centre of Debrecen. The meetings are held every year in the middle of December.

The aim of the organizers is to explore the traditional revival groups of the Carpathian Basin, to meet with their traditional practice Nativity play, perpetuance, transmission and to initiate new groups who has not practiced their Nativity plays already, but they are interested in. The meetings are also speaks to the traditional revival groups and to the audience.
The first meeting was organized by Márta Tömöry in 1991 with the participation of 20 groups. They were mainly puppeteer. For 2014 the meeting became the most important event of the groups of traditional preserving of Nativity play in the Carpathian Basin, where 200 groups performed Nativity plays. It had the effect, new meetings of traditional transmission of Nativity play were started in several regions. It can be said in 2015, that the most popular and widespred dramatical folk tradition not widely-known variations appeared. The tradition that become completed redraw the type of Nativity plays and maps of their spreding territories which were written in the book of „Collection of Hugarian Folk Music” in the fifties. It brings up several new questions and opens new directions of research.
The meetings of traditional transmission in Debrecen helps the communities of Hungarian native languages local – religious – cultural identity, creativity and integration of the participants, the live on and revival of the traditions.
The organizing of meetings, the teaching and supporting process of the groups of Nativity play became the modell and the exemplary of the looking after of tradition and uncover.

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