mummer

A person who dons a disguising costume, as for a parade or a festival.

An actor in a pantomime; one who communicates entirely through gesture and facial expression.

[To] perform as mummers, who act in relays of eight, at the worship of ancestors.

Synonym of mum (“to act in pantomime or dumb show”).

There is a general agreement that niggering [blackface performance] took over from mummering to keep up the old custom.

We mummered taverns and restaurants and the airport (the dead man went round and round on the luggage carousel). We mummered Portuguese fishing trawlers in the harbour, where the show worked despite the language barrier, […]