Keenoba

a Georgian mass folk performance. The origins of the keenoba are in festivals associated with the awakening of nature and the agricultural worship of fertility that were held every spring in the cities and villages. Gradually the keenoba became a folk spectacle depicting the struggle of the Georgian people against foreign aggressors. In the 19th century it often contained themes of social struggle and was therefore not allowed by tsarist officials. In 1905 the keenoba sometimes developed into revolutionary demonstrations by the workers (in Telavi, Khiduri, and Vardzia). The traditional masked characters in the keenoba are the tsar (keen) and tsarina, a vizier, a judge, a swindler, and soldiers from the enemy camp. The keenoba traditions were used in organizing mass revolutionary spectacles in the first years after the establishment of Soviet power in Georgia.