At the beginning of this paper I wish to stress that the folk drama is considered the 'national art form' of the Sri Lankan Tamils. Indepth studies of folk dramas bring a clear understanding of various aspects of the cultural tradition of the Sri Lankan Tamils. The printed and unprinted texts of the folk drama and the drama performances at rituals, as well as social festivals, are evidence of the richness and the current tradition of folk drama among the Sri Lankan Tamils. In this paper I will describe the characteristic features of the various folk drama forms, their function, audience, tradition and contemporary manifestations.
Folk drama is primarily performed as a dance with a closely associated story. The texts as well as the techniques of folk drama were preserved in the oral tradition, especially in the memory of the well-versed actors which are later transmitted and preserved their knowledge in manuscripts from generation to generation. The collection and printing of folk drama texts began in the mid-twentieth century.
Sri Lankan Tamil folk dramas are thematically based on the Indian heroic epics – Mahaa Bhaaratha and Raamaayana and Hindu myths. Some of them are based on social and political heroes and stories from the Bible. Mahaa Bhaaratha stories are very popular. It is important to note that the cult of Mahaa Bhaaratha is very predominant in eastern Sri Lanka where folk drama plays a main role in this cultural context.
Christian missionaries who arrived in Sri Lanka from the seventeenth century onwards observed that the folk dramas were a very powerful "mass medium" among the villagers, and they themselves used folk drama as a medium for their religious propaganda activities. In the last two decades, the Art Circle of the Bishop House of northern Sri Lanka has been involved in producing Catholic folk drama. The Christian influences on Tamil folk drama should be studied in greater detail.
It is very hard to obtain any accurate records for the remote period of folk drama. During the period from the twelfth to the eighteenth centuries, folk drama was widely used by the folk poets to spread and sustain Hindu philosophy and disciplines. It is an important fact that the folk dramas have served as an instrument of social change from the eighteenth century. Such folk drama exposed Hindu social evils, such as the caste struggle, dowry problems and other social misbehaviour like prostitution, gambling, etc. Folk dramas were also used as an instrument to expose the British colonial rulers and create a sense of national patriotism. The political activities and life struggles of the heroes who fought against the British colonial rulers were allegorically described in folk dramas. Such folk dramas served as the servant of nationalism in Sri Lanka as well as in south India. It is worth drawing attention to another development in the history of Sri Lankan Tamil folk dramas: since 1990, the drama group of the Liberational Tigers of Tamil Eelam, with the motive of political propaganda, has been using the folk dramatic forms and its literatures, which have been well received by the public.
Since the independence of Sri Lanka in 1948, a new interest in "national" and "regional" cultural identification and expression has developed. These activities have led to the rediscovery and re-evaluation of indigenous forms of performing arts. Traditional folk theatres, such as Vata-mooti, Ten-mooti and Vilaacam (= Icai Naatakam) have gone through remarkable changes. Their status has been enhanced by an intellectual re-evaluation which identified them as the national art form of the Sri Lankan Tamils. The interest of the cultural revivalists in folk dramas began in the 1960s. As a result of this trend, a move is being made towards better documentation of traditions in terms of examining them as total behavioural events and large scale empirical studies have demonstrated the existence of variant forms of dramas. Furthermore, theoretical structures have been developed through the in-depth research at the University of Jaffna from 1980.
Systematic collection was begun in the 1960s, the Arts Council of Sri Lanka having been formed by the Sri Lankan government in 1960. Since the 1960s, scholarly work has been published in the form of editions of folk drama texts, papers on folk drama, and criticism of performances of folk drama. In this category, the names of a few of the scholars who have worked in this field can be pointed out (in chronological order): V.S.Kandiah, S.Vithiananthan, K.Sivathamby, E.Balasundaram, S.Mounaguru and S.Sundarampillai.
Arts circles of schools, colleges and universities, as well as community centres, are showing a keen interest in producing folk dramas during calendar festivals and ceremonies. The Ministry of Education is also conducting an annual folk drama competition in the schools. The Folklore Society of Jaffna is very keen to produce a folk drama every year.