From Narratives of National Origin to Bloodied Streets: Contemporary Sinhala and Tamil Theatre in Sri Lanka

Abstract

Modern Sri Lankan theatre, a tradition that spans more than six decades, plays a considerable role in the cultural fabric of the island and has endured economic downfalls and violent periods in the country ‘ history. The theatre includes works in Sinhala, Tamil, and English. Despite the multilingual context, scholarship on Sri Lankan theatre is .polarized along linguistic lines, such that there are no comprehensive studies that seek to understand the points of connection and disjunction between the theatres in different languages. As the traditional kooththu performances, ‘a form of community social theatre which concentrated mostly on music and dance,’ served as a base for the revival of both Sinhala and Tamil theatre in the postcolonial era, this lack of scholarly engagement with the development of the two theatres is especially glaring.1 The scarcity of research conducted with the aim of understanding the two is also pronounced given that the discriminatory Sinhala-only language policy was one of the major reasons for the three-decade long war. This study, therefore, is an initial attempt to outline some of the significant developments in Tamil and Sinhala theatres from the sixties to the present, observing how those theatres responded to the nationalist revival in post-Independence Sri Lanka and then to several formative events that mark the later decades, such as the 1971 and 1987–1989 JVP-led youth movements, the liberalization of the economy, the 1983 anti-Tamil riots, war, and displacement.