Psychological Release: Comic Ritual Dramas in Sri Lanka

Extract

It is almost a truism to say that religious rituals are often dramatic in form: individuals take on roles different from their everyday ones and relate to each other (interact) in a special area clearly marked out from secular and mundane reality. Many rituals entail an actor, a role, a dramatic part or enactment and a stage or special area where the performance occurs. In most cases, however, the content of the drama is a part of the religious tradition of the group and in this sense is not a secular “play” precisely because it is ritual before it is drama. T.S. Eliot makes this distinction between art and religious sacraments (in “A Dialogue on Dramatic Poetry,” Selected Essays,London, 1951).

Ritual drama-is both ritual and drama. Actors impersonate sacred beings and heroes from mythology. Often the drama itself is an enactment of the myth.