Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

FRAGMENTS FROM EASTERN SRI LANKA

2005; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 3; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/14746680500118566

1474-6697

Sivagnanam Jeyasankar, James N. Thompson,

Theatre and Performance Studies

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes Kooththu as a form is familiar to all Tamil areas of Sri Lanka, but has particular strength in the east due to the relative isolation of the area. The English has been corrected where necessary with permission. This has been done only on occasions. A major part of the collaboration between the University of Manchester and TE has been in uses of applied theatre with young people affected by crisis or conflict. James Thompson has run a range of participatory theatre training programmes in this region – many in the community of Seelamunai – that have offered a range of theatre skills that can be used in refugee camps, and situations of displacement. References to games and play in the article tend to indicate applied theatre activities – that is, theatre exercises used to stimulate creativity, self‐expression, confidence and a space for young people to both forget and rework traumatic experiences. See www.inplaceofwar.net Suriya is a local women's organisation in Batticaloa. ‘Pongal’ refers to the Tamil harvest festival where rice is cooked in front of the house on an open fire. The pongal is the overflowing of the rice but has more recently been linked to a Pongu Thamil movement that includes mass expressions of emotion – an ‘overflowing’ or ‘swelling’ that aims to release the pent up trauma of the war. While this movement now has its own momentum and is widely associated with the Tamil Tiger guerrilla group, it was started, and it owes much of its structure to, the Theatre Action Group and its director, K. Sithamaparanatham. See: http://www.tamilnet.com/art.html?catid = 79&artid = 13910 – article Navalady – A village turned graveyard. Article dated 8 January 2005. Accessed 13 January 2005. See ‘Thai meteorology chief who got it right is brought in from the cold’ by Sutin Wannabovorn, Guardian 12 January 2005, p. 15.