Sri Lankan Passion plays

Sri Lanka has a tradition of presenting passion plays on stage for more than 300 years. Negombo is the main city preserving this form of traditional drama. There is another tradition known as 'Wasapuwa' performing Saint Sebastian's life story which is very popular among Christians as well as non Christians in Sri Lanka.

The Duwa passion play has a full-day programme on Good Friday. It could be the oldest and the best known Catholic pageant in Sri Lanka, coming down from generation to generation with well-preserved traditions. The Duwa passion play, with a history of around 400 years, carries a legend, too. The astonishing miraculous statue of Christ formed the centerpiece of the Passion of Christ in Duwa during the last 150 to 175 years.

In the original form, the play was enacted with statues alone and it was based on the script by Fr Jacome Gonzalvez. In 1948 when Kalasoori Fr Merciline Jayakody became the parish priest, Church of Our Lady of Good Voyage, Duwa, he introduced a new script and humans, instead of statues, for most of the cast. At that time the colourful Duwa passion play had over 250 actors, all drawn from the island hamlet of Duwa, and was considered as the greatest Ppassion show in Asia.

Yagaya is a passion play that brought many stage drama ethics in to the folk passion play tradition. It was directed by Sunil Costa, written by Alocius Induruwa, and organised by Kandawala parish in the 1990s.

in 2000 Halpe katana Negombo presented a grand passion play named Aho mage senageni. It was directed by Alexius Fernando (Wadduwa). In this play, they had an opportunity to use costumes from the Oberammergau passion play in Germany. It's the first time that costumes from the world's oldest passion play were given to a Sri Lankan passion play. The music for was created by Dinesh Subasinghe in 2003, 2007 and 2013. Vocalist Thushari Fernando in the parish has given some outstanding support from her soprano vocals. Rev. Fr. Laurance Martin gave a great contribution to this drama in the beginning. More than 250 cast participated on this project in each Easter season which this stage play has performed

In the 1990s, Sri Lankan dramatist Peter Wellambage, composer Dinesh Subasinghe, and Jayantha Modarage initiated a big change to the Sri Lankan traditional passion play by bringing in modern drama ethics, in the years 1999, 2000, 2001 at Katuwapitiya and Bolawalana villages in Negombo.

Rev. Fr. Merceline Jayakody was a memorable composer for several passion plays, and his tunes were very popular among Christians in Sri Lanka. Well known musician J.K.S. Perera was another versatile composer for passion plays; he has done music for the Nainamadama passion play and collaborated with the Boralasssa passion play. Lesly Rafayel has composed music for the Yagaya passion play done by Kadnawala parish.

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Wikipedia