The ongoing lockdown necessitated by the outbreak of COVID-19 has affected the livelihood of the street theatre performers and folklore artists.
With the temples remaining shut in the State and with public gathering banned to ensure physical distancing, the street theatre performers are finding it to difficult to make both ends meet.
“We are not able to do our performances because of closure of the temples and also ban on public gathering at the festivals. Our sources of living are totally hit and we go without any opportunity to earn our livelihood,” said A. Murugan, 41, a senior street theatre performer from Poyyapakkam near Koliyanur in Villupuram district.
Murugan has been performing street plays in temples for the last 20 years breathing life into the vanishing art form and propagating its essence across various cities.
“We have to feed the family and for this we have started working as assistants to mason. However, our income is not sufficient to take care of the families,” he said.
There are nearly 6,800 street theatre performers in the State and there are 365 troupes of artistes. Villupuram district alone has a large number of street theatre artists.
Normally, the artists would have opportunities from the Tamil months of Thai to Aadi. Though there are only a few programmes in temples during Thai, events begin to happen from the subsequent Tamil months of Chithirai to Aadi.
“The artists earn an average of ₹800 per day during such events. The few months after Aadi are lean months and we manage to run our families with this income,” says A. Prabha, another street theatre artist of Melapadi.
While a few artists have been taking up various other works to sustain their livelihood, the remaining are in abject poverty and without sufficient income.
There are aged persons who have good experience in the field of folklore art and street plays. They have been bearing the brunt of the lockdown.
“Meeting the educational expenses of children and also also to meet other commitments have now become a herculean task for us,” Murugan said.
For the street theatre artists, their livelihood mainly depends upon the patronage from the people who gather in large numbers at temple festivals and auspicious occasions.
“But now our sources of livelihood have dried up due to the restrictions. A situation has now emerged where folk arts are now vanishing. More than the fear of dying due to the virus, fear of dying due to starvation torments them,” says R. Boobalan, a street theatre artist from Poyyapakkam.
The need of the hour is to retain the essence of street art in its original form. The government should extend assistance to the artists who have been facing difficulties due to the lockdown, Murugan demanded.
