Kathas, The epics of India

What is a Folk Tale

A folktale is a traditional story that has been passed down
through generations orally and often carry a moral lesson based
in the culture. Storytellers adjust their stories to the audience
listening and their culture like the many variations of the
Ramayana. A folktale is told in simple language so that audiences
of all ages can understand it. The purpose of of a folktale is to
entertain and share cultural and moral values.
Kinds of folktales
Myths - Myths are traditional stories that are often based around religion and used
to explain the world with deities and other supernatural things. They are believed by
some and disbelieved by some.
Fables - Fables are a kind of short folktales passed down containing moral lessons
and often have talking animals, a good example of this is aesop’s fables and one fable
is the tortoise and the hare.
Fairy tales - Fairy tales contain lore and often have moral lessons, they are centered
around characters like princesses or animals with magical elements and are know
across the world and are most often told to children.
What is an epic?
An epic is a form of storytelling and they are long poems often
based around heroic characters with mythical and historical
elements with many settings and cultural significance often
performed orally. Some famous epics in India are the Ramayana
and Mahabharat. Epics are often changed and adapted to where
they are being told like in the Thai and south-asian versions of
the Ramayana raavan was said to have a daughter
Suvannamaccha who was a mermaid sent to stop the stone bridge
but fell in love with Hanuman ji.
Dramatic Elements in epics
Epics often have many fights and great conflicts along with the main
character taking a journey and supernatural things like deities.
Characters often face moral dilemmas in epics like Yudhisthira in the
mahabharata who had to choose which of his brothers to bring back to
life. Often these stories give life lessons and connect with audiences in
all time periods as the lessons within are important even in modern
times.
Expression
People express themselves in many ways, through music,
through dance, through theater and through art. One way
people express themselves in music is through lyrics like how
Benson Boone expressed his emotions about his grandmother’s
death through In the Stars. Expressionism is an art form
dedicated to expression of the artist’s inner self like Van
Gogh’s Starry Night. Likewise Expressionism is in dance and
relies on feelings. Expressionism is also in drama like The Son
by Walter Hasenclever
Elements of personal and cultural expression.
Storytellers often change a story to adapt it to the audience and adapt it to their
style thus expressing themselves through the story and their changes to it. This is
done through interpreting the story in a different way and telling the story with a
different way of speaking and communicating through the cover of a folktale.
Cultural beliefs are expressed through stories as they contain the beliefs and
religious aspects of the culture in context to the history and geography with
language and ways of speaking that show the culture and how people act in it.
The Ramayana Puppet Show by StoryHourUK
It is a performance with the purpose of providing an inaccurate and
entertaining production of the Ramayana through narration and
puppetry. It had many dramatic elements, two of which were the
expressions painted onto the characters to bring them to life with
emotions and have the characters move in the background to add depth
to the performance. They had detailed movement with different ways of
moving to add more personality to the characters. They had many props
for the puppets to interact with to add visual effects.