ORALITY, FOLKALIZATION AND SYNCRETIZING IN DEREK WALCOTT’S PLAYS By Sadiqa Maqbool Associate Professor of English Govt M.A.O College. Walcott’s dramatic art is an artistic reservoir, reflecting the new intellectual trends of the twentieth century Caribbean world. The time when Walcott was writing marked a period of political and creative activity. Walcott himself pointed out the need for bringing together the different creative elements from African, European and West Indian art traditions. The most powerful among the indigenous cultural elements is orality that Walcott combined with Western dialogical form in his famous play, Ti-Jean and his Brothers. He himself termed it ‘My most West Indian play’. Christopher Balm in Decolonizing the stage, points out how the play combines African orality and local rituals; accepting obvious influences of Lorca, Brecht, and Noh theatre. Walcott himself acknowledges the folk tale and local festivals working their way into this drama: ‘Other Saint Lucian rituals came out too , branching from the simple roots of the folk tale such as our Christmas black mass dances of Papa Diable and his imps, the Bolom, or Foetus, and the melodies which they used.’(Derek Walcott quoted by Sharon Ciccarelli, 1979: 303). The second half of the twentieth century, particularly the decade from 1950-1960, saw a feverish political struggle in the Caribbean islands reinforced by an equally powerful impulse to develop a new assimilated theatre. Turning away from the westernized logocentric form of literature, the indigenous writers searched within to discover the strength of rhythms and styles culturally familiar to them. Balme observes how, during this period “the various plays and programmes aimed at demonstrating and producing an indigenous West Indian theatre all sought to quarry the rich mine of the expressive ‘folk’ 1