Career
French
French Jayakody served as the head priest in Duwa in 1939. Duwa is the Passion Play Village of Sri Lanka. Originally, the play used traditional puppets as actors for the Duwa Passion play.
Jayakody wrote the original script for a Passion play, influenced by French
Jacome Gonsalves, and composed new hymns to the traditional "Pasan". He next introduced live male and female actors instead of puppets.
Eventually there were over 250 live actors taking the place of puppets in his adaptation of Dorothy L. Sayers"s The Manitoba Born to be King. The Duwa passion play was considered as the greatest Passion show in Asia at that time.