As elsewhere in the region, age-old proto-theatrical activities formed the basis for many later Lao performance styles.

One of the best-known animistic dance rituals still performed today is that associated with the Phou Nheu and Nha Nheu guardian deities of Luang Prabang, which takes place every Lao New Year at Wat Wisun in the northern capital.

Healing rituals were also developed from an early date, and even today the Lao folk genres lam saravane and lam siphandone (see Lam/khap - Lao call-and-response folk songs) still incorporate healing dances of spirit propitiation (lam phi fah), performed by female shamans.

Another important proto-theatrical activity developed in Laos is the art of sung storytelling, which traditionally served to teach morality as well as perpetuating the various myths, legends and cosmology associated with particular ethnic groups. As Buddhism began to spread throughout the region, monks began to use sung storytelling techniques while reciting jataka tales and other religious texts inscribed on palm-leaf manuscripts, giving rise to the use of the name an nangsu (literally 'reading a book'), a term still used widely today to describe the sung storytelling genre. Lam pheun, one of the older varieties of the call-and-response genre lam/khap, involves the recitation of jataka tales, local legends and histories, while the regional lam siphandone features long slow passages of solo recitation believed to derive from a much earlier period.