The University of Warwick

Department of Theatre and Performance Studies

School of Theatre, Performance and Cultural Policy Studies

The University of Amsterdam

Department of Theatre Studies

Jasmine Baker

Tracing Khon:

An Exploration of a Living Heritage's Evolution and Conservation

Primary Supervisor: Prof Janelle Reinelt

Secondary Supervisor: Prof Kati Röttger

MA in International Performance Research

MA Theaterwetenschap

December 2010

Warwick / Amsterdam

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Acknowledgements

First of all, my utmost gratitude goes to Prof Janelle Reinelt, who directed me through

the entire writing process with her patience, generous kindness and continuous willingness to

provide me with academic help and moral support. I would like to extend my appreciation to

Prof Kati Röttger, without whose guidance I could not have formed a solid dissertation

proposal and structure. I am also indebted to Dr Sruti Bala, Dr Silvija Jestrovic and Dr Milija

Gluhovic and all other MAIPR lecturers and staff who filled my academic year with scholarly

input and hospitality.

I must also direct my sincere thanks to Ajarn Pawit Mahasarinand, Ajarn Carina

Chotirawe, Pichet Klunchun, Kru Supachai Chansuwan, Kru Chulachart Aranyanak, Kru

Pramet Boonyachai and Jitti Chompee for sparing their valuable time to aid me with

resources and contribute their thoughts and opinions on my research subject.

Tangmo, Julian, Lookkaew, Janso, Nong Pim, P' Wanyen and Baipor: I still have no

clue as to how I can thank you enough for your superhuman ability to tolerate my extreme

kvetching, tears and demand for late-night company and food (for thought, literally), and still

be able to give me useful views regarding my work (or at least how to stay sane while

executing it). Without you all, I might have already jumped out my bedroom window.

No, that was a joke. I would still love my life, but you know how thankful I am.

Warm thanks to P' Ua, the lovely Thai MAIPRer from the last cohort and all those in

mine for the time and thoughts we shared together. I will miss our international pancake

extravaganza and Summer School shenanigans dearly. My friends in Thailand and Thai

friends abroad, too: thank you all so much for your kind words of encouragement.

Last but not least, I would like to express my genuine gratefulness to my family,

especially my parents for their unceasing support, love and belief in me. Lots of love back!

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Table of Contents

Chapter One 3

Performance, Conservation, and the Contemporary World:

A Complicated Combination?

Chapter Two 19

Dance, Dance-drama and Theatre of Thailand: An Overview

Chapter Three 32

Khon and Its Evolution:

From Coronation Ritual to Nation-building Tool

Chapter Four 61

Khon at Its Modern Turning Point:

The Early Struggle to Conserve and Carry On

Chapter Five 78

Khon at Present:

The Irreconcilable Clash between the Conservative and Innovative

A Concluding Note 95

Works Cited 103

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Chapter One

Performance, Conservation, and the Contemporary World:

A Complicated Combination?

The Raising Awareness, UNESCO and its Attempts

'Globalization is alternately seen as the panacea that will cure mankind of all conflicts,

or the ultimate calamity that strikes down world cultures pressed into an amorphous, soulless

melange', states Souren Melikian, long-time art editor for the International Herald Tribune

(53). Hans D'Orville, Director of the Bureau of Strategic Planning at the United Nations

Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) , however, expresses a

contrasting opinion that globalisation 'is neither the panacea which will cure mankind of all

problems and conflicts, nor is it the ultimate calamity that strikes down the cultures of the

world', although it obviously has immense effects on cultural heritage (35). D'Orville argues

that, in the respect of culture, globalisation on the one hand 'provides opportunities to access

knowledge and information about a broad range of cultural heritage on a global scale, to

obtain visibility, [...] to let cultural expressions be captured in digital and other forms and to

have them disseminated worldwide' (35). On the other hand, he continues, it 'poses threats in

the wake of a strong emphasis on economic values inherent in globalization processes, and

through the dominance of certain languages and cultural practices', which favour the

'emergence of a uniformity of expressions' and approaches, and impinge on cultural diversity

that needs to be kept (35).

D'Orville sees every culture that has forged its identity in history as being to a certain

extent influenced by other cultures, and hence realises the significance of openness and

acceptance of one culture to others (36). At the same time, 'the rapid flow of people, products

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and information as well as rapid cultural interpenetration caused by globalization', to him,

'menaces non-dominant cultures, especially their intangible cultural heritage , which has been

handed down from generation to generation' (D'Orville 36, emphasis added). On this cultural

matter, Kiyul Chung, World Culture Open Organizing Committee's Secretary General,

remarks that even culturally-rich communities, 'if left unprotected, may be pressured into

“going global” in every sense of the word, where traditional cultural forms of dialogue, dress,

and trade become relegated to museum exhibits' (98). Heading towards the same direction,

Richard Kurin, Director of the Smithsonian Institution for Folklife and Cultural Heritage,

notes in his 2004 article that the discourse about the consequences of globalisation and along

with in international awareness had increased prominently by the mid-1990s, as more cultural

observers over the globe believed that 'local, regional, even national, traditions were devalued

or endangered or both' and started to question the survival of 'valuable traditions, practices

and forms of knowledge rooted in diverse societies' amidst the bombardment of global mass

culture (68).

Eminent scholars have committed their works to this subject. Pierre Bourdieu, for

example, discusses in 'Culture is in Danger' from his book Firing Back: Against the Tyranny

of the Market 2 how the commercially driven globalisation processes breed homogeneity

—'omnibus products that can be consumed by audiences of all backgrounds and all

countries' (68), and how '[c]ulture is threatened because the economic and social conditions

in which it can develop are profoundly affected by the logic of profit in the advanced

countries where there is already substantial accumulated capital [...]' (71). In 'Grains of Sand'

from the same book, Bourdieu compares cultural works to crops that are controlled by the

rule of money and commerce (64–65). Joost Smiers, Professor Emeritus at the Utrecht School

of the Arts, dedicated most of his publications to cultural matters in the globalised, corporate

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world, with Arts Under Pressure, for instance, posing the question of 'what local artistic life

remains the era of economic globalisation' (vii), and dealing with how structural changes of

many cultural institutions have been occurring against this social backdrop and the 'system of

worldwide free trade that shows little respect for 'local endeavors' (viii).

Alongside this raising awareness of the so-called discourse on the effects of

globalisation, handling most eminently and actively the issue of culture and heritage in an

international scale is undeniably the UNESCO. According to world-renowned anthropologist

and professor at the Performance Studies Department, Tisch School of the Arts, Barbara

Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, this involvement can be traced back to the period of the Second World

War, which UNESCO has since been supporting a series of world heritage initiatives (52).

Starting, as defined by the organisation's World Heritage Convention, with tangible heritage

—'a monument, a group of buildings or site of historical, aesthetic, archeological, scientific,

ethnological or anthropological value' (52) , and extending to natural heritage—' outstanding

physical, biological, and geological features; habitats of threatened plants or animal species

and areas of value on scientific or aesthetic grounds or from the point of view of

conservation' (53), Kirshenblatt-Gimblett continues, the organisation's attention on the issue

has ultimately expanded to include cultural legacy undefinable by its former criteria of

heritage—the intangible, mentioned earlier as the aspect of heritage most under 'threat'.

Diana Taylor, Kirshenblatt-Gimblett's colleague at the New York University, states in

her article on UNESCO's involvement in the intangible cultural heritage that '[s]hortly after

issuing the 1972 Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural

Heritage, discussions began about how to expand that protection to “nonmaterial” or “living

heritage”' (93). This was followed by the approval of the non-binding Recommendation on

the Safeguarding of Traditional Culture and Folklore in 1989 (Taylor 93), which provided 'a

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general framework for the identification and conservation of heritage then called “traditional

and popular culture”' (Skounti 80). According to anthropologist and UNESCO expert Ahmed

Skounti, one of the main reasons that the 1972 Convention 'came under fire' was because 'it

favoured industrialised nations, particularly Western Europe' (79). This statement is

supported by Taylor who observes that '[s]ome in UNESCO argued that some societies do not

have buildings they want to preserve—no Taj Mahals or Auschwitzes or cathedrals—and thus

world heritage sites have been disproportionately located in the “First World”' (91). 'These

are signs of cultural power and capital,' she continues, 'but underrepresented communities

have defining practices and traditions that need crediting and safeguarding' (91).

This move in the concept from the tangible to intangible also accorded value to what

Kirshenblatt-Gimblett calls the '“carriers” and “transmitters” of tradition' or the 'masters' as

the ones who manifest the disembodied heritage, entailing 'a shift from artefacts [...] to

people'—from tales, songs and customs, to performers, artisans and healers, for instance—

and of course their knowledge and skills (53) . In 1996, UNESCO, with special assistance

from the Republic of Korea, launched another intangible cultural heritage programme called

'Living Human Treasures', the purpose of which, according to Noriko Aikawa in her

presentation at the 2000 Regional Seminar for Cultural Personnel in Asia and the Pacific, was

to 'grant an award as national recognition to those persons who embody, to the highest

degree, skills and techniques of outstanding historical and artistic value' and 'encourage the

recipients of the award to continue their work, where desirable to expand the frontiers of that

work, and most significantly on all situations, to train young people, thereby ensuring the

ongoing transmission of the intangible heritage (20).

This, as mentioned in Kurin's 2004 article, corresponded with Japan's 1950 'Law for

the Protection of Cultural Properties', in which the masters were defined as 'living treasures'

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and part of the 'national resources and assets to be protected, appreciated, utilized and

managed—not for commercial profit, but for the very survival of the civilization' (68). Also,

as a result of the shift from the tangible West to the intangible non-West, UNESCO decided

to adopt the 'Proclamation of Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity'

in 1997, modelling on the World Heritage List (Hafstein 95). The proclamation, in the eyes of

a UNESCO administrator during a discussion on this programme, gave pride to communities

as well as measured out responsibilities to governments whose national heritage was included

in the list, which was more than simply a record of names but 'a plan of action for

safeguarding the proposed items' (Hafstein 97).

In 2000, Diana Taylor and Mexican anthropologist Lourdes Arizpe, who served as

Assistant Director-General for Culture for UNESCO (1994–8), met in New York and further

discussed the possibility of protecting and safeguarding the intangible cultural heritage,

which, to Arizpe, was 'vital' because it is 'rapidly disappearing owing to economic and social

change' (Taylor 91). They began working together, forming a group with others from Taylor's

Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics, and soon after involved UNESCO, which,

at that stage, was working on the then-forthcoming 'Convention for the Safeguarding of the

Intangible Cultural Heritage' (officially abbreviated as ICH thenceforth) and would benefit

from collaboration with performance studies scholars 1, whose expertise was on what was

'normally thought of as “intangible” and “ephemeral”' (Taylor 91, 92). On 17 October 2003,

after a number of meetings that debated mainly the definition of ICH before the orgranisation

could settle on the safeguarding guidelines and bureaucratic aspects (Smeets, 'Keynote

1 According to Taylor, UNESCO commissioned the Hemispheric Institute to write a manual on Festive

Events, Rituals and Social Practices to accompany the 2003 convention, but in the end it was never

published in the form it was written in and presented, causing Taylor to speculate that 'bits and pieces of it

were transfered to other texts, recombined to make other points' (92, 102).

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Speech' 40), the Convention was finally adopted, with a clear statement in its official text that

the Convention is '[r]ecalling UNESCO's programmes relating to the intangible cultural

heritage, in particular the Proclamation of Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of

Humanity' (2).

According to Kurin in his 2004 article, '[n]ot all human cultural activity is defined as

intangible cultural heritage in the Convention' as it 'has as its purview forms of experience

that are aesthetically or conceptually elaborated', focusing on 'ensembles of action that people

name as traditions and regard as meaningful—not mere utilitarian actions' (69). UNESCO

defined ICH in its official text as:

[...] the practices, representations, expressions, knowledge, skills—as well as

the instruments, objects, artefacts and cultural spaces associated therewith—

that communities, groups and, in some cases, individuals recognize as part of

their cultural heritage. This intangible cultural heritage, transmitted from

generation to generation, is constantly recreated by communities and groups in

response to their environment, their interaction with nature and their history,

and provides them with a sense of identity and continuity, thus promoting

respect for cultural diversity and human creativity [...] (2).

Also, to define the ICH more simply, the text of the Convention further separates it into five

domains it generally is manifested in 'oral traditions and expressions, including language as a

vehicle of the intangible cultural heritage', 'performing arts', 'social practices, rituals and

festive events', 'knowledge and practices concerning nature and the universe', and 'traditional

craftsmanship' (2).

The key elements of the ICH can be elucidated further with the the aforementioned

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official definition serving as a starting point. According to the keynote speech at the 2004

Asia-Pacific Cultural Centre for UNESCO (ACCU) Regional Meeting in Osaka by Rieks

Smeets, Chief of UNESCO's Intangible Heritage Section, the lines in the official text stating

that ICH is 'transmitted from generation to generation' and 'is constantly recreated by

communities and groups in response to their environment' demonstrate how this type of

heritage 'has to be traditional', 'has to be living', and 'has to be recognized by communities not

just as theirs, but as important for their identity' (44). This 'living' nature is also reiterated in

UNESCO's brochure, 'What is Intangible Cultural Heritage'?, answering the title question that

it is '[t]raditional, contemporary and living at the same time', and providing cultural groups a

link from the past through the present into their future (4–5). Kurin supports this concept by

stating in his 2004 article that ICH is 'the culture that people practise as part of their daily

lives' and 'often described as the underlying “spirit” of a cultural group' (67), and addresses

the 'traditional' aspect by observing that it led to the ruling out of 'all sorts of things' such as

avant-garde theatre, video games and Bollywood choreography (69). He further observes the

close connection between ICH and its community in his 2007 article, saying that it ' is

articulated with social processes and other aspects of life' and cannot easily be 'isolated from

a larger constellation of lifestyles, nor de-articulated from a broader world of ecological,

economic, political and geographic interactions' (12).

At this stage, one might wonder if, in UNESCO's own Rieks Smeets' words,

'[e]lements of intangible cultural heritage, by virtue of their very nature, have always been

evolving, merging and, sometimes, disappearing' ('Globalization and the Convention' 44),

then are all the efforts in intervening with the globalisation processes and with them cultural

changes not pointless or even contradictory to this type of heritage's inherent feature. Smeets

himself responds to this matter in the same article, remarking that although the process of

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acculturation is not something new, the recent and present changes in the domain of ICH are

seen as more rapid than ever, to the extent that they are 'often felt as traumatic by the

communities and groups concerned', due to the great scale and speed at which globalisation is

developing (44). Also, the very fact that ICH is 'interrelated with the dynamics of life' makes

it much more sensitive to the 'unifying process of globalisation' compared to material heritage

(Wulf 86), and hence much more susceptible to damaging, drastic changes. As stated in the

official text of the Convention itself, UNESCO recognises that the globalisation and social

transformation processes create 'renewed dialogue among communities', but they also give

rise to 'grave threats of deterioration, disappearance and destruction of the intangible cultural

heritage' (1). Considering these strong, negative terms, it is clear that the current cultural

transformations are taken as much more than simply the cultural remodelling process that

goes with the flow of time, even though the inevitability of change is fully acknowledged.

The purposes of the Convention, according to its official text, are 'to safeguard the

intangible cultural heritage', 'to ensure respect for the intangible cultural heritage of the

communities, groups and individuals concerned', 'to raise awareness at the local, national and

international levels of the importance of the intangible cultural heritage, and of ensuring

mutual appreciation thereof', and 'to provide for international cooperation and assistance' (2).

The key purpose of 'safeguarding' is further defined in the Convention text as 'measures

aimed at ensuring the viability of the intangible cultural heritage, including the identifi cation,

documentation, research, preservation, protection, promotion, enhancement, transmission,

particularly through formal and non-formal education, as well as the revitalization of the

various aspects of such heritage' (3). In support of this definition, UNESCO's task, according

to Kurin in his 2004 article, is to make it obligatory for State Parties—countries bound by the

Convention—to 'charge a specific national entity with developing action plans to safeguard

its intangible cultural heritage' (72). At the same time, continues Kurin his 2007 article, the

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Convention has to place ample 'attention and responsibility on the communities whose

cultural traditions are being safeguarded' (15) because of the heritage's particular

interconnection with its surroundings. He further reflects in the same article that, ideally,

community members need to be fully involved in any decision-making procedure, and no

governments, universities or museums can simply assume that they are entitled to define ICH

and undertake its safeguarding because it belongs not to them, but to certain communities

(15–16). After all, as Smeets remarks in 'Globalization and the Convention, it is the

communities who create, recreate and transmit ICH for their identity and sense of continuity,

and it is only sensible to give them a prominent place in the Convention (43).

Safeguarding the 'Living': Issues and Debates

Setting the issue of human rights aside 2, it is the 'living' nature of ICH that adds great

complications to its safeguarding. Hans Van Ginkel, Rector of United Nations University in

Tokyo, states in his article 'Cultural Heritage, Identity Formation and Change' that like living

beings that change physically and mentally over time, culture—in particular, the living

intangible heritage—'evolves constantly, usually as a reaction to exposure to, and interaction

with, other cultures' and will continue to evolve (24). How, then, should we deal with heritage

that is forever-changing cannot simply and easily be restored and put away in museums?

Even though UNESCO experts insist on the necessity of the Convention and the

organisation's intervention in safeguarding the 'living', 'changing' and 'evolving' as mentioned

previously, the Convention text is overall rather generic than specific, reading more like of a

set of idealistic guidelines than actual implementation procedures, especially when it comes

2 For example, although the body is regarded as 'a site in which social identity and political attitudes are

expressed', traditions that involve body mutilation and body-deforming adornment like the Chinese foot

binding and the wearing of neck rings in certain Asian and African cultures are not covered and protected by

the Convention (Ruggles and Silverman 2).

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to the safeguarding measures that are related to communities. 'Education, awareness-raising

and capacity-building', for example, are listed collectively under Article 14 of the text, but

there is not much more to it than the fact that these activities are encouraged (6–7), while

Article 15 states only briefly that the states involved should endeavour to actively engage the

widest possible participation of groups and individuals that 'create, maintain and transmit

such heritage' (7). The safeguarding measures that are most clearly laid out in the Convention

text turn out to be for each State Party to draw and update inventories of ICH present in its

territory (5–6), and documentation (3).

According to Kurin in his 2004 article, the Convention's largest obligation is that ' it

commits national scholars and public servants to the task of composing comprehensive

inventories of intangible cultural heritage ', and although '[t]here was considerable debate

among international experts over the usefulness of inventory making', it was deemed rational

to identify and itemise ICH as 'a prelude to management' (71). Still, in his view from the

same article, the inventories may have value for acknowledging and valorising certain

traditions, but will by themselves hardly save them, and even more ironic, 'tangibilized' them

by reducing them to a list 'atomistically recognized and conceived' (74–75). True, the

inventories, which bore the official result of UNESCO's 'Representative List of the Intangible

Cultural Heritage of Humanity' and 'List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Need of Urgent

Safeguarding' is, according to Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, 'the most visible, least costly, and most

conventional way to “do something”—something symbolic—about neglected communities

and traditions', conferring value to what is listed in consistance with ' the principle that you

cannon protect what you do not value' (57), but it can also be seen as the products of

recontextualising specific cultural practices into national classifications or even removing

them from their contexts and 'freeze them into either superior or representative artifacts to be

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preserved and admire' (Pietrobruno 232).

Similar debates and problems, too, arise alongside the methodology of documentation.

Diana Taylor states in her writing that Mounir Bouchenaki, UNESCO's Assistant Director-

General for Culture, argued that one of the requisite moves was to 'translate intangible

heritage into “materiality”', but for a performance studies scholar like her, documentation is

clearly an action of turning such heritage into 'something they are not', of approaching live

practice only as archival objects (93). In Taylor's eyes, it seems like UNESCO's way to

understand and preserve ICH is much more by converting it into tangible listed objects and

manuals rather than through practice—failing to understand 'liveness' itself by materialising

and objectifying the 'live' (101). Fellow performance studies scholar Kirshenblatt-Gimblett

supports this view by referring to Taylor's distinguished book the Archive and the Repertoire

that this focus on objectification 'confuses archive and repertoire, a distinction that is

particularly important to an understanding of intangible heritage as embodied knowledge and

practice' (60). Always manifested 'in performance, in action, in doing', ICH—the repertoire,

which 'is about embodied knowledge and the social relations for its creation, enactment,

transmission, and reproduction', can only be passed on through practice and this is completely

'different from recording and preserving the repertoire as documentation in the archive'

(Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 60). Kurin, in his 2004 article, gives a clear, simple example on this

matter, observing that '[s]aving songs may not protect the ways of life of their singers, or the

appreciation due by listeners' (75). He further elaborates on this case in his 2007 writing that

ICH is 'not the songs as recorded on sound tapes or in digital form, or their transcriptions', but

'the actual singing of the songs', and concludes that this type of heritage can only be

'preserved in communities whose members practice and manifest its forms'—if it exists only

in the forms of a documentary record whether written, photographic or audiovisual, it is not

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safeguarded (12).

The complications around the objectification of ICH does not rest only at the issue of

documentation but extends even to the people embodying the practices. The pre-existent

'Living Human Treasures' programme continues to function in tandem with the Convention

because, according to UNESCO's official webpage on the project, the decline of 'practitioners

of traditional craftsmanship, music, dance or theatre, and of those who are in position to learn

from them' is one of the biggest threats to the viability of ICH, and ensuring that its bearers

keep on transmitting their knowledge and skills to younger generations is an effective

safeguarding measure. Still, Taylor contends that although the support of living masters may

be productive, 'the bureaucratic transformation' of practitioners into treasures 'turns them into

things and erases the centrality of practice'—becoming what she sees as 'a breathing world

monument, an exemplar of disembodied excellence and universally recognized value, rather

than a transmitter of practice' (94). To further illustrate her argument, Taylor uses the example

of language, stating that 'keeping one Native speaker alive to teach others misses the point',

because the essence of safeguarding such heritage is to sustain a specific environment,

worldview, and way of life and nurtures it, not merely preserving the knowledge of a

linguistic system inscribed in individual bearers (101).

The problematics of the objectification, and next to it, decontextualisation of ICH

patently call for safeguarding measures to ensure its sustainability within the whole social

structure that has yet to be worked out. Because intangible heritage is living culture, it has to

seek to support all the 'conditions necessary for cultural reproduction' and perpetuate the

system such conditions are ascribed to 'as a living entity' (Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 53). The

purpose of safeguarding is not to 'make fossils of the past or past wats of life but to integrate

safely into the present those parts of the past that continue to have meaning for the c urrent

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age and may predictably resonate with meaning for future generations' (Ruggles and

Silverman 7). In fact, the Convention itself already reflects this idea, according to Smeets in

'Globalization and the Convention', by showing that it will 'not be called upon to safeguard

intangible cultural heritage manifestations that are no longer further developed and

transmitted within communities, nor elements that belong to the past' (45). Fellow UNESCO

expert Kurin supports this view by asserting in his 2004 article that practices of the past are

'discarded when they cease to be functionally useful or symbolically meaningful to a

community', and the Convention need not guarantee the survival of the customs, practices,

beliefs and traditions that the community wants to drop because by doing so, a risk of

freezing intangible heritage in disguise of preserving cultural diversity against globalisation

(74). To Van Ginkel, it is hoped that the list of intangible heritage, although problematic as

mentioned, will help attract a broader public attention and bring the practices 'closer to other

current cultural expressions in society, leading to adaptations, alterations, amalgamations',

reinforcing its 'living' nature (24). Still, there is barely, if there can indeed be, any guidance as

to how this should be done and at which point the changes are going too far.

Authenticity is another tricky issue raised in relation to the objectification as well as

the living essence of ICH. In Taylor's view, UNESCO's take on documentation as the most

stable form of transmission suggests that what is becoming 'the past' after the recording

process is somehow more authentic than the present or what the recorded might become in

relation to the living system in the future (99). Kurin, too, expresses his concerns on the issue

in his 2007 article, referring again to the such heritage's unfixed nature. He uses the example

of how an art form might have originated from a peasant’s utilitarian purpose but, over time,

taken into a royal court and practised as an elite, sacred art, only to later be transformed into

elaborate, marketable spectacle, and questions at which point in time should this practice be

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considered authentic (12–13). What, then, should be safeguarded: the practice as it is or as it

was, and as it was when?3 Smeets, on behalf of the organisation, however, defends their

stance by stating that documentation is regarded only as nothing more than 'one or more

specific instances of the manifestations of intangible cultural heritage', are fully aware that

'the concept of authenticity can hardly be applied to intangible heritage', and accepts that this

complexity remains their future task ('Keynote Speech 44). He also further elaborates on his

claim in 'Globalization and the Convention' that if authenticity is indeed applicable to

manifestations of ICH, 'then it should not be interpreted as meaning “historically correct,” but

rather as traditional and evolving at the same time' (45).

Khon, Its Evolution and Conservation: a Thai Case Study

My interest in Thailand—specifically Bangkok, having been born and raised there,

drew me to initially examine the matter cultural safeguarding, especially that of traditional

performing arts against the backdrop of mushrooming department stores, cineplexes, mass-

market clothing retailers, Starbucks, etc. Looking through the UNESCO ICH official website,

however, Thailand is nowhere located in the lists of State Parties. Even more baffling, even

with its rich traditions, Thailand is only one of the few countries in Southeast Asia along with

Burma, a closed country; Singapore, a relatively new country; East Timor, a post-crisis

country; and Brunei) that did not join the 2003 Convention. This led to my e-mail

correspondence with the Culture Unit of UNESCO's Bangkok office, which I sent out on 11

July 2010 and did not get the reply until almost exactly three months later on 8 October.

Attempts to make international phone calls were made but failed miserably. The only

3 I modified this 'as it is' and 'as it was' model from Helen Thomas' concepts of dance reconstruction, in turn

inspired by Lesley Main's 1995 essay on the interpretative potential of modern dance repertoires. For

Thomas, reconstructing a dance as it was is to reproduce a live 'lived experience' (122, 129), while staging a

dance as it is is to allow the influences of the present time into it while still retaining its past essence (139).

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information I could get from UNESCO officer Takahiko Makino was that Bangkok's Culture

Unit gave a presentation on the Convention throughout Thailand as part of public awareness

raising campaign, and in July 2010, organised a consultation meeting in Bangkok on ICH.

However, he continues, the Culture Unit works in collaboration with the Fine Arts

Department (officially abbreviated as FAD) under the Ministry of Culture, which is supposed

to oversee the matters of performing arts—the intangible, as well as tangible heritage, merely

for issues related to artefacts, World Heritage sites, and Underwater Cultural Heritage.

Before the Convention came into existence, Thailand in fact had been rather involved

with the preservation and promotion of ICH. Thailand has been having its own National

Artists Project, paying tribute and giving monetary award to highly gifted and dedicated

artists including traditional performing arts masters since 1985, 11 years even before

UNESCO's 'Living Human Treasures' project was launched (Prasad 13). The country had also

been participating in ACCU's regional seminars and the Joint Development Programme of

the Data Bank on Traditional/Folk Performing Arts in the Asia and the Pacific Starting in

October 1998, which, according to ACCU's 2000 final report, aims to be 'an effective source

of information' UNESCO Member States in the region can share as well as help find suitable

ways to sustain (26). Included in the Data Bank from the same ACCU document are types of

performing arts, responsible institutions—ten and three, respectively, for Thailand—and each

country's background (29, 32). Of all the ten forms Thailand submitted, what clearly stands

out is the masked dance-drama khon—the only classical, as opposed to folk, form and the

only one originated in relation to and developed with the royal court and the capital city.

This fact drove me to ponder more on khon and recalled of my primary and secondary

school years when my male classmates were required to take khon classes and all students to

watch the school's annual khon performance. I remembered being able to follow the story

Baker 18

roughly as different episodes of the Ramakien epic, the only poetic narrative told through

khon, had been taught at many different school levels, but not having much understanding of

the highly codified dance form. Aside from that, I realised khon had since never been part of

my life, leading me to question its viability and sustainability in contemporary metropolitan

Thailand, represented by Bangkok. Going through existing khon literature as my initial

instinct to find out more about it, I discovered the sources are scarce and often repetitive.

Khon by Dhanit Yupho is the only book that traces the form from its ancient up to a period

near present, but is weak in connecting the form to its environment, while volumes that reveal

the relation between art and its social surrounding tends to mention khon lightly here and

there and treat it simply the collective 'Thai traditional performing arts'. There is hardly any

scholarly work done on khon lately, let alone at present—Chulalongkorn University professor

Suraphol Wirunlak published on Thai performing arts during the reign of the current King

Rama IX, but of almost 700 pages, only eight were on khon, and the latest khon production

addressed was staged in 1999.

Inspired by the discourse of 'living' heritage, this dissertation aims to fill in the gap of

khon literature and trace the evolution of the dance form in connection with its environment.

The research also endeavours to touch on khon's current state—how it is being treated in

contemporary metropolitan Thailand with clashes between the more conservative and radical

forms, both in hope to preserve the dance but with contrasting attitudes, which brings about

matters not so different from the problematics of the ICH Convention. With the issues around

change and conservation as the backdrop, the history and evolution of such classical dance

form as it relates to and functions in Thai history and politics on the one hand, and the

challenges of modernisation and globalisation on the other, shall be revealed in the following

chapters.

Baker 19

Chapter Two

Dance, Dance-drama and Theatre of Thailand: An Overview

In the first chapter, I have mentioned that different forms traditional Thai performing

arts are usually treated as a collective, with different forms dropped here and there in the

history and there is hardly any linear outline of the development of a particular form.

Nonetheless, in order to familiarise readers with the form of khon, it is also important to have

an overview of the Thai history and performing arts since many different forms and customs,

especially more traditional ones, are connected and related in various ways, confirming the

discourse of living intangible heritage and its inevitability to evolve with the changing

surroundings discussed in the previous chapter, and functioning as a preparatory introduction

before the readers go more deeply into the form of khon in the next chapters.

Dance (natasin), dance-drama (lakhon) and the art of theatre in Thailand, from their

simple folk and religious origins to the refined, elaborate and ritualistic presentations at the

royal court, have been a vital part in the life stream of the Thai people (Rutnin xiii).

Nevertheless, performing arts scholarship in Thailand is hardly an established field, and

relatively little has been written about dance and theatre in the country, be it traditional,

modern or contemporary. Mattani Mojdara Rutnin, founder of the Department of Drama at

Thammasat University and veteran contemporary theatre director, is so far the only scholar

who has published, in English, about the historical overview and development of Thai

performing arts from the the ancient times to the twentieth century. Hence, she is a reliable,

pioneering authority this chapter is going to rely on mainly. There are some other later

publications in Thai, for example, Wirunlak's research, but most of them, when it comes to

the historical aspect of the performing arts, seem to almost always say the same things and

are compiled from the same sources.

Baker 20

According to Rutnin, the Thai dance, drama and theatre's original ceremonial

functions relating mainly to agriculture, for example, rice planting, harvesting, rain-making,

are still active and alive in both rural and urban areas (xiii). She then gives the example of

how, annually, the Thai king or the crown prince as his representative, still assumes the

important role of Father Rice Planter who distributes the best grain to his people and

performs the Royal Ploughing Ceremony and predicts the weather through the sacred

Brahman's oxen—what it chooses to eat in the offering tray will predict the future conditions

for agriculture (Rutnin xiii). This close relationship between Buddhism, the national religion,

Brahmanic Hinduism and animistic popular cults in ceremonies, traditions and customs, and

their performative expression is largely the reason dance and dance-dramas have become

integrated into people's lifestyles.

Dances and dance-dramas are performed to please the patron gods and the spirits

relating to natural phenomena and agriculture, for instance (Rutnin xiii). The role of these

religions and beliefs are still very active in present-day Thailand. Although Thailand changed

from the lunar calendar to solar calendar in 1988 to synchronise with the Western Gregorian

calendar, years are still counted in the buddha sakkarat or (Buddhist era), which is 543 years

greater than the Anno Domini. Days considered important in the Buddhist myth, for

instance, those of Buddha's birth, enlightenment and death, are public holidays in Thailand,

and so is the Hindu-originated Royal Ploughing Ceremony, an important national event

which is still observed every year up until now. In front of many houses, miniature house-

cum-altars are still set up for household gods and spirits of the land as a common practice.

Rutnin states in her book Dance, Drama and Theatre in Thailand that in the past, and

to a certain level at present, the three important centres of Thai culture and arts have been the

ban (home, village), wat (temple) and wang (palace), which are interrelated and have

Baker 21

influenced one another in the development of the performing arts (xiii). After the 1932

Revolution, from which Thailand adopted constitutional instead of absolute monarchy,

though, the role of the wang was diminished by the Revolutionary Party which took over

court art and controlled them under the central administration and its political policies

(Rutnin xiii). National performing arts have since become instruments of government

propaganda and political campaigns—the most notable being the nationalistic movement

during World War II under the premiership of Field Marshal Phibunsongkram, his anti-

communist campaign in the late 1940s and early 1950s, and that of Premier Sarit Thanarat in

the late 1950s and 1960s (Rutnin xiii).

Unlike other prime ministers before his time, Premier Thanarat restored and promoted

the role of the monarchy to the fullest extent amidst the country's supposedly democratic

stage, ironically for political reasons, as the current King Rama IX especially, of all of the

royal family members, can be used as a pristine figure who can unite the hearts of the people

together and against what was seen as threatening to the institution. Also, as often remarked

by various scholars and supported by Gothom Aryan, former Secretary General of the Asian

Forum for Human Rights and Development, Thanarat 'astutely reversed the trend and revived

the prestige and pageantry of the Monarch', using the monarchy 'to legitimize the newly

established full dictatorship' of his own after having staged a coup, seizing governmental

power from Phibunsongkram (6). Sceptics and true democrats would right away see this

event as providing mutual benefits to both parties—like a deal for one to help the other

ensure their power.

After all, renowned Thai history specialist Chris Baker and Pasuk Phongpaichit note

that on the eve of his coup, Thanarat visited the king and on the day of his coup in 1957

named by the king as 'Defender of the Capital', while Thanarat, on his part, declared that his

Baker 22

group 'firmly holds that the King and Nation are one and indivisible' (176–177). The authors

go on to say that Thanarat even switched the Thai national day from the day of the 1932

Revolution to the king's birthday, and encouraged the expansion of the royal role, supporting

and promoting the royal family's tours to the rural area and their projects for rural

development, while the king himself revived the glittering royal barge procession and stresses

his position as a rightful Buddhist king by making his presentation of Buddha images to

temples and robes to monks all over the country (177). 'With his image of devotion to the

peasantry, constant ceremonial presence, promotion as the centrepiece of national identity,

and increasing longevity', Baker and Phongpaichit continue, 'the king's barami (charisma,

innate authority) steadily increased (237) . This is true up until the period of today at which

the images of the king, and the royal family members along with him, although to a lesser

extent, are protected by a strict lèse majesté law1 and circulated most ubiquitously in people's

daily lives. To quote some examples from Wongsiri:

[...] every morning at 8:00 and 18:00 the national anthem is played on all

government-owned channels (3,5,7,9,11 and TITV), everyday at 20:00 news

about the King and royal family members activities are reported, channel 7

ends their news program with excerpts of His Majesty‘s speech, short

documentaries featuring the King is premiered before the night time series

start, a special song in honour of the King called Pleang Sansern Phra Barami

(Song in Honour to the King and His Power), is played before the screening of

every movie and every theatre or concert performance; everyone stands up to

pay respect to the King. It is important to note that it is not a law for everyone

1 This law is listed under the Thai Penal Code, Article 122, stating that 'Whosoever defames, insults, or

threatens the King, Queen, the heir-apparent or the Regent shall be punished with imprisonment of three to

fifteen years' (qtd. in Wongsiri 32).

Baker 23

to stand, but the standing to pay respect action of Thai can be regarded as one

of the culturally coded behaviours which everyone choose to follow (41).

Throughout centuries of political, economic and social change, performing arts in

Thailand have always been through a continuous process of modernisation and the concern to

appeal to and serve the needs of a new generation of audiences in each period has stimulated

the leaders in dramatic circles to experiment with new ideas and concepts, in order to present

their dramatic works in more effective and attractive ways (Rutnin 1). The trend, as Rutnin

observes, seems to have progressed from performing arts as quasi-religious attribute to the

royal court or as public entertainment to an agent for political and social change (1). For

instance, after the student uprising against the military dictatorship on 14 October 1973,

which resulted in bloodshed and deaths, Rutnin observes, 'Thai classical dance-drama, along

with other arts and literature of aristocrat origins, were attacked by leftists as being products

of a decadent aristocracy and instruments of the monarchy to glorify its own institution and

corrupt the minds of the people' (194).

However, after the army coup d'état on 16 October 1976, generally referred to

euphemistically as the 'reform', Rutnin continues, the military-backed extreme rightist

government of Thanin Kraiwichien (1976–1977) went to great lengths to 'counteract the

leftist movement by promoting cultural activities, such as organising in 1977 a grand nation-

wide festival of Thai dance and drama, sponsoring productions of historical plays, and

publishing books on Thai traditional dance and music' (194). The constant fights and

conflicts between the two camps carry on even until today at intellectual podiums, on

university stages, in the National Theatre, at cultural centres and on public grounds. The

questions addressed vary from the subject of resources—to whom performing arts should

reach our and serve, content and aesthetics—how elite art is seen by the modern generation

Baker 24

sees elite royal art as being stale and petrified, by the radical democrats as being out of touch

and extravagant, and by the traditionalists and royal supporters as heritage, refined taste,

sophistication and national identity that need to be preserved and guarded.

It is noteworthy to mention, though, that in Thailand, cultural issues seem to fade into

insignificance in comparison with other 'grave issues', judging, for instance, from how the

Ministry of Culture's will be given the governmental budget of 5,220.0 million Thai baht,

while the Ministry of Agriculture and Co-opertatives, the Ministry of Defense, and the

Ministry of Education were issued 76,138.4 million, 170,285.0 million, 388,050.3 million

Thai baht respectively, for the fiscal year 2011 (Bureau of the Budget 70–71, 73–74).

Zooming in on Thai Dance-drama

Rutnin divides Thai dance into two major groups: folk dance (rabam phun muang)

and classical dance (natasin)--each of the four regions of Thailand has its own indigenous

folk dances usually associated with agricultural and social activities, and the styles of these

regional dances are distinctive to the localities and local people's temperaments (2). The

northern dance, called fon, is slow and graceful with simple hand, arm and leg movements ,

and accompanied by an ensemble of the gong (khong), drum (klong), Thai oboe (pi) and

cymbals (chap), resembling Burmese, Tibetan and southern Chinese music (Rutnin 2). The

north-eastern dances, called soeng, are faster in step and tempo. Hand and leg movements are

kept simple with the addition of hip-shaking and swaying in quite a sensual manner. The

major instruments accompanying soeng are the north-eastern Thai pipe flute ( khaen), drum

and gong. Sometimes a type of wooden xylophone characteristic to the north-easter region of

Thailand called ponglang is used (Rutnin 2).

The folk dances of central Thailand, where all the former as well as the current capital

cities are located, are more refined, and usually called ram, followed by the names of the

Baker 25

repertoires, such as ram sinuan, ram propkai (Rutnin 2). The southern style of dancing, ram

sat, is closer in origin to Indian and Ceylonese Kandyan dance both in their fast rhythm and

swift hand and leg movements, but localised by the accompaniment of the Thai oboe ( pi), a

pair of drums (klong tuk), gong (mong), a pair of single-faced drums ( thap or thon) and

bamboo stick castanets (krap) (Rutnin 2–3). The movements of the body, arms, hands and

legs are sensual, almost erotic, imitating the natural movements of mating birds and animals

(Rutnin 3). Thai classical dance (natasin) developed from the basic movements in these folk

dances and later incorporated the elaborate hand gestures, arm and leg movements of the

Indian Bharata Natya Shastra, the ancient India treatise on the performing arts, either directly

or through the ancient Mons and Khmers (Rutnin 3). Nevertheless, natasin differs noticeably

from the Indian classical dance and maintains its own national characteristics.

According to Rutnin, Thai dancers, in both folk and classical styles, hold their bodies

straight from the neck to the hips in the vertical axis and move their bodies up and down with

knees bent, stretching to the rhythm of the music, while Indian dancers, on the other hand,

move their bodies often in an S-curve (3). The arms and hands in Thai dancing, Rutnin

continues, are kept in curves, or wong, at different levels—high, medium or low, and the legs

are bent with the knees opening outwards to make an angle with the legs called liam (literally,

angle), and the grace and beauty depends on how well these curves and angles are maintained

in relation and proportion to the whole body (3). The symbolic hand gesture ( mudras) of

Indian dance are simplified to a few basic hand gestures such as the chip, placing the thumb

and index fingers closed together and other fingers open in a fanned manner, and the foot

movement is slower in Thai dancing with the toes mostly curved upwards or kept flat at an

angle with the legs, never pointed as in Indian dance or Western classical ballet or modern

dance (Rutnin 3). The head and neck movements are slight, while the shoulders remain

Baker 26

straight as a result of their being at different angles to the body. The body moves in diagonal

lines to the left and right, and is rarely twisted in curves except in the southern dance-dramas

(nora chatri) (Rutnin 3).

The development of natasin can be traced far back to the Sukhothai period in the

thirteenth and fourteenth centuries (Rutnin 3). The terms rabam (choreographed group dances

for specific functions and occasions), ram (dancing with emphasis on the hand and arm

movements) and ten (dancing with emphasis on the foot and leg movements) altogether are

mentioned in the long poetic dissertation on the three worlds of Buddhist cosmology

Tribhumi Phra Ruang (Tribhumikhata) composed in 1345 by King Lithai of the Sukhothai

period2 (Yupho, Khon 1–2). Rabam, ram and ten are also often used as a collective term,

'rabam-ram-ten ', referring to theatrical entertainment in general as found in the Kot

Monthianban or the Royal Family Laws dating back to the Ayudhaya period, but later

assigned to different forms of dance-drama (Yupho, Khon 2). According to scholars, ten

probably refers to masked dance-drama khon and shadow puppet dance-drama nang, because

these two arts both use feet movements in a martial style, while ram is used with lakhon

because of its stress on the arms and the upper body (Rutnin 3; Yupho, Khon 2–3).

The Thai monarchy, from as far back as the fourteenth century, has played a very

important political, social, economic and cultural role in the development and patronisation of

performing arts, both within the royal court and outside for the enjoyment and education of

the general public—in the past, once regional folk dances and drama were adopted by the

2 The performative characteristics of the people of Siam was also recorded in the previous King Ram

Khamhang's 1293 First Stone Inscription, which mentions certain musical instruments and states 'whoever

wishes to play can play, who wishes to laugh and laugh, who wishes to sing can sing' (Trans. Rutnin 21).

However, modern Thai scholars are still debating if, and some have concluded that, the Inscription is

actually a work of a much later period—possibly even of the 19 th century.

Baker 27

royal court, they became royal prerogatives and taboos for the general public (Rutnin xiv), as

can be seen the example of the lakhon nai or lakhon phuying khong luang (female dance-

drama of the royal court—literally, inner dance-drama). Lakhon nai was the exclusive

possession of the king and was covetously guarded by the institution from the reign of King

Boromakot (1732–1758) of Ayudhaya when a clear demarcation between this form,

performed by ladies of the inner court, and the lakhon nok (literrally, outer dance-drama),

which was performed by men outside the royal court, was noted (Rutnin 45) .

While dramatic poetry for general lakhon has been present before King Boromakot's

time, lakhon nai was only mentioned for the first time in Punowat Kham Chan by Phra

Mahanak, one of the dramatic poems composted during this reign (Rutnin 45), and it is

widely understood that the lakhon nai developed their performing methods from the plebian

lakhon nok. However, despite its debt to the art of the laypeople, once lakhon nai was

established as a court art, no other dance-drama outside the royal palace was allowed to use

females in their performances. Rutnin also believes that during the long reign of King

Boromakot that classical dance and dance-drama fully developed into prototype of the forms

and styles we see today (3). The dance teachers and members of the royal family, who were

responsible for the training of Ayudhaya court dancers, and after the ancient capital's defeat in

the 1767 Burmese war carried the tradition on to the Thonburi period (1767–1782) and then

the Ratanakosin period3 (1782–present), maintaining the royal court's role as the centre of

Thai classical dance and dance-drama (Rutnin 4). From the period of King Boromakot in the

Ayudhaya era, it was not until the reign of King Mongkut, Rama IV (1851–1868), in the

Ratanakosin period that the court's guard over the performing arts became more relaxed and

private troupes were able to train their own female dance-drama performers in the royal court

3 The Ratanakosin period started from when King Buddha Yodfa Chulaloke, Rama I, of the Chakri dynasty

ruled and declared Bangkok the capital city of Thailand as of today.

Baker 28

style (Rutnin xiv). Nevertheless, this tension between the court's ownership and commoner's

art and the issue of ownership still persisted even during that reign when King Mongkut

himself issued a decree in 1855 restricting the use of khon and lakhon costumes, headdresses

and accessories to the royal khon and lakhon nai only, as they are similar to those of the king

and royal family (Rutnin 246) and so should not be worn by performers of a lesser status.

From the old khon and lakhon traditions, many new and modernised forms— lakhon

dukdamban (from lakhon nai and lakhon nok), lakhon rong (Thai operetta), and likay (folk

dance-drama)— during the nineteenth until mid-twentieth centuries (Rutnin 6). While lakhon

dukdamban and lakhon rong were conceived and developed in the courts of King Rama V

and VI by noblemen such as Chao-phraya Thewetwongwiwat and Prince Narathip

Praphanphong with influences from Western operas and musical revues, likay, Puchadapirom

asserts, although revolving around courtly stories, was formulated in the reign of King Rama

V from the mixture of the chanting style of Muslim prayers and the lakhon nok by laypeople

and later developed amongst the same group (46–48, 264).

As the country has become at least officially democratic after the 1932 Revolution,

the authority over the royal dance-drama could not possibly remain directly and only within

the court, but had to be transferred to a governmental organisation of the FAD. Natasin, khon,

lakhon, and traditional music and art are now taught by modern methods from the

elementary school level to the university level—the natural, conventional, life-long method

of teaching has been replaced by set courses and curriculum for each academic year (Rutnin

4). At the more traditional Witthayalai Natasin (College of Dramatic Arts) directly under the

FAD, as opposed to universities that offer dance degrees under the Ministry of Education's

Office of Higher Education Commission, for example, students attend courses in normal

education in the morning, while dance, music and art are taught in the afternoon by teachers

Baker 29

who come from a long line of artists to the royal court of Ayudhaya, Thonburi and

Ratanakosin. The formalisation of traditional dance-drama through the school system allows

anyone who could attend school or pass the College of Dramatic Arts' audition to learn the

form.

Conventionally, though, students of Thai classical dance start their training usually

from the age of between eight and ten with the foundational series of dance movements

called phleng cha (slow movements) and phleng reo (fast movements), explains Rutnin (5).

They repeat the sounds of the taphon, single-faced drum used in giving rhythm, out loud,

Rutnin continues, while exercising in their daily routine: 'cha-chong-cha, thing-chong-thing'

for the phleng cha's slow movements and 'tup-thing-thing' for the phleng reo's fast

movements, then proceed to learn the basic patterns of dance for each character (5).

Traditionally, there were 108 basic movements ( mae tha) in natasin for the characters of

refined male heroes (phra) and refined female heroines (nang), but they have now been

reduced to 68 movements in the major chapter ( mae bot yai), the more advanced syllabus of

classical dance hand and arm movements, and 18–20 movements in the minor chapter ( mae

bot lek), the smaller, basic, foundational syllabus (Rutnin 5). The demon ( yak) and monkey

(ling) characters in khon masked dance-drama have separate chapters consisting of six

patterns of dance movements, although one of monkey chapters is no longer performed at

present, leaving the character with only five (Rutnin 5).

The next requirements in the training of classical dance-drama are dances for specific

actions and occasions in the play or ceremony ( ram na phat) (Rutnin 5). Each type of na phat

is again divided into sub-types for detailed purposes, occasions and characters. The most

basic dance tunes and patterns for these actions, na phat, are walking and going from one

place to another in a slow or moderate tempo (smoe) and fast entrance/exit or other fast

Baker 30

actions such as fighting (choet), which are considered important as they are often used, but

still considered as the 'lower class' of na phat, as the fundamental movements anyone can

learn and need not be highly revered (Rutnin 5; Pramoj 55). There are more elaborate na phat

for special actions such as supernatural actions ( tra nimit), very violent and forceful actions

(kuk phat) and magical or supernatural actions about to happen ( rua), which are deemed as

the 'higher class' naphat, and all revered as sacred and have to be performed with great

respect, concentration and care as if the dancer is in a magical or religious trance (Pramoj 55–

56). Certain na phat are considered very powerful, to the extent that they could cause fatal

accidents or even death to dancers who misbehave, such as the dance of Phra Phirap

performed in the Invocation and Initiation Ceremony of Dancers (Rutnin 5).

Because of the dance tunes and patterns' tight connection with the supernatural and

religion, this belief in the power of na phat is not only a way to tell dancers they must not

offend customs or they will be punished, but also superstition that these movements, along

with the tunes, carry the force that can harm or kill if they are abused or executed by those

underserving. The aforementioned dance of Phra Phirap, above other higher naphats, is

considered most sacred also because of its relation to Hinduism. Although Phra Phirap is the

name of the demon guardian of Shiva's garden in the Ramakien epic, the Thai version of the

Indian epic Ramayana, the name Phirap can also be traced to its Sanskrit root, Bhaivara, a

god of dance, a destructive, monstrous form of the god Shiva, the creator and destroyer,

whose dance gives both life and death to the universe (Pramoj 56–57). Because of this mix-

up, the mask of Phra Phirap, who is only one of the more major demons, is revered as one of

the two most sacred masks in the invocation and initiation ceremony, which will be discussed

more in detail later in this chapter under the customs relating to khon.

In order to perform well in the dance-drama, both khon and lakhon, dancers have to

Baker 31

learn the language of gestures, or phasa tha, through which narratives and dialogues in

classical dance and dance-drama are interpreted, either word by word or phrase by phrase

(Rutnin 5). Apart from the fixed steps with no particular meanings, the expression of feelings

and emotions is also mimed with elaborate hand movements that are assigned meanings, but

ones that require knowledge of the dance or substantial watching experience to understand

(Pramoj 48). For example, the 'going to war' gesture is signified by placing the right arm in a

wong (curve) with the right palm opened, while stretching the left arm outwards and forming

the left hand in a chip. There are also movements that developed from natural human

gestures, like stretching the entire arm outwards to signify the act of going and pulling the

arm back inwards for the act of coming, or crossing two arms in front of the chest to show the

feeling of love (Pramoj 48). Movements as such are without a doubt much more universal

and easier for general spectators to understand, but not considered as aesthetic. Each dancer

has to practice how to best interpret the scripts and the character in their play ( ti bot). Dancers

and actors who succeed in interpreting well are said to 'have smashed the script and character

to pieces' (ti bok taek)4 (Rutnin 6). Though there are strict patterns of movements and

gestures to follow as an artistic skill, dancers can still explore their individual talents and

ingenuity as creative artists (Pramoj 48).

4 In Thai, 'smash' in this sense means something along the lines of 'conquer', perhaps comparable to 'acing the

role' in English.

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Chapter Three

Khon and Its Evolution: From Coronation Ritual to Nation-building Tool

The Literature of Khon

Ramakien (literally, Rama's honour), the Thai, localised version of the ancient Indian

epic written in Sanskrit Ramayana, is the only narrative to be told through the form of khon.

When khon performances are being staged, there is no need to inform the audience what story

is going to be presented since there is simply one. Instead, different performances are marked

by episodes from the Ramakien, which, in its entirety, is the tale about the adventures of the

virtuous king Phra Ram (Rama), one of the god Vishnu's many incarnations, and his monkey

army, featuring mainly their numerous fights against the demon king Thosakan (Ravana) in

order to save the world from calamity. For example, the Nang Loi (literally, Floating Lady)

episode would be focused only on the period when Thosakan orders his niece Benyakai to

disguise herself as Sida (Sita), the wife of Phra Rama whom Thosakan has fallen in love with

and kidnapped. It is Thosakan's plan to have Benyakai in the appearance of Sida feigning

death and floating her seemingly lifeless body along the river all the way to Phra Ram's army

camp, with the hope that the benign king would be fooled, simply give up the battle and

leave.

According to Khon: Thai Masked Dance, Salachalermkrung , published by Thailand's

Crown Property Bureau, the story of Phra Ram had been in existence for centuries as an

Indian folktale before the sage Valmiki wrote his eminent epic Ramayana some two and a

half millennia ago, and became widespread in Southeast Asia under the great Khmer Empire

that had exerted a powerful influence throughout the region since the 9 th century (16). Most

probably this was the result of the travels of Indian merchants and settlers that had migrated

into the area over land and sea, and the migrants would have included educated Brahmin

Baker 33

missionaries who successfully established themselves as teachers, mentors and advisor of the

ruling classes at witnessed by the inscriptions and depictions of the story in the sculptures of

the period, the Crown Property Bureau's book continues (16).

Featured in George Coedès' renowned The Hinduized States of South East Asia , one

of the main characteristic of the Khmer Empire was to be 'founded on the Hindu conception

of royalty' which included the idea of devaraja (literally, divine or godly king) as quoted in

Lawrence Palmer Briggs' review of the book (377, 389). Ramayana, an important part of the

Hindu canon with Rama, the incarnation of Vishnu as the centre of the epic, could readily be

used by the ruling figures as a means to reinforce the concept of divine kingship. The kings

would foster the personification of Rama whose godly version's principle duty in the

pantheon of Hindu gods is to protect the people and ensure their well-being, to ensure the

acceptance of the all powerful nature of absolute kingship and to uphold the monarchal

institution. Being part of the Khmer Empire, Thailand, then Siam, would naturally have been

subjected to the same belief system, as K. P. Landon's Southeast Asia: Crossroad of

Religions, also commented on by Briggs, concludes that the Hinduisation of Siam took place

while the region was part of the Khmer empire (271). Even when the state of Sukhothai

declared independence from Khmer rule during the 14 th century and the Thai kings, then

pious Buddhists, presented themselves as paternal rulers or po khun as opposed to divine

sovereign, the relation between the ruling class and Rama was still not entirely demolished.

The most prominent king of the Sukhothai era was called Ram Khamhang (literally, Rama

demonstrating his power).

In the Ayudhaya period, the kings reverted once again to divine kingship to assert

their absolute power on people. The name of the newly founded capital city at that time bore

a close resemblance to Ayodhya, the city of Rama in the Ramayana as well as Phra Ram in

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the Ramakien1, while the inaugural king of the Ayudhaya era was officially called King

Ramadhibodi I. The same device seems to have been at work again to support the regal might

of King Rama I and his successors of the present royal house of Chakri, a name derived from

the melding of 'chakra' (disk) and 'tri' (trident), two weapons of the four accoutrements

Vishnu carries in his four hands, all of whom are called King Rama in short. The history

towards the end of the Ayudhaya period in the 18 th century was fraught with upheaval due to

internal unrest and instability, and the threat of invasions by hostile expeditionary forces. The

fall of Ayudhaya was a catastrophic event in which the fabric of the Thai society and and its

glorious culture were destroyed. The resurrection of the Thai society by King Taksin in

Thonburi and the subsequent foundation of Bangkok by King Rama I needed ways and

means to reinstate that lost culture—most important was the part of culture which reinforced

absolute power of the monarch as the national leader.

King Taksin was in no way related to the last king of the Ayudhaya by blood who

would became a designated successor, but a soldier who became king because of his success,

as the militaristic leader, in freeing Thailand from the rule of Burma, and interestingly he is

the first king of Siam or Thailand to be clearly recorded to have composed a version of

Ramakien. King Rama I, too, together with building of the new capital city, immediately

commanded the revival of three literary works, the Tripitaka buddhist canons, the Laws of the

Three Seals and the Ramakien: the first served to revive the religious order, the second

enforced the rule of law and the last served to uphold the power of the monarchy.

1Apart from this similarity between Rama's city, Ayodhaya, and Thailand's former capital city before Bangkok,

Ayudhaya, its name during the Sukhothai period, Ayodhaya Sri Ramthep, and even Bangkok's full Thai name

itself, Krung Thep Mahanakhon Amon Rattanakosin Mahinthara Ayudhaya Mahadilok Phop Noppharat

Ratchathani Burirom Udomratchaniwet Mahasathan Amon Piman Awatan Sathit Sakkathattiya Witsanukam

Prasit also in one way or another carries the same word.

Baker 35

Similar to King Taksin's case but even more controversial, King Rama I was not

blood-related to the preceding king, but was the chief soldier who enthroned himself after

having ordered the execution of King Taksin who was allegedly declared demented as a result

of extreme stress and fatigue. In this context, it is easy to understand why King Rama I went

to great efforts to make his version of the Ramakien as comprehensive and complete as

possible.2

Khon's Early Days: From Coronation Ritual to Court-Empowering Entertainment

According to Rutnin, the term khon may have derived the Khmer lakhol or lakhon

khol meaning dance-drama and royal dance drama respectively (7). Mom Ratchawong (title

for the grandchildren of princes) Kukrit Pramoj, former prime minister, writer and an avid

khon dancer himself, also believes that actually both khon and lakhon came from the same

Khmer word lakhol, but were simply assigned different meanings in Thai, the former

referring to a masked dance-drama telling only the story of the Ramakien, and the latter

referring to other kinds of dance-dramas (Pramoj 42).

Dhanit Yupho, former Director General of the FAD from 1956–1988 and lecturer in

the history of Thai literature at Chulalongkorn University agrees and supports this belief with

other officially recorded examples of what Thailand, formerly Siam, has borrowed and

adapted from the Khmers such the Thai alphabets and certain words, suggesting the close

relationship between Siam and Khmer, and the latter's marked influence on the former (30–

31), as, after all, the large area of the present Thailand was part of the Khmer Empire which

2 From the inauguration of Bangkok as the new capital city, the Ramakien could be found in Siamese culture

in a fully integrated manner, linking all forms of the arts and artistic expression from books to dramatic

presentations and from classical dance to mural paintings in different Buddhist temple—most prominently,

in the Emerald Buddha Temple which was constructed alongside the Grand Palace to mark the start of the

Ratanakosin period and King Rama I's reign.

Baker 36

flourished from the 9 th to 13th centuries. However, Yupho also suggests other possibilities of

where the word khon may have originated from.

In Bengali, the drum used by the Vaishnavites (followers of Vaishnavism, a Hindu

tradition distinguished by its worship of the god Vishnu—interestingly the prime god of the

story of Ramayana and Ramakien, both of which featured the life of his incarnation) on

propitious occasions is called khola or khol (Yupho, Khon 25). The Tamil word kolam, which

according to the Cologne Online Tamil Lexicon, can mean 1. beauty and gracefulness, 2.

form, shape, general appearance, 3. ornamentation, or 4. appropriate dress or attire as worn

by actors (in order to signify the gender of characters, Yupho suggests), may also be what

khon is derived from (Khon 26). The Persian khwan, too, as defined in British linguist Francis

Joseph Steingass' dictionary as the narrator (of the surat puppet, originating from India),

maybe another source of the term khon (Yupho, Khon 26–27), which also uses narrators to

speak instead of completely masked performers save for the eyes.

Scholars have debated the origin of khon. According to Rutnin, in the stone

inscription number 8 of the Sukhothai period, the Charuk Khao Sumanakut (Inscription of

Mount Sumanakut), written under the royal patronage of King Lithai (ca. 1347–1376) or

King Maha Thammaracha I (from the Sanskrit maha dharma raja, meaning the great king of

virtues), there is a mention of the word ten, literally meaning to jump or to move with legs

and feet, which is technical term for khon movements (6). This is probably the earliest

evidence of a prototype of khon developed from the martial arts, in which soldiers stamped

their feet in unison to the rhythm of drum beats.

Men of the Kingdom of Siam, like many other nations in the past, were generally

trained in the art of fighting, especially using sticks, swords, spears, batons and pikes. The art

of using these weapons was called collectively krabikrabong (literally, sword-stick) or

Baker 37

swordplay, which was formulated into syllabi for training in the forms of pleng or songs, and

in the Kot Monthianban or the Royal Family Laws of the pre-Ayudhaya period, coupled with

the verb ram or dancing with the emphasis on the hands, arms and the upper body as

mentioned before (Yupho, Khon 4). This connection between martial arts, dance and

performance led Yupho to believe krabikrabong could be another major influence on khon,

and also that rabam weerachai (War Dance) used in khon's fighthing scenes was developed

directly from the showcase of krabikrabong during the Ayudhaya era (Khon 5).

In the chronicles of the Ayudhaya period, there is a description of a martial ritual

called Chak Nak Dukdamban (literally, pulling a naga, or giant serpent), performed at the

coronation of a new king by the god Indra ( Indraphisek), in which military officers and civil

officials dressed and masked as demons ( yak), monkeys (ling), and gods (thewada) in Hindu

mythology, pulled opposite sides of a naga rope in a tug-of-war, re-creating the myth of

churning the Milk Ocean (Kasien Samudra) with the great serpent king, Ananta Nakarat, and

winding around Mount Sumen placed vertically on the back of a giant tortoise, one Vishnu

incarnation, to obtain the ambrosia of eternal life for these heavenly beings (Rutnin 6).

In this myth, the demons were positioned by the cunning gods to be on the side of the

naga's head , and as a result were polluted and weakened by the venomous exhaust from its

mouth. Once the ambrosia was ready, the stronger gods simply took all of the content to share

amongst themselves and kill most demons in a fight. This ritual was likely to have originated

in India and was then transmitted to the Thais through the Khmers (Rutnin 6). At Angkor Wat

and Angkor Thom, constructed in the twelfth-century Khmer kingdom of Suryavarman II

(1113–50), there are stone-sculptured bas-reliefs depicting this ancient rite. The words duk

and damban, according to Mom Ratchawong Kukrit Pramoj, which came from the Khmer:

tuk, meaning water, and taban, meaning churn with great force (42), match perfectly the

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actions in the ritualistic performance.

The tale of the death of demons and eternal lives of the gods, in the view of Sujit

Wongtes, author and editor of various newspapers and the Silpa Watthanatham (literally, arts

and culture) magazine, must have had a major influence on the mentality of the rulers or

kings from the ancient times and so this ritual was created to confirm the might and power of

said rulers and kings in comparison with the eternal gods (196). The Indrapisek and Chak

Nak Dukdamban rituals, containing the same (dressed-up) characters of demons, monkeys

and gods as those in the Ramayana and Ramakien, may have developed into a complete

masked-dance-drama form of khon or may have co-existed with it, commented Prince

Damrong Rajanubhab, half-brother of King Rama V and founder of the modern Thai

education system (Rutnin 7; qtd. in Yupho, Khon 20). Also, in the Ayudhaya chronicles

during the reign of King Prasat Thong (1629–1656), instruments similar to those used in

khon performances were mentioned when describing the Chak Nak Dukdamban ritual

(Yupho, Khon 21).

Performing the story from the Ramakien and embracing the three Hindu Trinity—

Bhrama, Vishnu and Shiva, as well as Phra Pharot Rusi (Bharata Rishi, great master of

dance), all of which came from India, it is also believed that khon may have inherited certain

characteristics from the khatakali, classical dance-drama originated during the seventeenth

century in the present state of Kerala in south-west India (Yupho, Khon 9). The sacred tribute

to the gods prior to the performance, vigorous leg movements, certain mudras and use of

cymbals, gong and drums, for instance, are the shared elements. Another sister art of khon is

nang, or shadow puppet drama. It is known to have been performed as early as the fourteenth

and fifteenth centuries in the late Sukhothai and early Ayudhaya periods and perfected in the

late Ayudhaya period, parallel to khon. Nang, in the later period, is also often called nang yai

Baker 39

(literally, big skin, as the shadow puppets are big in size and made from buffalo skin

perforated into the figures of characters from the Ramakien) so as not to be confused with

nang talung of southern Thailand which employed smaller puppets and earthly stories of

general people.

According to Rutnin, Khon and nang were usually performed together, with the nang

either preceding the khon or running simultaneously with it—this type of performance is also

called nang tit tua khon (shadow play with khon dancers) (7). Some scholars have argued that

khon developed from nang because it was being performed by dancers in more elaborate

patterns, while others have contended that they are off-shoots from the same tree—the

pictorial illustration of dramatic narratives of the Ramakien (Rutnin 7). Performers of both

theatrical forms even adopted the aesthetic qualities from each other to perfect their arts, for

example, khon dancers imitate fighting poses depicted in the exquisitely carved shadow

puppets, while nang puppeteers manipulate their puppets and use the leg and body

movements of khon (Rutnin 7). Both khon performers and nang puppeteers do not speak or

sing any lines as the former's mouthes are totally covered by their masks and the latter are

behind the screen. Also in both forms, the recited and sung narratives, called the khum phak,

are written in the same poetic forms of kavya (kap) and chandra (chan) with dialogues called

cheracha improvised in rai yao, which is regarded most sacred of all Thai poetic forms

(Yupho, Khon 6–7).

The shift of trend from the religious and highly ritualistic Chak Nak Dukdamban to

the more narrative-based, entertainment-inclined nang and khon took place through times, as

something that originated from the sacred Hindu canon like the Ramakien, Wongtes

observed, could not have been made such forms without the influence of economical,

political and social changes (206). Trades and exchanges of goods and knowledge both

Baker 40

eastwards with China and westwards with Portugal—the first Western nation to have been in

contact with Siam and who brought in guns and canons, for instance, during the reign of King

Ramadhibodi II (1491–1539) of the Ayudhaya era, made the elites realise that the actual

stability of a kingdom depends much more on commerce and advanced armaments as

contrasted with staffs and swords than rituals (Wongtes 207–208). As materialistic values

increased, religious or solemn ceremonies became less uptight. Nang's popularity decreased

while that of khon, which can be seen as the more visually satisfying three-dimensional

version of basically the same form, escalated.

During the reign of King Ramadhibodi III (1632–1688) or King Narai, whose name

derived from Narayana, another name for Vishnu, khon was performed as a spectacle in a

theatre space to welcome Simon de la Loubère, the French diplomat who led an embassy to

Siam in 1687 and recorded a brief description of the masked dance-drama in his 1691 major

travelling account Description du Royaume de Siam as follows (my translation):

[...] 'a dance with several entrances, accompanied by the sound of violin and

other instruments. The dancers are masked and armed, and they represent more

of a combat than dance: their movements are elevated, their postures

elaborated, and they do not allow a mix of words [with their movements] even

from time to time. Most of the masks are hideous and represent monstrous

beasts [i.e., monkeys], or species of Devils [i.e., demons]' [...] (148–149) 3.

The description of what the French diplomat correctly transcribed the pronunciation as

3The original French text goes: [...] Celuy qu'il appellent Cône est une danse à plusieurs entrées, au son du

violon & [sic.] de quelques instrumens. Les danseurs son masquez & armez, & représentent plûtost un

combat qu'une danse: & quoy que tout le passe presque en mouvemens élevez & en postures extravagantes,

ils ne laissent pas d'y mêler de temps en temps quelque mot. La plûpart de leurs masques font hideux &

représentent on des bêtes monstreuses, ou des especes de Diables [...].

Baker 41

'Cône', albeit a little distorted through a Western lens, is rather accurate.

Subsequently, at the beginning of the Ratakosin period, even King Rama I wrote in

his version of the Ramakien himself the script was nothing of much substance and meant for

entertainment (qtd. in Eowsriwong 57). It is also worth noting that as a form of entertainment,

albeit a high art, rather than royal ritual, it would have been easier for Ramakien, and along

with it its messages—be it the simple moral lesson of good and evil or something more

political like loyalty to the 'divine ruler', to reach out to people in general. However, one must

remember that casting something as entertainment does not mean it has to lose its function as

a political tool. Connecting the dance form with Ramakien and its aforementioned political

implications, it was in this reign that the literature, through khon, was used very clearly to

manifest the 'rightful' power of the king, and show how the dramatic performance of

Ramakien was closely intertwined with political and social institutions at the highest level

(Rutnin 54). Both Wang Luang (the Royal Palace)—belonging to King Rama I, and Wang Na

(the Palace of the Front)—belonging to the king's younger brother) had their own khon

troupes. In grand celebrations of the new city, the khon troupes of both camps would perform

together, representing opposite armies—the king's troupe that of Phra Ram and the king's

brother's that of Thosakan (Rutnin 53). According to Rutnin, one historical incident was

recorded in 1796, at the commemoration of the ashes of the king's father, of such a

performance that turned into a real gun battle between the khon dancers of the two parties,

and which caused their patrons to be come angry with each other for a lengthy period (Rutnin

53).

Rivalry between the two palaces often cause bitterness between the king and his

brother. The latter got even more resentful in his old age as it became clear to him he had no

chance in the succession to the throne for himself, despite the fact that he had fought by his

Baker 42

brother's side all along before the inauguration of Bangkok (Rutnin 53). The dramatic battles

between Phra Ram and Thosakan, ending always with the defeat of the demon—always

represented by the khon troupe of the king's brother, Rutnin observes, 'spoke clearly, though

symbolically, of the perpetual conflict between the two leaders', with the person of a lesser

status always on the losing side as Thosakan (53).

The Characteristics and Customs of Khon as a Royal Article of Use

As already mentioned, stories performed in khon are taken from the Ramakien. Each

episode has a Buddhist theme of good defeating evil. The favourite climactic scenes are battle

scenes between Phra Ram, the righteous king of Ayodhaya, and Thosakan, the immortal ruler

of Longka, a menace to the universe. It is customary that the performance ends with the

defeat of Thosakan and his allies who promise a revengeful return, which is the next day's

performance (Rutnin 7). Though Thosakan is finally killed in the epic, his death is generally

not presented on stage, for it is believed to cause a stroke of bad luck and fatal accidents to

the dance company. This superstition has become a generally respected rule in all Thai

classical dance-dramas, in a way comparable to how actors in the West would not say the

name Macbeth or quote lines from the play inside theatres to steer clear from misfortune .

Traditionally, khon performances begin with a prelude of 'Chap Ling Hua Kham'

(Catching the Monkeys in the Early Evening), a short episode about a hermit and his two

monkey disciples, one white, one black, signifying good and evil: the acquiscent white

monkey receives all the blessing, while the troublesome black monkey is a nuisance and

finally caught by the white monkey and is punished by the hermit, who later frees him on

probation after long moral lessons (Rutnin 8). The actual show then follows, still with the

theme of good and evil portrayed to the battles of Phra Ram and his monkey soldiers and the

demon king Thosakan. Constant comparisons between the two opposing rulers, their politics,

Baker 43

social and domestic affairs, systems of government, characters and personalities, as well as

their psychological complexities, all of which were originally intended to give political,

social, moral, and religious lessons to the audience are presented throughout the play (Rutnin

8).

Khon dancers are usually trained from the young ages of eight to ten, and are first

divided by their teachers into four categories following the types of characters in the

Ramakien according to their physical appearance—refined male humans or divine beings

(phra, or gods); goddesses, princesses, or refined females ( nang); robust or vigorous demons

(yak); and monkeys (ling)—before they go through years of rigorous training and daily

practice of 'mother' patterns for each type of character as well as acrobatic martial arts for

fighting scenes (Rutnin 9).

Because khon dancers are completely masked save for small holes for the eyes and

breathing, the chorus and narrators, called khon phak, recite the narratives and dialogues in

poetic rhyme for them with the musical accompaniment and 'several dance tunes for special

na phat actions, such as army processions, fighting, flying, walking, sleeping, and

manifesting supernatural power' played by the piphat orchestra consisting of one or two

wooden xylophones (ranad), a Thai oboe (pi), a double-faced drum ( taphon), one or two

circular sets of gongs (khong wong), a pair of small cymbals (ching), and two drums (klong)

(Rutnin 8). The higher na phat tunes and movements, as previously explained, are respected

by the dancers and musicians as sacrosanct, and therefore are performed as rituals by only

dancers who have been through the Invocation and Initiation ceremony. In khon productions,

these sacred na phats, for instance, samer sam la—used to signify short journeys, are

reserved to be executed only by characters of high status such as Thosakan, the demon king,

and his brothers, Phra Ram and his brother Phra Lak (Boonyachai 345). Na phats of the lower

Baker 44

class, on the other hand, can be executed by mundane characters like demon and monkey

soldiers, whose roles can be assumed by dancers in training in their more beginning stage.

The Invocation and Initiation Ceremony is the custom, also regarded as the rite, of

paying homage to the masters of khon, lakhon and the piphat musicians, demonstrating their

profound reverence for their teachers who play an important role in the formation of their

characters. When young, children are reared and trained by their parents, and when they grow

older they receive guidance and instructions from teachers. In Thai society, it is considered a

bound duty of pupils to pay regular homage to their teachers, and artists would have special

homage rites which are usually elaborate. It is also perhaps because khon is an entertainment

developed from something highly sacred that made it require this ceremony to address the

gods, in a way to ask for permission and pay tribute to them (Chomwatthana 122).

Ancient masters made regulations concerning the ceremony which have been

observed until the present day. During the ceremony, the presiding teacher, either of dance-

drama or music, will initiate each pupil who has acquired a certain standard of skill or

competence. Novice dancers of khon and lakhon will be granted initiation only after they

have mastered the slow-tempo and fast-tempo dances and are considered competent to appear

on stage in minor roles such as army officers or ladies-in-waiting. Also, as mentioned before,

as certain naphat tunes and movements are considered specially efficacious or even

consecrated, they are not to be taught until pupils have been duly initiated because it is

believed that teaching uninitiated pupils might bring misfortune to both parties. If any mishap

should result from such practice, it is said to be due to phit kru or 'wronged teachers', or rang

kru or 'power of teachers' (Yupho, Custom 8).

According to Yupho, it is often said that old masters usually guarded their manuscripts

of the rite jealously and could not be easily persuaded to hand down these texts to deserving

Baker 45

pupils—this might have been true in the case of some teachers, but after careful consideration

it might also be because of the possibility that these texts might fall into the hands of

unscrupulous pupils who would use them with dishonest intent ( Custom 4–5). As a result, he

continues, the whole profession would be disgraced and so the old masters had to be very

careful about their choice of pupils to whom they would pass their priceless manuscripts on

to (Custom 5).

According to the tradition, the presiding teacher who leads in the homage and

performs the actual initiation must be a man, as it it believed that the female touch will not

bring success to an initiation, only misfortune will befall both the initiated and initiator

(Yupho, Custom 5). Though tradition approves only male initiators, not all male teachers can

perform the rite. In principle, 'the initiation of new artists is possible of comparison to the

ordination of a new Bhikku [Buddhist monk]': only teachers who have been appointed by

past senior teachers can do so, 'in the same way Bhikkus of old could perform the ordination

ceremony only on authority bequeathed them by elder Theras [or senior monks]' (Yupho,

Custom 4–5). Even though artists have had bequeathed on them the ritual manuscripts, if they

are not specially authorised then they still cannot conduct homage and initiation rites, and in

this case, their manuscripts become objects of reverence and study only (Yupho, Custom 5–

6).

Khon masks, representing different characters in the Ramakien, are worshipped by

dancers and artists as sacred objects possessing supernatural power, which could bring both

fortune and misfortune to the owners or wearers, and the various masks along with lakhon

headgears, collectively called 'teachers' heads', are placed on altars all through the ceremony.

To begin, offerings of baisri—traditional articles of offerings such as rice and flowers

wrapped in banana leaf, liquor, rice, hog's head, duck, chicken, etc, which are placed in front

Baker 46

of the altar (Yupho, Custom 9). The presiding teachers who do the initiation are required to

conduct this solemn rite in the traditional ritual dress of all-white garments, like those of

Brahmans.

When making offerings to teachers of the drama the senior teacher of this art recites

incantations inviting gods of the drama and spirits of departed teachers to come and accept

these offerings. Simultaneously, the piphat ensemble is called on to make 'invitation' tunes—

to gods and spirits, which are repeated at appropriate intervals. Artists who are senior pupils

then life up among them all the vessel containing offerings and perform the 'dance of

offering'. After this dance, the offerings are placed before the altar again. The rite up to this

point must be finished before noon, after which the pupils remove the offerings. This removal

may be accompanied by another ceremonial dance (Yupho, Custom 9–10).

According to Yupho, some old Thai manuscripts he found also describe primary

procedures and order of successive tunes used in the rite. Prior to paying homage to teachers

of khon and lakhon and performing initiation, those involved would express deferential

respect to the taphon drum or the mask of Phra Pharot Rusi, the great master of dance, and

recite the basic Namo formula for starting any Buddhist prayers— namo tassa bhagavato

arahato samma sambuddhassa— thrice, followed by another non-Buddhist incantation with

reference to the gods, also three times (Custom 10). The pupils are then brought to pay their

respects to the musical instruments on the altar table. The music ensemble plays tra

prakhonthap, one of the high na phat tunes, the kuk phat, also a high na phat, then the pupils

make three traditional krabs—prostration with hands on the ground, each to the side of each

ear (Yupho, Custom 10). As Yupho states, the presiding teacher orders the scattering of

popped rice, which is then sprinkled thrice on the musical instruments on the table,

meanwhile the kuk phat tune is play in repeat as the pupils make three more krabs (Custom

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10).

Each pupil then takes a sip of the wash-water from the taphon drum, which is also

used to wet the pupil's hair by the presiding teacher, who would then perform the homage rite

to teachers of the khon and lakhon as described previously (Yupho, Custom 10–11). Before

the initiation rite begins, the piphat ensemble is asked to play the mahachai (literally, grand

victory)4, which is repeated until the end of the initiation (Yupho, Custom 11). There are

many collections of the homage ritual tunes, from which the presiding teacher has the

freedom to choose. Still, it is worth noting that the tunes that are deemed appropriate were

already chosen and formulated by His Majesty the King Rama IV (Yupho, Custom 11).

When the worship and offering are over, the senior teacher of drama and his

counterpart in music sprinkle holy water on each pupil, whose head they encircle with

blessed strands of cotton (Yupho, Custom 13). Besides this, the senior teachers must perform

the initiation rite, which, in the khon and lakhon section, consists of putting Phra Pharot

Rusi's mask, khon masks, crowns and other lakhon headgears that had earlier been put on the

altar—collectively called srisa kru, or teachers' heads—on each pupil for a short moment.

Hence, the ceremony is commonly known as pithi krob (literally, covering ceremony), i.e.

The rite of covering or putting on the masks and headgears the khon and lakhon on pupils'

heads (Yupho, Custom 13).

After this procedure, the senior dramatic teacher leads the pupil in a ritual dance while

the music ensemble plays the tune ram twai mu, a commanded performance dedicated to

gods and spirits of teachers (Yupho, Custom14). Pupils who have been trained as heroes and

heroines dane to slow and fast tempo tunes, while those trained as monkeys dance to krao

4Interestingly, it is the same tune that is used to play in honour of the current royal family members of the lower

rank than the queen—the crown prince and his royal consort, the crown princess, the king and queen's other

daughters, their nieces, and their grandchildren—whenever they officially preside over any event.

Baker 48

nok , and demons to krao nai tunes—each of which is characteristic to each role. Apart from

being the artists' way of showing their reverence for their teachers, this ceremony also gives

senior instructors the chance to observe the result of their training, and thus the pupils' ability

to dance gracefully and correctly according to instructions becomes obvious on this occasion

(Yupho, Custom14).

According to Yupho, 'the fact that all artists spontaneously join in this homage rite

proves that in their hearts they are recalling with gratitude the benefits they have received

from their teachers' (Custom 15). Besides the gods who are supreme masters of the arts,

Yupho continues, teachers of teachers and deceased teachers of teachers should also receive

the artists' worship and homage because the present teachers could in no way be trained

without the above mentioned, as the arts are handed down from generation to generation—to

the present teachers who are capable to carry on the tradition ( Custom15). Though the

departed teachers can show neither approval nor displeasure concerning the behaviour of the

pupils who pay them homage or not, it is considered auspicious for the pupils to show them

respect and gratitude, as reverence for teachers not only serves as the mark of good pupils,

but also shows their their affection for their teachers and their respect for the teachers' virtues

(Yupho, Custom15).

At present, the Initiation and Invocation Ceremony is arranged annually by the FAD

as an inside affair but students from institutions other than ones under the department are also

admitted for initiation. Many senior artists outside this department also join in this annual rite

as it is customary with all artists. According to Yupho, there has even been an interesting

record of an incident which a man in shorts, with mud-spattered body, danced

absentmindedly into the ritual hall and joined in the rite ( Khon 164). It was not until the rite

was over in the afternoon that the man realised his pitiful condition and explained to others he

Baker 49

had been working in his orchard until late in the morning and had forgotten himself—he did

not know how he came to join in this rite (Yupho, Khon 164). However, the crowd soon

learned that this man was a former artist, who lived quite far from where the ceremony was

being held and subconsciously brought himself to the ceremony, though uninvited, as if on a

trance (Yupho, Khon 164). To the khon and lakhon artists, this happening would very well

prove how holy and powerful the ceremony was.

Khon's First Phase of Evolution in the Ratanakosin Period:

From Court-Empowering Entertainment to Counter-imperialism Tool

Going back to the historical aspect, from the early Ratanakosin period to the reign of

King Chulalongkorn, all royal entertainment was under a loosely structured administration

consisting of various departments (krom), namely the Krom Khon in charge of khon luang,

the Krom Hun in charge of puppets, Krom Piphat in charge of the royal Thai orchestra, the

Krom Hok Khamen Ram Khom in charge of acrobatics and the lantern dance, and the Krom

Mahorasop in charge of other games and entertainment (Rutnin 168). The performers of khon

during the reign of King Rama I were originally courtiers, but upon seeing that the vigorous

physical practice of the dance-drama complemented the training of martial arts very well, the

king decided to grant lesser members of the royal family as well as the major authoritative

figures such as governors the permission to set up khon troupes and conduct trainings using

their lookmoo or men under the departments or counties they are in charge of (Yupho, Khon

45). Because of the vigorous activity and its relation to martial arts, sacred rituals and

religion, which were conventionally reserved for men, khon had always been performed

traditionally by an all-male cast, even in the female roles.

Four of the major fives types of khon generally performed during the reigns of King

Rama I to IV were khon klang plang, khon rong nok or khon nang rao, khon na cho, and

Baker 50

khon rong nai. The first, and also the first type of khon to ever be performed, is done klang

plang—literally, in a field—similarly to the Chak Nak Dukdamban ritual, with the usual

episodes focusing on grand battles between the armies of Thosakan and Rama (Yupho, Khon

35, 38). The reason to this is probably to make the most of out a vast open-air plain required

in order to demonstrate the fights between two prodigious royal troops in an elaborate manner

appropriate for both the godly and demon kings' honours and statuses. The second type of

khon is performed on an open stage with a long bamboo rod serving as a bench, with no

singing part but only narration and na phat music as the accompaniment (Rutnin 7; Yupho

39). The third is performed na cho, literally in front of a screen, specifically that of nang—

some say to commemorate the connection between the two art forms, while some believe the

screen was simply left there when all the nang puppeteers were replaced by the dancers

(Rutnin 7; Yupho 40). The fourth, khon rong nai (literally, inner theatre khon, signifying the

inner court), or khon luang (royal khon), is a mixture of the more primitive form of khon with

focus on martial movements and straightforward narration and the lakhon nai female court

dance drama, with graceful movements of the upper body, singing and more polished

narration—the merge was probably derived from the fact that the Ramakien had also been

composed as lakhon scripts by the past kings and sometimes the two forms would mingled in

the same space (Rutnin 7; Yupho 42).

The public, outdoor nature—with or without a stage—of the types of khon in this

period shows clear linkage to the coronation ritual, and supports its function as a court

entertainment that serves to glorify the monarchy before its minions at the same time. The

usage of khon as a royal-political tool was particularly interesting in the hands of King Rama

III. In Thailand, it is a widely known fact taught in schools that when the king was Prince

Jessadabodin, he was not the first in line to the throne because his mother was only the royal

Baker 51

concubine. The son of the queen, who later became King Rama IV, in fact, should have been

the third king of the Chakri dynasty but was driven to monkhood to avoid his older half-

brother's ambitious power and tight connection with the court officials. In his Prince

Jessadabodin days, King Rama III nurtured a khon troupe, but as soon as he was crowned

king dropped it completely because he in fact never liked performing arts and so allowed

other noblemen's troupes to take his dancers freely (Yupho, Khon 57). Judging that khon and

the political implication behind the story of Ramakien had earlier been use to support the

rights to the throne, it can be inferred that Prince Jessadabodin was using the dance form in

this exact fashion. Moreover, having a khon troupe would mean having more close associates

whose attitude towards the king had been formed towards loyalty and sacrifice.

King Mongkut, Rama IV, came to the throne amidst the approaching danger of

Western imperialism, with the examples of the neighbouring states Burma, the Malay

Peninsula and Indochina taken over by the rivalling France and Britain. According to Rutnin,

the king was determined to deal with the West 'not as an inferior but as an equal', and to

'establish Siam on the same part with the great powers of the West' (69), one of his ideas was

to 'propagate an atmosphere of grandeur and pomp to surround the Siamese monarchy in the

eyes if the Thai as well as the foreigners, or more precisely the Westerners, who were

accustomed to looking down on Asian monarchs' by resuscitating many royal customs,

including entertainment (74). Interestingly, however, although khon was a form more closely

connected to the royalties, Rutnin's accounts show clearly that the king's concentration was

placed much more on the revival of lakhon. Her chapter on the Thai performing arts during

the reign of King Rama IV mentioned the royal khon (76), but only the name, as the rest of

the chapter goes on to discuss the fusion of Western styles with the form of lakhon. This,

though, probably makes sense when considering the fact that King Mongkut had spent 27

Baker 52

years as a strict Buddhist monk before ascending to the throne, and khon is very much related

to Hinduism while lakhon is neutral.

King Mongkut were flexible and gave permission to other members of the royal

family and nobles to train in and perform the all-female cast lakhon nai, which, before, were

exclusive to the king, and allowed consorts and Inner court ladies to leave the royal service

and reside outside the Royal Palace (Rutnin 168). This gave opportunity to some dancers of

this royal court drama to train, teach and/or form other troupes, but at the same time made

those who were overly excited about the chance to have their hands on a new form of high art

neglect khon (Yupho, Khon 54). Still, on the positive note, this also allowed the appearance of

women performers in khon productions and the tighter merging of khon and lakhon nai,

which led to further develop khon rong nai and later, during the Fifth reign, the fifth type of

khon, khon chak (literally, scene khon)—a modernised production style of the nineteenth

century performed in a theatre with painted backdrops. This new invention adopted romantic

scenes from lakhon nai and lost many of its original martial characteristics, with new songs

and sung narratives in the lakhon style added to the kham phak scripts (Rutnin 9). The clear

division of of scenes in the manner of the Western spoken theatre was also introduced by

Prince Narisaranuwattiwong, son of King Rama IV and younger brother of King

Chulalongkorn (Rama V), for the first time to khon (Yupho, Khon 43). Khon's move from

outdoors to a proper theatre space can also clearly be seen as a way to add Western-styled

decorum to show the 'civilisation' of both performances and spectators.

During the Fourth reign, the head of the Krom Mahorasop and Krom Hun was Prince

Singhanat-ratchadurong, grandson of King Rama II. He also inherited from his father a khon

and lakhon troupe and continued to train dancers and their performances with the assistance

of the dancers from the royal troupes. In the reign of King Rama V, his son and successor

Baker 53

Chao-phraya Thewetwongwiwat, was appointed by the king to also be in charge of the three

other kroms for royal entertainment: the Krom Khon, the Krom Ram Khom and Krom Piphat

(Rutnin 169). With these five kroms under his supervision, Chao-phraya Thewetwongwiwat

had almost complete control over the administration and activities of royal entertainment,

with the exception of the Inner Court's lakhon luang, which, in this reign did not exist as a

permanent group, but only performed on special occasions (Rutnin 169). At that time,

dancers in the khon luang did not have to report to work every day. They only came for

weekly rehearsals on Thursday, Teacher's Day in Thai tradition, and for performances. They

were even assigned to keep the masks of their often performed characters at home and take

care of them to the extent of repairing them when they are worn out (Yupho, Khon 56–57).

Khon's Second Phase of Evolution in the Ratanakosin Period:

From Counter-imperialism to Nation-building Tool

In terms of general dance-drama, Western influences became apparent towards the

end of King Rama V 'in the development and expansion of new lakhon ram into new forms

as discussed earlier in the chapter under the overview section, and as one can see from how

unkempt the khon luang sector was, the king's focus, still amidst the threat of Western

imperialism, were more on the modernised forms mentioned in the previous chapter.

However, a prominent khon troupe called Khon Samak Len (literally, willing-to-play khon,

though meaning 'amateur' khon as used in the Thai language now) was established by King

Rama VI, who was still the crown prince at that time. The traditional performing arts were

then left in the hands of a lesser monarch. Having returned to Thailand after his years at the

Royal Military Academy Sandhurst and Oxford University, the crown prince agreed that

khon could be the means to show Thailand's civilisation to other countries (Chansuwan 21).

He then asked to 'borrow' skilled khon masters�Khun Rabamphasa, Khun Natakanurak and

Baker 54

Khun Phamnaknatchanikorn 5�from Chao-phraya Tewetwongwiwat to start the training of

his own attendants (Chansuwan 25).

According to one of King Rama VI's biographers, Thawee Muratharakosa, the king,

then the crown prince, with his English public school and university education, was trained

particularly in dealing with the foreign affairs (681). His duties normally included receiving

important guests from abroad and organising welcome parties for them, which usually

featured traditional Thai dance-drama and live music. In his view, this is a way to 'boast' to

the guests Thailand's national culture, as it has been done favourably in other civilised

countries (Muratharakosa 681). Murathakosa also commented that the art of khon was then in

decline and no one, but the crown prince, would dare form new troupes because khon,

requiring a lot of performers and elaborate costumes, would demand costly investments

(681). As for King Rama V, he had to pay his undivided attention to dealing with the British

Empire and France's increasing colonial power, as Thailand served as a buffer state between,

to the right, the countries under the French rule, and to the left and south, those under the rule

of Britain's Queen Victoria.

The Khon Samak Len troupe, although amateur as its name suggests, was trained to

be performed as if it would be a professional company. In the programme note of its

production to mark the opening of the Royal Military Academy on 25 December 1909, the

term 'samak len' and the purpose of the troupe are explained as follows (my translation):

This khon troupe is called Khon Samak Len because the [amateur] performers

5Note the Thai rhyming pattern of the end syllable with the middle syllable of the next word-group linking all

three titles, which the king conferred upon these head dancers: Khun Rabampha sa, Khun Natakanurak and

Khun Phamnaknatchanikorn. These names are not the teachers' real names, but titles bestowed upon them by

the crown prince once he became king. This is very characteristic of names relating to or coming out of the

royal court (Rutnin 170).

Baker 55

are involved in the production on their free will, not because they are ordered or paid.

It is the company's wish to entertain acquaintances and those from the same class, as

well as to remind them that the art of dance does not need to be from the West to be

watchable. We also have that of our own from the ancient times that we should not let

extinct [...] (qtd. in Yupho, Khon 60)6.

The programme goes on to say:

[...] Normally, this troupe would only perform at the [crown prince's] Saranrom

Palace. However, this time, because the military students are of the same

[educated and disciplined] class, and hopefully the future strength of the

nation, khon performers are willing to help entertain the academy's

inauguration. If the audience finds the show fun and realises that Thai

traditional art is something worth watching, the performers will be more

happen than if they receive any wages [...] (qtd. in Yupho, Khon 60–61)7.

Apart from the reasons explained above, Supachai Chansuwan, National Artist

Laureate in performing arts, also observes that this khon training for his attendants was

a way to prepare for his future courtiers once he became king (30). This is especially because

the story of Ramakien revolves around the ruling system and places a high importance on

6The original Thai text goes: โขนโรงน้ี เรียกนามวา โขนสมัครเลน เพราะผูเลนเลนดวยความสมัครเอง ไมใชถูกกะเกณฑหรือเห็นแกสิน

จาง มีความประสงคแตจะใหผูท่ีคุนเคยชอบพอกัน และท่ีเปนคนช้ันเดียวกัน มีความร่ืนเริงและเพ่ือจะไดไมหลงลืมวา ศิลปววิทยาการเลน

เตนรำไมจำเปนจะตองเปนของฝร่ังจึงจะดูได ของโบราณของไทยเรามีอยู ไมควรจะใหเส่ือมสูญไปเสีย [...]

7The original Thai text goes: [...] โขนโรงน้ีไดเคยเลนแตท่ีพระราชวังสราญรมยเปนพ้ืน แตคร้ังน้ีเห็นวาผูที่เปนนักเรียนนายรอยก็เปน

คนช้ันเดียวกันและเปนท่ีหวังอยูวาจะเปนกำลังของชาติเราตอไป พวกโขนจึงมีความเต็มใจมาชวยงานเพ่ือใหเปนการครึกคร้ืนถาแมวาผูที่ดู

รูสึกวาสนุก และแลเห็นอยูวาการเลนอยางไทยแทยังเปนส่ิงท่ีควรดูอยูแลว ผูท่ีออกน้ำพักน้ำแรงเลนใหดูก็จะรูสึกวาไดรับความพอใจย่ิงกวา

ไดสินจางอยางใดๆทั้งส้ิน [...]

Baker 56

loyalty to the King, trust and bravery.

Towards the end of the first year of King Rama VI's reign, the king reorganised the

Krom Mahorasop, and later went to Chao-phraya Tewetwongwiwat to transfer the Krom

Khon and the Royal Pages Orchestra (Krom Piphat Mahatlek), which had been under the

Chao-phraya, to the Krom Mahorasop along with the three aforementioned leading khon

teachers (Rutnin 170). The krom was then given the responsibility to oversee the royal dance

and music, additionally to other entertainment and crafts as the Royal Entertainment

Department. King Rama VI introduced modern politics into his khon productions and trained

his courtiers and close associates in the art as a revival of the ancient military tradition and

also a tool to propagate his political policies. First established, with said head dance teachers

in charge of the khon training, was a special battalion attached to the Wild Tiger Corps—a

national paramilitary oraganisation—called the Kong Thahan Krabi (literally, Monkey

Solider Troop), consisting of officials in the Krom Mahorasop (Chansuwan 80; Rutnin 170).

Its name referred clearly to the monkey army of Phra Ram in the Ramakien—the choice was

intentional, according to Chansuwan in his interview.

King Rama VI's emphasis on the Thai-ness of khon counter to the West, as shown in

the programme note—something beyond how the form was used simply as an example to

show the West that Siam was a civilised country with rich traditions—as well as the

fabricated connection between a national paramilitary corps and the royally glorifying dance

clearly pointed towards khon's shift in function, now as a nation-building tool. The ideas of

nation, nationality and national identity were adopted from European models previously

during the reign of King Rama V when Siam was remade as a nation-state (Baker and

Phongpaichit 47). The use of Phratet Thai (the country of Thai) instead of Siam, according to

Baker and Phongpaichit, emerged in different treaties from 1902 on, modelling after the

Baker 57

European concept that 'a nation was the political expression of “race”', and this was followed

by Prince Damrong Rajanubhab's new take on historical writing which focused on the

national character of the Thai (63–64, 74).

One big difference between the concept of the European and Thai nation-state,

however, was the emphasis on the monarchy. King Rama V stated in 1904 that 'the king was

the embodiment of the nation', and the Thai nation 'was conceived, not as an expression of its

people and all their variety, but as a mystical unity symbolised by the ruler—an absolutist

nation' (Baker and Phongpaichit 77, 80). Quoting historian Davisakd Puaksom, Baker and

Phongpaichit observed that nationalism and royalism in Thailand were synonyms and 'loyalty

to the king is identical with loving the nation because the king is the representative of the

nation', and further commenting on the statement that the duty of the ordinary people seemed

'only to be unified, obedient, and grateful, to the point of self-sacrifice' (107). This concept

got intensified in the period of King Rama VI when, in 1917, 'a new tricolour national flag

was designed for a Thai contingent sent to fight on the Allied side in Europe' with the king

noting himself that the blue, white, and red not only matched the colours used in other Allied

flags, but also represented his nationalist trinity of Nation (red for blood), Religion (white for

purity) and King (royal blue) (Baker and Phongpaichit 107).

Shifting back to King Rama VI's khon-related mission, since the Monkey Solider

Troop was the king's favourite, those who wished their children to be in the royal service

close to the person of the king enlisted them in the battalion, leading to the king setting up a

special school under his royal patronage for sons of officials and middle-class families to

receive free formal education as well as military and ultimately khon training (Rutnin 170).

The new Rongrian Thahan Krabi Luang (literally, the Royal School of Monkey Soldiers) was

the first ever institution that offered formal khon training, and when the Wild Tiger Corps was

Baker 58

reshaped as the Krom Sua Pa Phran Luang Raksa Phra-ong (Department of Wild Tigers

Royal Scouts and Royal Guards), the king promoted the school to Rongrian Phran Luang

(School of Royal Scouts) under royal patronage (Rutnin 170). According to Rutnin, there

were initially about one hundred pupils, thoroughly selected from people of many groups and

types, and no longer just sons of the noblemen or the middle-class family. They were

subjected to six years of formal education in ordinary subjects and could pursue their artistic

interest by receiving further training in music and classical dance drama (170).

Under direct royal support, the children receive free education, meals, lodging,

textbooks, clothing, medical treatment and school equipment, and like the system of an

English public school where the king himself was educated, were all boarders and

accommodated in four different houses close to the school situated in Suan Misakawan in

Dusit Palace where the Rong Khon Luang (literally, royal khon theatre) was also located.

(Rutnin 170). Later, the king's preference for khon was further confirmed when he re-

subjected the Royal Entertainment Department to the Krom Mahatlek (Department of Royal

Pages) under direct control and command of the king instead of the Ministry of Royal Palace

which took care of more generic courtly duties (Rutnin 171). Under the Royal Entertainment

Department, as well as the close watch of King Rama VI, another khon troupe, Khon

Bandasak (literally, title khon) was established in a way as the evolved version of Khon

Samak Len to keep up with King Rama VI's growth from status of the crown prince to the

rightful king. The reason of the name of the troupe was because the king would offer

bandasak, or special titles—the three aforementioned leading teachers are good examples, to

the courtiers involved in his productions (Yupho, Khon 68), again showing that the khon

section of the Royal Entertainment Department and the Khon Bandasak troupe were clearly

the king's favourites.

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Not only was King Rama VI involved with these structures as an authoritative figure,

but he also took part in them personally and intimately. As stated in Mom Luang Pin

Malakul's account, once, while observing the rehearsal of the Nang Loi episode of khon, the

king disliked a monkey character's downwards hand gestures that had to go with the low-

ending tone of a phrase of the kham phak (narration), and so decided to simply altered both

the movements and the words to what he felt looked and sounded more beautiful (28). Apart

from that, the king also changed the make-up style of the refined female characters, who,

then, only had to wear head gears instead of full masks. In the olden days, the faces of these

female characters would be caked in white powder, but the king instead opted for Western

realistic make-up that enhances the colours of the human flesh and even did the first face

himself (Malakul 79). Moreover, according to Siri Pothong's book on King Rama VI's royal

court and the Wild Tiger Corps, the king himself also enjoyed functioing as the khon narrator

from time to time (225).

With the setting of Rongrian Phran Luang, attached to the Wild Tiger Corps and the

Royal Entertainment Department, the reorganisation of the Department, and the

establishment of Khon Samak Len and Khon Bandasak with royal pages and court officials as

members, it is clear the king purposefully centralised all royal entertainment and dramatic

activities around himself and 'his people' in order to use them, not only for his own pleasure

and glorification. His intention was more to implement, instruct and disseminate his political

schemes and policies and create amongst close associates a strong sense of loyalty to the

throne, patriotism and group spirit, seen as vital to the unity of the country (Rutnin 171). With

the origin of the school referring to the monkey soldiers, the students—of a broader range not

simply the elites—were clearly casted as Phra Ram's soldiers—King Rama VI's soliders, and

by receiving the particular education so tightly connected with loyalty to and sacrifice for the

Baker 60

king that had been with the Ramakien and khon for centuries, these attitudes were inculcated

in them from a very young age. With the novel concept of Thai royalist nationalism, a new

generation of Thai citizens were moulded to not only honour their king for his righteousness

and authority, but also hold him, Thai-ness and the nation as one and ready to go on building

the unique Thai absolutist nation. Thus, khon developed a new political role in modern Thai

society.

Baker 61

Chapter Four

Khon at Its Modern Turning Point: the Early Struggle to Conserve and Carry On

Khon during the Seventh Reign: A Shaky Existence

When King Rama VI passed away on 25 November 1925, the art of khon have come

to a deterioration—not only in terms of the big picture of the form, but also the artists' spirits.

According to Yupho's account, a courtier in the Royal Entertainment Department admitted

feeling as if his own father, he head of the family, had died, and said he believed that other

courtiers would have felt the same (Khon 72). This was especially because only a few days

after the news of King Rama VI's death, it was rumoured that the Royal Entertainment

Department would soon be disbanded (Yupho, Khon 72). At the time, courtiers in the krom

were preparing to leave the residents conferred to them by King Rama VI, and those who did

not have any relatives outside the palace area would have to struggle to find accommodation

with the overall atmosphere of ban taek saraek khad (literally, 'broken house [and] snapped

rattan carrying rack'), a Thai idiom referring to familial turmoil (Yupho, Khon 72). Khon and

lakhon props were neglected, and as a result, left to rot or stolen. Another courtier in the

Royal Entertainment Department recounted for Yupho a disheartening event of himself

witnessing a group of boys kicking the carefully crafted head of a royal puppet figure around

as a football, but could do nothing to stop as he felt too melancholic and powerless ( Khon

73).

On 8 February 1926, during the Seventh reign, a meeting regarding the future of the

Royal Entertainment Department was held between the recently enthroned king and the high-

ranked officials. King Rama VII mentioned that the Royal Entertainment Department was a

big department under the Department of Royal Pages, and realised that it could only be right

to conserve the dance forms, which were regarded as the nation's high art (Yupho 73). Having

Baker 62

said that, however, after the late King Rama VI's extravagant expenses that earlier went to the

Phran Luang School, the Wild Tiger Corps, the Royal Entertainment Department and its khon

productions under the Khon Bandasak troupe, as well as personally to artists and those

involved with these sectors as rewards, there was ironically not enough money left in the

national treasury to keep the Royal Entertainment Department in operation (Yupho, Khon 73).

The Phran Luang School, especially, was particularly costly because the students of the

school did not only get free education, but were also given stipends for school uniform, food

and accommodation, as well as extra money for the performances they participated in

(Suntharanont 322).

King Rama VII and his officials thus decided to opt for the dissolution of the

Department, and, under it, the Phran Luang School and the Khon Bandasak troupe. Khon and

lakhon props were transferred to the care of the National Museum, whose governing body

was given the rights to make selections of what to keep and what to put to auction (Yupho,

Khon 73). The classical Thai orchestra or pi phat and the Western music unit, however, were

retained within royal court, perhaps due to the obvious fact that musical bands were less

expensive to maintain (Yupho, Khon 73). Yet, it is worth noting that King Rama VI,

according to maestro Phra Chen Duriyang's account, was an adept musician himself (qtd. in

Chaisuwan 227). This could probably be another reason that influenced the king's verdict on

what type of performing arts to continue supporting.

On 24 July 1926, roughly five months after the decision to dismember the Krom

Mahorasop, the Department, along with the Department of Royal Pages, were merged into

the Ministry of the Royal Palace. The only courtiers from the Royal Entertainment

Department who were transferred to the Krasuang Wang were pi phat and Western musicians,

while the courtiers from the khon section were all dismissed (Suntharanont 322). However,

Baker 63

Chao-phraya Woraphongphiphat, then the head of the Ministry of Royal Palace, fearing that

the succession and transmission of khon would simply be discontinued, decided to solve the

problem at hand by cunningly transferring some of the talented khon artists to some other

unrelated position within the Ministry and reducing their payment so that at least they could

be provided for by and thus kept close to the royal court (Suntharanont 322). Some khon

dancers even had to work as royal police officers (Chansuwan 228). Rather comically,

though, after having taken five months for the decision to terminate the Royal Entertainment

Department to materialise, it also took another five months for the royal palace to realise that

the art of dance was actually still needed for courtly affairs. At the end of year 1926, King

Rama VI asked Chao-phraya Woraphongphiphat to resurrect the Royal Entertainment

Department, but in a smaller scale as the Kong Mahorasop (the Royal Entertainment

Division)—kong meaning 'division', is a subset of 'department' in the Thai governmental

system (Chansuwan 228). Khun Natakanurak, one of the three leader teachers who had been

working closely with King Rama VI since his Khon Samaklen days, and had by that time

been promoted to the higher rank of Phraya Natakanurak, was re-hired as the head of pi phat

and khon sections (Suntharanont 322).

The specific event that urged the re-establishment of the sector that took care of royal

entertainment was interestingly the French governor of Indo-China's visit to Bangkok in

1927. Mom Chao Ying Poonpismai Diskul, daughter of Prince Damrong Rajanubhab states in

her account on the visit that the French governor was so pleased with the lakhon staged in his

welcome party that he, when given the chance to meet the king afterwards, he praised the

show tremendously before His Majesty (qtd. in Chansuwan 229). This roused the king to

demand for a restage of the show at his royal palace, and after having seen the performance,

he then expressed his royal command to have Chao-phraya Woraphongphiphat, the Minister

Baker 64

of Royal Palace, call Phraya and Khunying Natakanurak back to serve in the Ministry as the

lakhon luang trainers (qtd. in Chansuwan 229). From this, it seems as if an external force

from the West played an important role in the resurrection of traditional performing arts in the

Seventh reign. At least this particular incident shows quite clearly that the traditional Thai art

of dance was used to define the country's identity and civilisation, or at least Thailand's

distinct characteristics against the backdrop of other colonies in the region, as well as the

West.

Another notable event after the reinstallation of the Royal Entertainment Division was

the Invocation and Initiation Ceremony at the balcony of the Emerald Buddha Temple,

Bangkok's supreme temple adjacent to the Grand Palace. To celebrate King Rama VII's royal

elephant, a khon performance was commissioned. However, Phraya Natakanurak who was

supposed to perform the na phat phra phirap, the highest of all the high na phats, had an

accident, broke his arm, and even with an injury, he still had to ask for the king's permission

before he could pass the most sacred na phat on to Rongphakdee, a younger substitute dancer

in order for him to be qualified to carry on this royal duty. (qtd. in Suntharanont 330). This

incident clearly shows how closely connected khon was to the monarchy, even at the period

when the royal entertainment sector was not at its strongest. During that year, too, because of

the lack of the younger generation of artists, the Royal Entertainment Division started

admitting students for khon, lakhon and music training again, but unlike the Phran Luang

School, no formal education nor ordinary subjects—as opposed to performing arts subjects—

were offered (Suntharanont 322). Also, the training was still very much connected to the

court, as students in the characters of the refined humans phra and nang were sent for

practices at the Suan Kularb Palace, those in the roles of monkeys and demons were sent to

the residence of Chao-phraya Woraphongphiphat himself, and female students to a school

Baker 65

situated at the rear of the Royal Palace (Chansuwan 230).

Krom Silpakorn, the FAD, which was established on 27 March 1911 during the Sixth

reign to oversee duties involving visual arts, crafts and museums under the Ministry of Royal

Palace (Chansuwan 232), too, was affected by King Rama VI's budget cut. On 9 June 1926,

the Department was taken away its position as a department merged into the Royal Council 1

under the name Silpakorn Sathan (Wirunlak, Evolution of Thai Theatre 313). Nevertheless,

after the absolute monarchy was replaced by a constitutional monarchy in 1932, the new

government re-established the FAD under the Ministry of Education and transferred to it the

duties of the Royal Council (Yupho, Preface III), which, soon after, was renamed by the

militaristic government of Phibunsongkram as the Royal Institute (Sivaraksa 20) .

In 1933, the batch of students trained under the former Royal Entertainment Division

had their first chance to perform in front of the Anantasamakom Throne Hall (Suntharanont

323). The event was particularly interesting in terms of the art form, time, and space. The

construction of the Anantasamakom Throne Hall was initiated by King Rama V and carried

on by King Rama VI after his father's death. After the 1932 revolution, though, the Throne

Hall was converted to Thailand's first House of Parliament. The drastic switch of the

building's purpose, from serving a single divine ruler to serving the government—the public,

could convincingly be read as the government's political statement. Having a former court art

most related to the monarchy like khon staged against the background of the old building

with a new function, too, clearly echoed the country's change. Together with ith the power

shift from the monarchy to national government, to use Yupho's statement, it was from then

on that the duty to support the Thai art of music and dance, which was once the royal article

1 The Royal Council was a creation of Prince Damrong Rajanubhab in the style of l'Académie Fran çaise. The

Council's aim was to 'shape national language, literature, and for the conservation of traditional arts,

archeological sites and national treasures' (Sivaraksa 15).

Baker 66

of use reserved for the nobility, was transferred to the hands of the public and the government

(Preface III).

In 1934, the recently re-established FAD set up the Rongrian Nataduriyangkasat

(School of Dance and Music) to comply with the royal decree drafted by Chao-phraya

Thammasak Montri who ran the Ministry of Education between 1932–1933, requiring an

official arts school under the direction of the Ministry (Chansuwan 235). When the school

first operated on 17 May, it did not even have its own buildings and had to rely on those

within the National Museum area—it was not until three years later that the school was given

the money to construct its own space within the vicinity of the Royal Palace (Chansuwan

240). In 1935, the arts of dance and music, the royal khon troupe included, were transferred

from the Ministry of the Royal Palace to the FAD, under the administration of the Ministry of

Education (Yupho, Khon 74). On 2 May of the same year, the Nataduriyangkasat School was

merged into the newly established visual arts school and became the Dance and Music

Section under the Silpakorn School with the main aim to fix the negative attitude towards

performing artists, whom, once taken outside of the royal court setting, were regarded as

people of a frivolous profession (qtd. in Chansuwan 246). In order to do that, the school

required the students to take academic subjects double the time of performing arts classes,

and focused on training them to become formal teachers so that they could work in civil

service (Chansuwan 246–247). At this point in time, we can see that traditional Thai

performing arts were placed clearly in the educational rather than artistic track.

Khon, Standardisation and its Transformation into National, Classical Art

The school, however, did not offer formal khon training as in the earlier days of

Nataduriyangkasat School, even though it sported the same title 'Silpakorn' as the governing

FAD, to which khon artists from the Ministry of Royal Palace were transferred (Yupho, Khon

Baker 67

75). Khon, at this stage, was greatly affected by the disruption of the monarchical support

system it had been under for centuries, confirming the crucial linkage between practice and

its environment within the ICH discourse. Khon artists who were transfered to the FAD from

the Ministry of Royal Palace could only teach rabam, ram and fon instead of using the skills

they had been acquiring throughout their Phran Luang School and Royal Entertainment

Department years. Because no new khon artists were produced at the time, the older

generation of dancers were recycled time after time whenever khon performances were

demanded for government service (Chansuwan 252).

During Phibunsongkram's first premiership from 1938–1944, which lasted throughout

the reign of King Rama VIII (1935–1946), the Prime Minister himself issued Rathaniyom

(literally, stateism) or state prescriptions, which worked as a cultural reform. His goal was to

move Thailand towards national modernity and put it on the same level as the great nations of

the West by, at least in his view, 'improving' Thai culture according to the Western standard

against the backdrop of the Second World War. Concerning the performing arts, the

Phibunsongkram government issued two royal decrees, 'the Royal Decree Determining the

Culture Concerning Theatre Arts' in 1942, and in 1943, the other concerning music, singing

and vocal narration (Puchadapirom 54). The Theatre Arts Decree covered the policy to

orientate all kinds of theatre arts in accordance with what the government called 'the nation's

fine customs', determining which artist are of adequate skills and which shows are acceptable

and of quality according to the FAD's standards (Puchadapirom 54). Placing decorum at the

centre of the so-called standards to reinforce Thailand's image as a civilised nation, khon,

with its courtly origin, clearly written scripts and refined movements were not affected by the

1942 Decree in terms of its form (Puchadapirom 54).

Ironically, however, because khon was already considered a proper form, it was

Baker 68

virtually left untouched where it previously was, and in tandem with WWII, even though

there were some institutional changes, they were not very productive. In 1942, the Visual

Arts Section of the Silpakorn School was transfered to the newly established Silpakorn

University (Chansuwan 252), leaving the Dance and Music Section out of the higher

education system. As a result, the FAD could revamp the left out Section into the Rongrian

Sangeetsilp (School of Performing Arts) under its Office of Performing Arts (Yupho, Khon

75). However, not much result could be produced, and on 29 November 1944 the school

building was bombed, causing the teaching and learning process to come to a halt

(Chansuwan 252). Also, during the war period, elderly artists from the Sixth reign either

passed away or were too weak to perform, and of all remaining artists of around 10 people,

fewer than the number could really execute their movements onstage (Yupho, Khon 76).

Although the transfer of khon business and artists finally to the FAD helped carry on the old

traditions and retain the refined style of the royal palace, the new Department as a whole was

still weak and with the number of working artists this small, khon could only be staged as

miscellaneous small episodes and not in its full form and grandeur.

By the end of the War, the number of functioning khon dancers in the FAD decreased

frighteningly to only four or five (Puchadapirom 86), and as a result of the absence of the

new generation of artists to continue the khon tradition, Khuang Abhaiwongse, who ran the

cabinet from 1944–1945 proposed for the School of Performing Arts to offer khon training,

following King Rama VI's model (Chansuwan 253). This initiation was materialised when

the School changed its name to the Rongrian Nattasin (School of Dance and Music) and first

accepted 61 male students on 8 December 1945 for khon training with artists from the former

Royal Entertainment Department as their teachers (Chansuwan 258). Luang Wilatwong-

ngam, for example, was transferred back from the Royal Police Department to the FAD, and

Baker 69

also taught at the School as the successor of Phraya Natakanurak in conducting the

Invocation and Initiation Ceremony for students (Suntharanont 415).

The government of the former Prime Minister Khuang Abhaiwongse also decided to

formalise the promotion of classical performing arts, entrusting the task to Phra-ong Chao

(Prince) Bhanupan Yugala who came to work in the FAD, under the direction of Phraya

Anuman Rajadhon (Yupho, Preface IV). Titled 'the Project for Improving Theatre Arts and

Music to Promote and Maintain the National Arts', the aim of the project, which finally came

into operation in 1946, was, according to the 'Ministry of Education's Record 19/23' , to

'revive these fields for them to forever remain with their nation' (qtd. in Puchadapirom 86).

Although 'improving' was one of the key words in the title of the project, its prime concern

was on the maintenance and continuation of high arts, especially those of the royal court,

which the FAD held on to firmly. According to Puchadapirom, Assistant Professor of Thai

Music, Chulalongkorn University, the official reasoning for the 'necessity' of this focus was

that such high arts had been developed in different social settings through times, and with the

support from the elite, it had reached its peak, reached the 'classical status' and become the

their nation's unique forms (91). It is rather ironic that the government fully acknowledged

the evolving nature of this living intangible art, but failed to see the possibility of further

significant changes once the form had been transferred into their hands.

'The Project for Improving Theatre Arts and Music', which carried on until the years

of Phibunsongkram's second regime (1948–1957), had three important elements: reviving and

improving; creating and promoting; and lastly, standardising (Puchadapirom 93). It was at

this time that a clear distinction between contemporary arts and traditional arts was made, as

elucidated by Phraya Anuman Rajadhon, the Director General of the FAD (my translation) in

the 'Ministry of Education's Record 2/25':

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... it is necessary to separate arts into contemporary arts and traditional arts.

Contemporary arts are about developing and promoting arts to progress with

the environment and the nation's happenings. Just like the dressing style, the

way of living, thoughts, opinions, etc., contemporary arts cannot be something

of the past. At the same time, although the changes are unstoppable, the

traditional Thai essence has to remain—contemporary arts are the adaptation of

traditional art to match society's advancement. Traditional arts, on the other

hand, are already beyond their time, but required to be conserved because they

have become characteristic to their nation. The arts of a nation is like the

people of that nation, and once they have flourished to their peak, they turn

into classical arts. If they are not well maintained, they will only deteriorate

and die out, but they can also not be further developed because they have

already become the nation's standard arts—the stereotype. Hence, it is

necessary to maintain both pathways. Contemporary arts are about

development, while traditional arts are about the conservation of the old style

as the model and inspiration of contemporary arts (qtd. in Puchadapirom 91) 2.

2 The original Thai text goes: ... จำเปนตองแยกออกเปนศิลปะปจจุบันและศิลปะสืบตอของชาติ (Traditional Art) ศิลปะ

ปจจุบันเปนเร่ืองบำรุงสงเสริมศิลปะใหเจริญกาวหนาไปตามส่ิงแวดลอม และเหตุการณแหงความเปนอยูของชาติ เปนอยางเดียวกับการแตง

ตัว การกินอยูเหยาเรือน ความคิดความเห็นและอ่ืนๆ ซ่ึงจะเหมือนสมัยกอนไมได แตถึวจะเปล่ียนไป เหน่ียวร้ังไวไมไดก็ไมทิ้งลักษณะเดิม

และยังเปนชาติไทยอยู คือดัดแปลงแกไขศิลปะสืบตอใหเขากับสมัยความกาวหนา สวนศิลปะสืบตอเปนเปนศิลปะที่ลวงสมัยแลว แตตอง

รักษาไวไมใหสูญไป เพราะเปนลักษณะประจำชาติ ศิลปะไมวาของชาติใดก็เหมือนกับคนผูเปนเจาของศิลปะ คือเม่ือมีความเจริญงอกงามเต็ม

ท่ีแลว ก็ถึงข้ัน Classic ถาไมบำรุงรักษาไวใหดี ก็มีแตเส่ือมและสูญไป แตจะใหกาวหนาตอไปอีกน้ันไมได เพราะมีลักษณะถึงขีดสูงสุด

รัดตัว (Stereotype) แลว เหตุน้ีการบำรุงจึงตองบำรุงทั้งสองทางควบคูกันไป ในการบำรุงศิลปะปจจุบัน เปนเร่ืองทำใหศิลปะกาวหนา

สวนการบำรุงศิลปะสืบตอเปนเร่ืองรักษาศิลปะแบบวิธี (Style) ของเกาไวใหคงอยูเพ่ือเปนแบบอยางและเปนเคร่ืองบันดาลใจ

Baker 71

This statement confirms that even though the FAD's goal was to work with both tracks of the

arts, an emphasis was placed on the traditional, which was made a prerequisite for

contemporary arts in this context. It is also interesting to see how the Department totally

neglected the connection between the concepts of contemporary and the nation, as if a nation

could only be characterised by past traditions. Also presented clearly here is the strong belief

that traditional needs to be frozen for the purposes of authenticity and maintaining a certain

national standard, going totally against the nature of performance practice as something

unfixed and recalling the ICH problematics.

Inscribed in the record was Phra-ong Chao Bhanupan Yugala's statement supporting

why it was the FAD's chief duty to maintain traditional Thai arts (my translation):

Before Western music3 became widespread, traditional Thai dance-drama and

music, for many hundreds of years, have been popular and highly regarded as

the arts that had been growing side by side with the Thai nation. These two

forms [dance-drama and music] flourished no less than the arts of other

nations, because our traditional arts were beautiful, exquisite and unique [...]

Arts specialists and lovers, regardless of their race and culture, when seeing

and hearing our traditional arts, would hold them as high arts. Thai people

should be very proud that our arts are tantamount to those of other civilised

nations (qtd. in Puchadapirom 92)4.

(Inspiration) ของศิลปะปจจุบัน

3 It is interesting to note that the literal translation of 'dontri sakol ' (Western music) in the Thai language is

actually 'international music', encompassing different genres of Western music from classical to

contemporary and popular.

4 The original Thai text goes: ... นาฏศิลปและดุริยางคศิลปแบบไทยเดิม เม่ือยังไมมีดนตรีสากลเขามาแพรหลาย ยอมเปนท่ีนิยมและ

ไดรับความยกยองเชิดชูวาเปนศิลปะคูบานคูเมืองของไทยสืบตอกันมาหลายรอยปแลว ศิลปะสองประเภทน้ีเคยรุงเรืองออกหนาออกตา

Baker 72

The concepts of past tradition and nation are once again intertwined, and here, the

method of defining one's own qualities by comparing and contrasting them with 'others'

comes into play. After WWII, boosting Thailand's pride as such would seem a sensible and

beneficial action, especially when the country was caught in between both the losing and

winning sides, having cooperated with Japan officially but also served as an important

military intelligence source in the region for the Allies through the Seri Thai underground

movement. Also, it seems rather clear how the inception of this project on traditional Thai

performing arts in 1946 coincided with Thailand applying to become a member state of the

recently established United Nations was not a coincidence. According to Luang

Ronnasitthiphichai, former Director General of the FAD, in the Ministry of Education's

record, the cooperation with the UN' affairs was necessary because 'we [Thailand] cannot

stay still, or else we will fall very much behind other nations' (qtd. in Puchadapirom 82), and

what the Department could do was to join UNESCO's effort in supporting the worldwide

revivification of culture by promoting traditional performing arts as national arts

(Puchadapirom 81–82).

The anti-Communist movement was another reason traditional performing arts were

promoted as national arts. A National Culture Council was established in 1948 and promoted

to the Ministry of Culture in 1952, as a 'necessary action' following the American model,

working in cooperation with the FAD as culture was strongly linked with the stability of an

individual nation and seen as what could go against the proletarian 'uncultured' ideology

(Baker and Phongpaichit 147; Puchadapirom 138–139). Also, looking towards China,

Communism and old ways of thinking or classical culture were seen as polar oppositions

ทัดเทียมศิลปะของชาติอ่ืนๆเพราะศิลปะแบบเดิมของเรามีความงามไพเราะและมีลักษณะเดนเปนพิเศษไมเหมือนของใคร [...] ผูท่ีเช่ียวชาญ

และผูท่ีรักศิลปะไมวาชาติไร หรือจะมีขนบธรรเนียมแตกตางกันสักเพียงไร เม่ือไดเห็นและฟงศิลปะของเราแลว เปนตองยกยองชมวาศิลปะ

ของไทยเปนศิลปะช้ันสูง เปนส่ิงหน่ึงท่ีชาวไทยควรพูมใจอยางย่ิงท่ีมีศิลปะอยางสูงไมแพศิลปะท่ีเปนของชาติท่ีเปนอารยประเทศ

Baker 73

during the period of Cultural Revolution, and to battle one with the other was probably one of

the most basic ideas. Colonel Luang Saranupraphan, Minister of Culture in 1954 even stated

point-blank in his interview that the 'advocacy of high culture as national culture' was a

crucial action because high culture indicated civilisation, which in turned connoted peace,

and this was something that could 'resist the evil doctrine threatening the happiness of the

world' (Puchadapirom 139–140). It is known that Thailand's forceful, negative attitude

towards Communism was strongly influenced by that of the United States—the country that

helped negotiate with Britain and saved Thailand from being branded as one of the defeated

nations and having to paying a dire amount of war reparations with this excuse that it was

only 'an enemy-occupied country' when it lent help to Japan.

Judging from the cases of WWII's aftermath and Cold War, khon as a traditional art

form would still have political functions, but unlike how it had been for a long time under

different royal courts, its original essence as an actual political tool was lost. Khon, then, was

increasingly decontextualised and treated as a national classical art that could occasionally be

used for international affairs, both amicably or antagonistically, because of the 'national'

essence branded to it. This new take on khon was further affirmed by the FAD Theatre Arts

Project, of which another important task, according to Yupho, was to promote Thai dance and

music in order to 'further the public appreciation of Thai national art' (Preface VI). He states

that the audience in the previous times was almost always Thai who could follow the story of

Ramakien well and understand the Thai classical performance, but after WWII, many more

foreigners visited Thailand and 'quite a number of them were interested in Thai dancing and

music and, quite contradictorily, the new generation of Thai took less interest in their own

traditional art' (Preface VI–VII). With the hope to 'fill in the gaps in knowledge of the general

public and help them appreciate more fully the Thai art of dancing and music', performance

Baker 74

programmes were produced for the first time—both in Thai and English—to help explain the

performances (Yupho, Preface VII). Here, although programmes in Thai were also produced,

the implication of the idea of publication seems to be that the initial involvement of the print

media with traditional performing arts was geared towards international relations or tourism.

With regards to khon, the most important action under the project was to get in touch

with experienced, skillful artists no matter how old they were to persuade them to join the

few FAD's teachers in passing on their knowledge of the dance art the School of Dramatic

Arts (Yupho, Preface V). The reason that this project initially concentrated on the artists,

from gathering and supporting the existing ones to creating new ones, was because,

conventionally, performing arts were the products of artists and the transmission of the arts

could only be done through the mutual interaction of different generations of artists

(Puchadapirom 98). Even in contemporary society, the field of performing arts is still highly

empirical and cannot be taught or learned only through textbooks. Thus, it was crucial to

prepare the artists to be most ready for the conservation, development and creative

adjustments of the traditional arts. Again, even long before UNESCO's 'Living Human

Treasures' project, Thailand had been aware of the significance of bodily transmission in

order to sustain ICH and placed its attention on the cultural bearers.

The FAD realised then that one main cause that stunted the maintenance and growth

of khon was the bureaucratic problem of income that arose from the artists' change of status.

During the time of absolute monarchy, artists had been hugely supported by the royal court,

and in the Sixth reign, even favoured by the king above other court officials outside of the

Royal Entertainment Department. With the new, standardised governmental system that

required civil servants to be of a certain level of education, however, older artists who had

spent their entire life on conventional artistic training with no formal education could only be

Baker 75

put in the position of government employees—as opposed to government officials, or

assigned the lowest civil service ranks in the FAD (Puchadapirom 98–99). Lower career

positions undoubtedly resulted in low wages, and this further led to the older generation of

artists leaving their profession because they could no longer fend for themselves and their

families working with the FAD.

To solve this problem, Phra-ong Chao Bhanupan Yugula proposed for skilled

performing artists to be exempted from rules and regulations of the Office of the Civil

Service Commission, and received higher salary even though they were not up to the required

academic qualifications. He states, according to the 'Ministry of Education's Record 2/25' (my

translation):

... To maintain traditional performing arts, it is necessary to gather all the

skilled Thai artists in the old Thai way and provide them with substantial

financial assistance, or, to be frank, we have to support the artists the way they

had been in the past under the royal patronage. If we do not do this, the arts

will simply die out because the career path concerning conservative arts like

khon, lakhon and nang is very limited—not many people would be willing to

take these arts professionally, unless the government would promote, support

and sustain them as the glory of the nation (qtd. in Puchadapirom 100) 5.

Similarly to UNESCO's financial assistance for the 'living human treasures', this FAD's

performing artist support project was to ensure the practitioners' comfort so that they could

stay in their traditional professions and transmit their intangible practices to the next

5 The original Thai text goes: ... การบำรุงศิลปสืบตอ เปนเร่ืองตองรวบรวมศิลปนไทยท้ังหมดท่ีมีฝมือดีในศิลปะแบบวิธีเกาของไทย

และใหเงินเดือนแกศิลปนเหลาน้ีเพียงพอแกอัตตภาพของตน หรือกลาวกันตรงๆ ก็คือตองเล้ียงไวเปนทำนองเดียวกับท่ีไดรับราชูปถัมภจาก

พระมหากษัตริยแตกอน ถาไมทำเชนน้ีก็สูญ เพราะศิลปะแบบวิธีเกา เชน โขน ละคร หนังใหญ มีชองทางหากินอยูในวงจำกัด จึงไมใครมีใคร

สมัครฝกฝนเปนอาชีพ นอกจากราชการจะสงเสริมอุดหนุน ประคับประคองไวใหเปนศรีแกชาติเปนของคูบานคูเมืองเทาน้ัน

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generation. However, again, like the usual critique on UNESCO's project, ensuring the well-

being of artists does not necessarily guarantee the sustainability of ICH in relation to its

changing environment. The FAD noticed the connection between the prosperity of traditional

performing arts and the support system of the royal court, and hence the attempt to emulate

such system was understandable. Yet, they did not seem to realise that this action

decontextualised the system and casted it into an entity separate from actual social

surroundings.

The artists under this project were not simply treated as if they were those from the

Royal Entertainment Department in its olden days—they were all actually either originally

from the bygone Department themselves or trained closely under those masters

(Puchadapirom 108). For this reason, only the pure royal court formula was passed on to the

younger generation at the School of Dramatic Arts, emphasised and emitted to the masses

through the FAD's performances and publications, and eventually became the national

standard with rigid aesthetic rules and regulations regarding the old customs used by artists

up until today. This fact also contributed to the monopoly of the form by the FAD and its sub-

organisations, as the absolute power to oversee khon affairs were transferred from the royal

court entirely to the Department, and those involved are from the same artistic origin. There

have been attempts to alter the traditional form to better match the faster-paced society, but

the changes have always been within the old structure (Puchadapirom 117) and ultimately

resorted to simply making the old forms 'quick, concise and fun'—the Thai catchphrase

always used when talking about making 'the slow past' more present. More radical changes

outside of the system are rare, but when in existence, almost always rejected. This clash

between the governmental legacy to preserve what they deemed as national, classical dance

in its authentic form and more innovative attempts will be touched upon in the next and final

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chapter following a survey of happenings relating to khon in the recent and current days.

Chapter Five

Khon at Present: The Irreconcilable Clash between the Conservative and Innovative

It is undeniable that the majority of people who are closely involved with the arts of

khon are conservative and likely reasons for this can be synthesised from looking at its long

history of evolution. Although khon has gone through significant transformations in terms of

form and function through times in relation to changing socio-political situations, it has

always been with more or less the 'same' group of people: the monarchy and noblemen, and

then, when it fell into the hands of the national government after the 1932 revolution, the civil

servants who had been working in the royal court, or even noblemen themselves. For

instance, Prince Bhanupan Yugala was greatly responsible for the current state of khon

because of his Theatre Arts Project that led to the authorised classification of khon as a

classical form and the standardisation of the form as national art. Once a living art form is

standardised, there are inevitably implications of what is 'right', 'wrong', or 'up to standard',

and with khon, the communal beliefs of those who had be in charge of it were turned into

rules and regulations to follow, be it officially written or not.

Having been decontextualised as a classical dance form and featured unique national

artistic creation, khon falls into the position like that of the ICH Convention's 'masterpiece'.

To quote Pietrobruno once again, the national classification in a way freezes it as a superior,

representative artefact 'to be preserved and admired' (232). Khon, as a national art, becomes

like a totem of the constructed Thai-ness or identity rigidly identified against others. The

strive for a unique identity would naturally lead to, as Anico and Peralta observe, the dis-

identification with someone else, one of the easiest ways of which is going back in time to

select something from the past—when things are much more obviously distinctive from the

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increasingly globalised or mass culture—to retain in the present (11). In the case of khon, it

seems that real appreciation and understanding within the community one would think crucial

in order to sustain ICH, fade into insignificance compared to the nationalistic discourse: khon

is part of the Thai national identity and the embodiment of long, rich, high traditions, and we

as Thais should support khon and together with it our nation and national identity. These

observations led me to survey the more recent and current important happenings revolving

around the dance form to complete my tracing of khon in this dissertation.

The Governmental Legacy

Khon's contemporary trends, Rutnin observes, tend to be more educational than

artistic or political (9–10). Khon classes are now offered as part of performing arts subjects in

general schools, only superficially to let students have a taste of the Thai national art and

tradition. More serious khon training is also offered in several general universities such as

Chulalongkorn, Srinakarinwirot and various Rajabhat universities under their Department of

Dance. However, khon education at these institution are typically—if not stereotypically—

deemed as more academic-oriented and weak on the practical side. This was probably

because the long historical line of khon, even with twists and turns—formal and

organisational, still in the end leads to the virtual monopoly of the dance-drama by the FAD

and institutions closely related to it. Respected khon master, Chulachart Aranyanak, from the

Office of Performing Arts states flat out in his interview that those trained outside of the

College of Dramatic Arts and Bunditpanasilpa Institute cannot seek jobs with the FAD

because no one would dare to, as they were not from the original school.

The College of Dramatic Arts, according to its official website, is the revamp of the

School of Dramatic Arts which had its status raised on 1 January 1972. With the intention to

produce performing arts teachers and professionals, the curriculum, combining general

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education with more intense practical training are divided into three levels as stated on the

webpage: Elementary Performing Arts Certificate—admitting students who have already

completed six years of primary school education from other institutions for a three-year

instruction; Intermediate Performing Arts Certificate—admitting students who have passed

the elementary level for another three-years instruction; and finally, Advance Performing Arts

Certificate—admitting students who have passed the intermediate level for two more years of

training. Students receive the equivalent of a higher education diploma once they have

completed all the levels. Currently, there are also ten other branches of the College operating

in different regions of Thailand, but they would focus more on regional and folk arts than

khon (Chansuwan 259–260), of which the growth always been with the capital city because

of its origin as a royal asset.

In 1976, the College expanded its curriculum up to a bachelor's degree level—

students who have already received their Advance Certificate can continue their studies for

another two years to gain a Bachelor of Education certified by the Rajamongkol Institute of

Technology (College of Dramatic Arts). It was not until 1998 when the College offered its

own two-year bachelor's degree programme under the FAD's newly established

Bunditpatanasilpa Institute—'an education institute in the field of arts which emphasizes the

creation and education of fine arts and performing arts, producing graduates who excel in the

arts and process high morals to uphold the conservation and dissemination of national culture

and tradition', according to its official website. The Institute was transferred from the

Ministry of Education to the Ministry of Culture, which was re-established in 2002 after it

had been reduced to only the status of 'division' in 1958 and then raised to 'department' in

1979 (Ministry of Culture). It is now, according to my interview with Supachai Chansuwan,

who also serves as the Dean of the Faculty of Dramatic Arts and Music, operating as a sector

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separated from the FAD, although still closely to it. To put it simply, the Institute is

responsible for training the dancers and the Department is responsible for producing

performances and publications, and media distribution.

The FAD's Office of Performing Arts is still continuing their roles, according to its

official webpage (my translation), of 'protecting, safeguarding, conserving, maintaining,

supporting, creating, promoting, managing the education of, researching, experimenting,

developing and sustaining the arts and the artistic, cultural, national treasure, to uphold the

value and uniqueness of the nation, leading to the sustainable development of the Thai

society and national security'1, along the path that has been paved for them since the earlier

times. According to my personal interviews with the National Artist Laureates like

Aranyanak and Chansuwan, it seems like the FAD has had many attempts to constantly create

and rouse the interest in khon amongst the younger generation and contemporary public, but

it is the central government that stunts their effort. Chansuwan, for instance, mentions the

Department's weakness in public relations, which could help link the internal knowledge to

the masses. He claims that because the FAD is a governmental unit, they cannot make a

decision to launch a project to their own will, but have to wait for funding from the bigger

unit that they belong to. As long as the government does not pay attention to culture as much

as it does to other affairs, and as long as the mass media only sees popular series and

commercials as the most important things, Chansuwan coments, khon cannot grow.

Aranyanak echoes Chansuwan through his lamentation of how the central

government, even when paying attention to cultural affairs, seems to leave khon out. He

observes how the government, when aiming to support cultural proliferation, would the

1 The original Thai text goes: '[...] คุมครอง ปองกัน อนุรักษ บำรุงรักษา ฟนฟู สงเสริม สรางสรรค เผยแพร จัดการศึกษา คนควา

วิจัย พัฒนา สืบทอดศิลปะและทรัพยสินมรดกทางศิลปวัฒนธรรมของชาติ เพ่ือธำรงคุณคาและเอกลักษณของความเปนชาติ อันจะนำไปสู

การพัฒนาท่ีย่ังยืนของสังคมไทยและความม่ันคงของชาติ '.

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impressions of the country with the biggest airport and fashion venues, but never affiliated

khon with these. With regards to the issue of public relations, Aranyanak continues to say that

khon could be better known only if it is seen through national media more often, because the

public can absorb art and culture through tourism and mass communication. In his view, t here

are groups of theatregoers who are particularly interested in khon, but the reason the wider

public is not entirely keen on the form is because the local media never attempts to beat the

drum for traditional art. It is khon teachers who have to do all the advertising works, he

continues, and this is impossible in the age of telecommunication. Moreover, even after the

FAD's Theatre Arts Project to raise the status of khon artists mentioned in the last chapter,

their condition, according to Aranyanak, is still very grim. Many dancers who are not

registered civil servants under the FAD receive only the wage of 100 baht—roughly £2—per

show.

When asked if the FAD has tried any new innovations in terms of the form to connect

khon more with contemporary audiences—consumers of what they say the media favours—

and their lifestyles, both Chansuwan and Aranyanak mention modern stage techniques and

the works of the late National Artist Laureate in Performing Arts Seri Wangnaitham.

Realising the increasing pace of the modern lifestyle and that the younger generation might

have wanted a complete, concise narrative they could easily swallow rather than lengthy but

only bits and pieces of the Ramakien in the original episodic form they would not have been

able to make full sense of if they had not paid attention in Thai literature classes,

Wangnaitham wrote new khon scripts, telling the story of the Ramakien from the beginning to

end—from Phra Narai or Vishnu's incarnation as Phra Ram to Thosakan's death—very

briefly, while highlighting a character and his/her role in the story. Chansuwan explains more

that Wangnaitham's method borrowed was to borrow relevant fragments of different episodes

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and tied them together, like telling a biography of a character within the big picture of the

epic. One time, Chansuwan continues, Wangnaitham staged battles between Phra Ram and a

number of the brothers of Thosakan’s from different episodes in one scene. Chansuwan and

Aranyanak claim this different approach, which the FAD still now uses as well as the

episodic, to be successful, as the audience can understand the whole story with no

redundancy, while set choreographies distinctive to each character and the sacred na phats

were still fully retained. However, according to Burutratanaphan's transcription of

conversions on the subject, this style of staging was harshly criticised by Kukrit Pramoj who

accuses Wangnaitham of being 'an impresario', giving up as well as betraying the long

traditions simply to cater to the consumeristic needs, and goes on to express his rather

unrealistic view that the FAD's duty is to guard and keep performing their 'good thing' in its

pure, traditional form even if it means no one would understand it or the FAD would lose

money (104–105).

As for the National Theatre, Bangkok, which serves as the main venue for the FAD

productions with most of the cast members from the Office of Performing Arts, and some

from the two performing arts school, Aranyanak claims that it cannot venture seriously in the

making of productions because the theatre belongs to the government and, thus, the funding

was limited and deducted. He claims that each piece of khon garments needs to be used up to

10–15 years, and although the dancers are proud to have played a role in sustaining the

traditional 'Thai-ness', a little detail like this has also discouraged and tired out Thai artists.

This lack of investment is shown quite clearly through the event calendar on the Department's

official webpage: only two khon episodes are staged at the National Theatre in 2010, after

four years of renovation since 2006—the first show would run for one selected month, and

the second one would run in December to celebrate the king's birthday.

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Noted Recent Khon Projects:

The Thammasat University's Khon Troupe

Going back to the extremely conservative Pramoj, i n Rutnin's view, despite the threat

of Western popular culture, khon gradually regained its significance in modern Thai culture

during the 1970s through his creative efforts and formation of Thammasat University's khon

troupe (10). What is particularly intriguing about the khon of Thammasat is that the

university itself does not even have its own Department of Dance, but because of this very

reason, teachers from the FAD were brought in as guest teachers to teach in their long-

conserved style made standard. Consequently, although Thammasat is a 'general' university

like Chulalongkorn, Srinakarinwirot, etc., with the masters from the national arts institution,

it does not fall into the same 'academically strong but practically sloppy' category the

aforementioned institutions are in.

According to Pramoj in 'The Maintenance and Transmission of Thai Dance-Drama',

the reason he stepped in to offer free khon training to Thammasat University students—the

younger generation, at least at the time, in 1966—was to fulfil his last effort to instill the

maintenance and transmission of Thai dance-drama amidst the circle of the youth (60–61).

He continued in the article that he specifically targeted students of said university, even

though most of the ones who came for training had no khon background, because he was a

lecturer there and hence felt a closer connection to them than any other group of youngsters

(60). His aim was not to rival the students and artists of the FAD, but to shape future khon

audiences, as no arts could survive well only with the givers—the creative party—and no

takers (Snidvongs, Rutnin and Boonyawat 71). In Pramoj's view from the same text, these

young intellectuals would soon become cultivated future leaders of the communities they

were from or even of the country, and if they appreciated and were well-informed about the

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dance form, then khon could be better supported and artists from the Department would not

be able to get by with sloppy dancing (71).

Pramoj also saw khon training as a way to introduce the younger generation to their

nation and traditional Thai culture, stating in his article, 'The Maintenance and Transmission'

(my translation): 'The Thai khon and lakhon has their own system, customs and tradition—

with the old masters as objects of reverence and artistic discipline to teach people to know the

high and the low [Thai idiom meaning, not to treat those deserving respect with disrespect]

and know how to hold themselves [in social situations]' 2 (63). He then refers in the same

article to how Thammasat students, only after three months of khon training, could perform

an episode before the king and pleased him so much that they were invited to a royal dinner

at the Chitralada Palace, where they could converse before and with the king with refined

manners in total ease (65).

There is no record of how the Thammasat University's khon troupe discontinued, but

Pramoj mentioned during a conference on Thai performing arts in 1991 that the troupe had

faced many obstacles, especially the introduction of the academic credit system into Thai

universities that came with more exams, causing students to 'have no time to play'

(Burutratanaphan 108). The troupe, still, was revived in 2001 on 12 August—Her Majesty

the Queen's birthday—but more in a form of a university club ( Khon Thammasat). Also,

Thammasat Troupe's website sadly shows only four events in their activity schedule from

years 2005 to 2008, all of which are meetings, not shows. There is no set performance dates

or programmes available, but one recorded production of the Thammasat troupe from the

university's formal hazing event in 2006 has been uploaded on YouTube.

After all, according to Thammasat University's Public Relations Office, the latest

2 The original Thai text goes: ' โขนละครของไทยน้ันมีระบบของตนเองและมีขนบธรรมเนียมประเพณีของตนเอง มีครูบาอาจารยทาง

นาฏศิลปเปนวัตถุแหงความเคารพเช่ือถือ มีศิลปะมีวินัยอันทำใหคนรูท่ีต่ำท่ีสูงและวางตนไดถูก [...]'.

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staging of the Thammasat Troupe's khon production was in 2009 to celebrate King Rama IX's

birthday 80th birthday, which was presided over by the Crown Princess Maha Chakri

Sirindhorn. Details on the website also show that the rehearsals for this production were

conducted by teachers and National Artist Laureates from the College of Dramatic Arts, and

the FAD's Office of Performing Arts was responsible for the audiovisual domain.

The Sala Chalermkrung's Khon Project

Another important currently active khon project that is that of the Sala Chalermkrung.

With tourists and to some extent the new generation of Thai public as the project's main

target audience, a demonstrative video clip briefly explaining what khon is shown prior to

every Sala Chalermkrung's khon performance. The shows—staged twice a week on

Thursdays and Fridays—are condensed, and although different episodes have been stage,

they would all tell the story of the Ramakien from the beginning to end, only with focus on

different characters in the style of the FAD's Seri Wangnaitham.

In 1993, as the old royal movie theater Sala Chalermkrung turned 60 years old, the

Crown Property Bureau undertook the renovation of the old Royal Theatre, the cost of which

exceeded 100 million baht (Chitrabongs 143).The stage was enlarged by six metres to

accommodate live performances, the sound and lighting equipment has been updated, the

newly inserted hydraulic system now allows the stage to be elevated, and the number of seats

has also been reduced, and the walls and ceiling have been modified so that the performance

equipment can be installed more easily (Chitrabongs 143, 145). The successful renovation of

the Royal Theatre has marked a rebirth of the Sala Chalermkrung, which, from 2 July 1993

on, have been hosting khon productions (Chitrabongs 145). According to the Crown Property

Bureau's book, in presenting performances at this time, the Sala Chalermkrung seeks not only

to contribute to the preservation of what the theatre calls an 'exquitsite art form', 'but also to

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give the audience from all strata of society an opportunity to participate in this precious

cultural and artistic legacy' (Chitrabongs 59).

It is the Sala Chalermkrung's hope that 'the performances will instill in the young an

admiration for the beauty of their national culture, and that foreign visitors will come away

with a profound sense of wonder for the exquisite artistry of Thailand' (Chitrabongs 59). The

khon performances at the Sala Chalermkrung are meant to fulfil three primary objectives—

the first being the conservation of Thailand's artistic tradition as the theatre 'has made every

possible effort to observe the traditions and rituals associated with this ancient art form so

that modern spectators can enjoy a truly authentic experience that captures the spirit of the

past' (Chitrabongs 60). The performances are also intended to reinforce the Thai identity. By

respecting the traditional art form and content of classical khon, the Crown Property Bureau's

book continues, 'the Sala Chalermkrung hopes to expose the current generation of young Thai

people to the beauty and exceptional intricacy that have characterised genuine Thai arts and

culture for centuries', which are claimed to be evoked most eloquently in khon (Chitrabongs

60).

Finally, the performances are meant to provide an aesthetic experience as well as

entertainment. The khon staged at the Sala Chalermkrung is faithful in both form and content

to its ancient roots, with the choreography, costumes, and music of the traditional Thai

ensemble as, to use the theatre's word, 'authentic' as possible (Chitrabongs 60). The original

choreographic movements were mostly kept and altered only to make the shows more

concise. True to tradition, the curtain is closed only once before the program's conclusion,

when the customary na phat dance is performed in front of the closed curtain (Chitrabongs

117). The battle scenes, which have typically required a large number of performers, still

without a doubt remain in the productions, only with the number of players scaled down to

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suit the limited size of the stage.

A number of researches have been made, and khon experts have been consulted for

the preparation for khon masks, costumes and ornaments (Chitrabongs 105). The masks used

in the performances at the Sala Chalermkrung are replicas of the traditional masks used in

khon performances for centuries, while human characters in Sala Chalermkrung's productions

are not masked and instead wear thick while make-up with heavily painted eyebrows, lips

and eyes, modelled after the khon masks of the old (Chitrabongs 112). The costumes at the

Sala Chalermkrung, too, are distinctive because the sleeves and the armour are of different

colours—unlike those of general productions that assign only one colour to one character,

following the format of old according to a number of historical sources, including the

National Museum, an astrological almanac and learned writings on Thai classical art

(Chitrabongs 114–115).

The light and sound systems, scenes and all other props, on the other hand, are the

products of modern technology. To cater to the contemporary spectators, the Sala

Chalermkrung shows are shortened to approximately one hour and fifteen minutes in length,

as opposed to the usual two or three hours, to allow them to follow the story on stage with

relative ease (Chitrabongs 109). As a result, the scene changes must be made as quickly as

possible, with the help of the hydraulic system that allows scenery to be moved both

horizontally and vertically with speed and convenience (Chitrabongs 117). In some instances,

successive events are presented on stage simultaneously, and occasionally the action is

accompanied by the traditional Thai shadow puppetry nang yai (Chitrabongs 118). The use of

lighting, scenery and movement almost always serves some symbolic purpose, such as a

character's sudden transformation or a demonstration of his magical powers—these

techniques are aimed to enliven the performance as well as aid to the audience’s

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comprehension (Chitrabongs 119)

To help the target audiences understand khon and the Ramakien more, the technology

of surtitles—in this case, moving texts that briefly tell what is happening on stage, in English,

to allow foreign spectators to comprehend the story alongside the Thai audience—were

employed (Chitrabongs 125). Also, there are booklets 'Appreciating Sala Chalermkrung

Khon' handed out at every performance. In a format much similar to a detailed programme,

these booklets contain the synopsis of the Ramakien as well as brief information on khon.

Then, there are the Sala Chalermkrung khon leaflets for each episode performed, with acts,

scenes and names of performers and producers listed. Moreover, an exhibition on the Sala

Chalermkrung khon presenting knowledge about the art of khon, the synopsis of the

Ramakien, and the background and objectives of the Sala Chalermkrung khon project is held

in the foyer of the Sala Chalermkrung Royal Theatre (Chitrabongs 125).

As a tribute to His Majesty the King Rama IX's 60 th Year on the Throne in 2006, all of

the episodes performed at the Sala Chalermkrung centre around the theme of reverence for

and loyalty towards the king, illustrating the Tospith Rajadham (ten virtues of the monarch),

as well as the ultimate victory of righteousness over evil (Chitrabongs 106). The first episode

performed at the Sala Chalermkrung, between December 2005 and June 2006, was

Chakravatar, which begins with the story of Phra Narai reclining in the Milk Ocean and

concludes with Phra Ram's ascension to the throne—intended as an oath of allegiance to the

king and the Chakri dynasty (Chitrabongs 106). Subsequent episodes performed at the Sala

Chalermkrung focus on the major characters from the Ramakien, especially those which

highlight the exceptional nature of the king (Chitrabongs 109). The episode Hanuman Chan

Kamhaeng (Hanuman the Mighty), which is currently being performed, places an emphasis

on the birth of Hanuman, the son of the god of winds who transformed into the powerful

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monkey warrior from his original petty wild monkey form with the touch of Phra Ram.

Hanuman soon becomes Phra Ram's most trusted general in the war with Thosakan's Longka

city, who carries out each of the missions assigned to him with ingenuity and unremitting

energy and devotion.

The Sala Chalermkrung does not have its own in-house troupe, and thus open

auditions are held to cast all of the roles for each of the episodes to be staged. According to

my interview with Dr Supachai Chansuwan, most performers were audition from the FAD-

related institutions. Once the cast members have been selected, they all undergo the same

basic training to hone their general dancing skills, and afterwards begin their training for their

specific parts (Chitrabongs 110). After the final performance of each of the selected episodes,

the cast is dismissed, and new auditions are scheduled for the upcoming episode (Chitrabongs

110).

The reality of the Sala Chalermkrung's khon project, however, does not seem to be as

beautiful as its principles and expectations presented in the Crown Property Bureau's book.

Only one German family of four, an interpreter, and no more than 10 other Thai spectators

joined me and my mother in the Sala Chalermkrung performance on 22 July 2010. To be fair,

the month of July is normally Thailand's low season, but less than 20 people amidst hundreds

of available seats was nonetheless a rather shockingly low number.

Also, my talk with Jitti Chompee, former colleague and choreographer who is

currently working closely with a Sala Chalermkrung dancer Suwan Klinampon, albeit for his

contemporary dance production, revealed that most Sala Chalermkrung performers,

according to Klinampon, are in fact those unwanted by the Office of Performing Arts due

mainly to inferior physical beauty. Even more horrifying, Klinampon admitted to Chompee

the Sala Chalermkrung dancers including never really bothered to improve their skills,

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because they would still receive the same amount of salary no matter how good or bad they

are. Ultimately, they also realise that it is virtually impossible for the project to be taken down

because of its inception as a tribute to the king and national identity with the support from the

Crown Property Bureau and the Tourism Authority of Thailand.

Her Majesty's Khon

The most recent khon phenomenon can be none other but Her Majesty the Queen's

khon. According to the programme notes on an episode commissioned by Queen Sirikit, 'the

queen has expressed concern about the existence of khon since its production always demand

a lot of effort and unfortunately only a handful of audience has ever seen the actual

performance', hence, Her Majesty has 'demanded the experts in the field of classical

performing arts and other classical fine arts specialists to work on producing a new set of

khon costumes, strictly based on the classical concept, yet more elaborate and endurable' (3).

When the new set of khon costumes was completed, the premier performance was staged to

celebrate the auspicious occasion of His Majesty the King's 80 th birthday and Her Majesty the

Queen's 75th birthday. From 24–28 December 2007, during which the Phrommat episode of

khon was shown at the Thailand Cultural Center, it received a huge success that in 2009, it

was restaged from 19–29 June 2009. According to the programme notes, this unexpected

response delighted Her Majesty the Queen so much that she initially ordered khon to be

performed annually (3), before settling on a biannual staging.

As for the background of the specific episode of Nang Loi, the latest Her Majesty's

commissioned production, Pramet Boonyachai, veteran khon dancer, teacher of

Bunditpatanasilpa Institute, and director of all Her Majesty's Khon productions thus far, after

his team was one with Phrommat, they started selecting different episodes for Her Majesty to

consider through Her Majesty's Deputy Private Secretary and said the queen settled on said

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episode. In Boonyachai's view, this episode was chosen because of its exquisite

choreographer as well as the sheer fact that people know it. Because of its beauty, the singing

script of Nang Loi originally composed by Prince Narisaranuwattiwong was selected to be

the main part of this new production, and thus thoroughly studied and readjusted. However,

the concert script has no bot phak and bot cheracha (spoken narration and dialogues), both of

which, Boonyachai continues, are the heart of khon performances and need in Her Majesty's

performance as the project explicitly aims to present contemporary audience with what

Boonyachai calls 'conservative production'. Thus, King Rama II's narrative composition of

Nang Loi, as well as dialogues composed by the late National Artist Laureate Seri

Wangnaitham were also included.

According to the performance programme of Nang Loi, this staging straightforwardly

follows the court's traditional dance and music style as practised in the reign of King Rama

VI (3). However, when asked if the production is focusing only on conserving and presenting

khon as it was in the past, Boonyachai further explains that it aims to conserve the good and

the finesse, but at the same time stage technologies like turntable and slings were also used in

the production. He admits that the performance is conservative, but also a 'developed' one,

with these modern innovations. While modern stage techniques seem to be employed rather

freely in this production, the reason that the choreography has to be conserved in its original

form, according to Boonyachai, was because 'the old master's invention is already the finest',

'exquisite' and even 'flawless'. To use Boonyachai's words, the traditional choreography and

co-ordination between the movements and the music are the creation of the old masters he

'would just stoop at their feet' for. No corrections can be done, only a slight adaptation to

shorten the episode to suit the standard contemporary theatre's length of performance. Also,

the show is still purely episodic, telling only a certain series of event from the Ramakien, not

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the whole story in the style of Wangnaitham and the Sala Chalermkrung.

Moreover, there seems to be overall known rules of what of the old can be changed

and to what extent. One example here would be how it is completely acceptable to use

Western musical instruments in more conservative khon productions as long as they produce

the original Thai notes and proper na phat tunes. In fact, the second staging of Her Majesty's

Phrommat episode in late in 2009 was accompanied by the Royal Thai Navy's brass band

instead of the traditional pi phat orchrestra. When asked further about such rules, Boonyachai

brings up the word chareet or customs, referring to the regulations and practices dating back

to the past. He goes on to say that, while some things can be changed, are the customs that

have been cast in stone since the olden days and have to be complied with—some explainable

and some not. For instance, when a character cries, he/she has to use the left hand to perform

a gesture by the forehead, because the left hand is closer to the heart and hence connected to

emotions, while the requirement for the position of the phra role on a long stool has to be on

the left whereas the nang is on the right cannot be explained. Initially, it seems to me as if

some of these rules are quite random and simply followed because they were designated by

the old masters. However, when reconsidering khon's primitive form as a ritual which brought

about sacredness, accompanying homage paying rite, and its connection to superstition still

widely belief today, such attachment to customs is completely understandable.

In terms of the performers, when in a queen's commissioned productions, they have to

be the best of the best. Boonyachai states that leading artists and even khon masters were

selected from the teachers of the College of Dramatic Arts, Bunditpatanasilpa Institute, as

well as the Office of Performing Arts, all of which are closely linked to—if not under—the

FAD. An audition, too, was held to get a new generation of khon artists involve with the

production, but Boonyachai still admits that all of the young dancers are students from the

Baker 93

College of Dramatic Arts and the Bunditpatasilpa Institute. It worth noting that even though

this production seems to be open to people from different sectors and of different ages and

experiences, even encouraging them to work together, all in all, they are still from within the

overarching frame of FAD.

A full-house performance of Nang Loi at the Thailand Cultural Center on 25 July,

which I attended, along with three other sold-out shows from 23–26 July, proved to be of a

drastic difference from the Sala Chalermkrung's khon production, both in terms of the public

enthusiasm and quality. The cast, movements, music, costume, setting, stage techniques of

Nang Loi were clearly superior—more elaborate, neat, and grand because of the amount of

budget that was put into less than a week run of performance. However, must this kind of

sacrifice always be made? Between eight exquisite performances a year and two mediocre

shows twice every week, what is actually more productive towards the sustenance of

traditional Thai masked dance-drama remains debatable.

Also, another reason behind the Nang Loi sensation, apart from the aesthetics and its

limited run, in contrast with the Sala Chalermkrung's shows that seem to forever go on, is

highly possibly the different statuses of the two projects. True, the Sala Chalermkrung's khon

project is that of the Crown Property Bureau to honour the king, but it is incomparable to that

commissioned by the queen herself. In Thailand, it is very common for anyone to do

something as a tribute to the king and queen as long as it is decent. Each major record

company would produce a song celebrating the king as the nation's Father and the queen as

the nation's Mother close to their birthdays every year. Television production companies

would do the same but in the form of soap operas. Schools can host any performances or

exhibitions under these themes and call them tributes. Hence, it is much more special when

the royal figures, still very much revered and worshipped in Thailand 3, initiate a certain

3 As mentioned in Chapter Two, although Thailand has been through several democratic and militaristic

Baker 94

project themselves.

This view is confirmed by Sudsakorn Chaisem, traditional Thai visual artist and set

builder of the queen's khon productions, who says in his interview with Sakulthai magazine

(my translation):

I work hard as if I give my head to the queen. All of us [the set building team]

have received an invaluable opportunity to serve under her divine grace. It is

something that makes us proud, spiritually fulfilled, happy. We don't even

think about our wages, because this kind of opportunity is so rare. [Traditional]

Thai arts have been neglected and they need to be revived for the society to

deeply appreciate their values [...] If it wasn't for Her Majesty the Queen

Sirikit's phra barami3 and the merit she has fulfilled [...], the work could never

have reached such beautiful success. 80 backstage crew all worked with Her

Majesty's royal grace and sacrifice in mind [...] 4 (32).

The dependency of khon on the monarchy also echoes through the words of Prateep Rodpai,

allegedly one of Thailand's last traditional khon mask makers according to a featured article

by Suchaovanich in Thailand's major English language newspaper The Nation. In his view,

revolutions, the royal family's power—especially that of the king—was revived in full force from the period

of General Sarit Thanarat's premiership on.

3 This word is from the Sanskrit parami, meaning 'virtue', but not directly translatable into English. Baker and

Phongpaichit define it as 'charisma, innate authority' (xi), which is rather accurate in the Thai context.

4 The original Thai text goes: 'ผมทำงานแบบถวายหัว พวกเราทุกคนไดรับโอกาสดีเขามาทำงานสนองพระมหากรุณาธิคุณ เปนความ

ภาคภูมิใจรูสึกอ่ิมบุญแลวมีความสุข ไมไดคำนึงถึงเร่ืองคาแรงงานที่จะไดรับจากการทำงาน โอกาสอยางน้ีไมไดมีกันทุกคน ศิลปะไทยถูกทอด

ท้ิง จะตองไดรับการร้ือฟนใหสังคมรูซ้ึงถึงคุณคาอยางแทจริง [...] งานน้ีถาไมใชพระบารมีสมเด็จพระนางเจาสิริกิต์ิ พระบรมราชินีนาถ คือ

คุณความดีท่ีทรงบำเพ็ญอยางย่ิงยวด [...] งานจะไมสำเร็จสวยงามไดอยางน้ี ทีมงานเบ้ืองหลัง ๘๐ คน ทำงานดวยความตระหนักในพระ

บารมี ความเสียสละของพระองคทาน [...]'.

Baker 95

khon, although decreasing in popularity, 'can still count on Her Majesty as a major patron',

who 'footed most of the bills for this years' epic performance' of Nang Loi, and 'thanked the

performers [of the production] for their sacrifice, knowing that these dancers could have been

doing something more profitable, but chose to preserve this national art'. FAD's Aranyanak

who supervised the rehearsals of this production confirms this view: if it was not because of

the royal funding, it would be impossible, as the show costed many hundred millions of baht.

A Concluding Note

The FAD's educational-oriented activities and the three major khon projects discussed

previously prove that after khon's official standardisation and transformation into national,

classical art in 1940s–1950s, the dance form remains basically in the same way up until today

—looking towards the past, operating within the nationalistic discourse, and isolated to a

certain level from the changing society as a 'masterpiece'. Although the FAD and the three

khon projects all claim to have made modern changes in terms of stage techniques or the

shortening of khon staging to match the contemporary lifestyle, their focus is still obviously

much more on the institutionalised standard and customs, as well as authenticity or historical

accuracy especially in terms of choreography, musical accompaniment and costumes. Unlike

many ICH in danger of extinction due to external threats of economic globalisation, khon will

never disappear because it is protected by different establishments, be it the FAD and its sub-

organisations, as well as the general education system of schools and universities as an

artistic embodiment of the Thai identity. However, simply because the dance form 'exists'

does not guarantee that it is 'living'. Khon's growth has always been with capital cities,

operating in various functions in connection with socio-political events of different eras, but

its existence in Bangkok today seems to have very little relevance to the surroundings.

Still, there is a shared characteristic unpronounced in the period of khon's official

Baker 96

standardisation emerging from the more recent and current khon productions worth

highlighting. Unlike in the days of Abhaiwongse and Phibunsongkram's premierships, which

khon, a court dance-drama, had been treated purely as a national artistic asset and 'promoted'

into the classical status merely because of it antiquity and long traditions, the royalist

association original to the form seems to have been reintegrated into it. One of the two

National Theatre's annual khon programmes is slotted in the king's birth month. The first ever

production of the Thammasat University's khon troupe was staged before King Rama IX, and

their first show after the troupe's hiatus and revival was to celebrate the queen's birthday and

presided over by the crown princess. The inauguration of the Sala Chalermkrung's khon

project was intertwined with the celebration of the auspicious anniversary of the king's

Ascension to the Throne. Her Majesty's commissioned khon productions were no doubt

related to the monarchy more than any other, and its success was also so far beyond any other

projects.

In contemporary Thailand where the glory of the monarchy has been greatly

reinvigorated, it seems as if the more closely related khon is to the royal family, the more it

flourishes, and this led me to once again think about the sustainability of ICH. As Diana

Taylor remarks, practices only thrive as long as people find them meaningful (101), and by

reconnecting the story of Phra Ram with the court of King Rama IX, meanings behind khon

that had been overshadowed by its change of status in to classical, national art fall back into

places. If khon is to be safeguarded effectively in its more original form developed under the

monarchical system, then it has to remain under or maintain tight connection with such

system that ascribed values and life to it. If khon is to be performed in its full glory then it has

to go back to patrons with great financial power and ultimate influence—the monarchy,

whose ancestors had moulded the dance-drama into such elaborate form that requires a huge

Baker 97

cast, a vast amount of carefully crafted props and accessories, and intricately tailored

costumes.

However, with Thailand's changed and changing social and economic atmosphere, it

would be unfeasible to expect the monarchy to be actively responsible for the khon at all

times, especially when the duty of taking care of the art form has already been assigned to a

governmental institution who now holds its monopoly—although there seems to be different

khon projects, but all performers and/or teachers are still from the FAD. Handing the dance-

drama entirely back to, or placing total dependence on the palace would suggest not only the

khon master-cum-civil servants' failure to safeguard and sustain the art form they consider as

their own, but also the frailty of the Thai democratic system. How, then, can we make khon

relevant to the social system it is in without resorting to an unrealistic option? The common

sense when it is not possible to bring the 'old' fixed form back to the 'old' system would be to

bring the form closer to the existing system through the means of alteration. But then again,

to go back to the unsolvable ICH problematics, how do we know at which specific point are

changes going overboard?

Pichet Klunchun is a dance artist trained in khon who has been trying to take the form

towards this latter direction. Unlike the FAD and FAD-related projects which place their

focus on khon's classical, conservative form, Klunchun's main concern is to make the dance-

drama relevant in contemporary society. In his view, the decreasing relevance is caused by

the lack of understanding, which he further elaborates on in his personal artist book by

comparing the dance form to a language. According to him, although Thai dance is part of

Thai culture, the choreography speaks another language—to use his example, watching Thai

dance is like listening to a person talking about Thai culture the local people are familiar with

but in incomprehensible Latin (5). Employing this idea as a starting point, Klunchun's works

Baker 98

then tend to either simply 'talk' about its forms, meanings of codified gestures, and its

training, or bring out the universal aspects of khon that contemporary Thai people can easily

understand. The examples of his significant productions are as follows.

In Pichet Klunchun and Myself, a collaboration with French choreographer J érôme

Bel, for example, the two simply exchange knowledge and stories on their dance expertise—

khon and Western contemporary dance. Together with Bel, the audience gets to learn briefly

about khon history and philosophy, see the connection between the dance form and other

aspects of Thai society—the similarity between the line of arms, khon costumes, and

traditional Thai architecture, as well as decode khon gestures. I Am a Demon, Klunchun's first

solo, starts with him directly addressing the audience that he wants to do something for his

late khon master Chaiyot Khummanee, then moving on to do khon warm-ups and

movements, which are interrupted throughout by the voice recording and video projection an

interview with Khummanee about Klunchun as a young dance student trained in the role of

yak. The performance ends with Klunchun talking about his view on the state of khon in

Thailand, saying he is proud of and does not deny its beauty, but mere aesthetics are not

adequate in this era.

In The Battle of Sang-Athit, Klunchun refers to Thailand's recent political unrest

through the episode from the Ramakien of the same title. The show begins with traditional

khon repertoire but the connection between the mystical time of Phra Ram and

contemporary Thailand became clearer once news clips and a parodic music video of the

former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra are incorporated via projection. The red demon

Sang-Athit, who gets into a battle with Phra Ram for Thosakan, is compared to the red-

shirted National United Front of Democracy Against Dictatorship (UDD) protesting in

support of the corruption-charged, exiled Shinawatra and often seen as a strong anti-royalist

Baker 99

force. Chui Chai, too, is used to discuss changes in contemporary Thailand. Originally, the

term chui chai, which means 'transformation', refers to the moment in the Nang Loi episode

when Thosakan's niece Benyakai transforms into Sida, with the plan to feign death and fool

Phra Ram into thinking his wife is killed. In Klunchun's production, the meaning of the term

is portrayed to different kinds of changes—the juxtaposition of traditionally-dressed

Benyakai character and topless, jeans-clad Klunchun in a pas de deux, and the changing

projected backdrop from pictures of traditional Thai landscape to skyscrapers, for example.

My initial understanding of Klunchun's works as contemporary khon was knocked

totally by Chansuwan, Aranyanak and Boonyachai, the three FAD masters whom I

interviewed. Although clearly inspired by khon and still revolving closely around the form, to

them, his works are outrageous productions that abuse the refined, old dance tradition and its

respected customs. First of all, their shared accusation on him is that he is phit kru, or

wronging the teachers. The three masters echo one another in saying that khon artists are

trained to be cautious about the frame and restrictions of tradition, and when they perform

they pass on what they have learnt from their masters to express respect to them.

Interestingly, their first comment on Klunchun is unanimously how he acts vulgarly onstage

by performing khon gestures shirtless or in tights—'like in ballets', Boonyachai adds.

Aranyanak sees this as the abuse of the sacred—like randomly splashing paint on the Buddha

image. Regarding on Klunchun's taking off of costume, Aranyanak sees it as turning a dance

worthy for the traditionally sacred stage into general dance anyone can do, and goes as far as

to accuse Klunchun of simply fulfilling his own fancy by showing his muscular body as a

seduction—turning the sacred into flesh and earthly squalor.

To these FAD masters, contemporary khon is khon with the employment of new

technologies, stage techniques and lighting. What Klunchun does cannot be called khon even

Baker 100

with the word contemporary attached to it, only a contemporary mode of addressing khon,

because he abandons what they see as the required elements of khon—set choreography, na

phat music, masks and costume. In their view, Klunchun is only selecting whatever elements

he likes and jumbles them together. This negligence of 'the set requirements' defined by the

FAD also lead all three masters to pick on Klunchun's training background, suspecting that

Klunchun's aberrant actions stemmed from how he has never experienced the philosophy or

the lifestyle of people who really practice khon, as Klunchun did not train with the College of

Dramatic Arts from a young age, but went to a normal school and only took personal lessons

with FAD's Chaiyot Khummanee before completing his Bachelor of Arts in Thai Dance at

Chulalongkorn University.

It is this very opinion, Klunchun said when I interview him, that led him to see the

FAD's negative critiques on his works more as antagonism towards competition to the FAD

monopoly of khon. He observes that top-down changes from within the institution are never

too problematic, but as soon as lowly Klunchun, the 'outsider', the 'black sheep', wants to do

something with khon, especially when that 'something' contradicts the FAD-set standards,

then the institution rise to a clamour. If the reason for his condemnation is purely because he

is phit kru and being disrespectful to the masters and tradition, he questions, then how come

Seri Wangnaitham's innovative take on the khon script which greatly affects the flow of the

original repertoires was met with no opposition from the FAD and even honoured as being

creative? The simple response to this statements from Chansuwan was simply that all the

required khon elements are kept in Wangnaitham's productions, and although the

choreography had to be rearranged greatly, it was still the original—only cut and pasted

together from different places, not a complete mutation like that of Klunchun's. In turn,

Aranyanak questions Klunchun insistence in sticking with the term khon, which as already

Baker 101

been defined. He observes that if only Klunchun would drop the name and call his works

contemporary dance, even if he uses elements from khon, there would be no problem. The

other two masters agree.

Contrary to the three masters, I see it as crucial that Klunchun keeps the name khon

with him. First of all, he never claimed his productions are original khon, and with modern

elements both visually and conceptually, no even the daftest person will be able to confuse

his contemporary-geared pieces with the style that has long been developed in the Thai royal

court and then governmental artistic institution. Also, I argue that keeping the name khon in

connection with Klunchun's production will even be beneficial to the more traditional form

approved by the FAD. This, in my view, is because Klunchun never develops new repertoires

by merely using khon as a springboard, but always creates links back to the original form.

Pichet Klunchun and Myself may appear more like a lecture-performance, but its

educative content is very much on the original form and old traditions. In its sequel, About

Khon, Klunchun even adds a traditional scene at the end to prove that after 90 minutes of talk

on the traditional form, the audience will be able to decode the gestures, follow the storyline,

and understand the message behind glitzy masks and costume. From I Am a Demon,

spectators can observe how traditional khon training is done, and the intimate relationship

between Klunchun's late master Khummanee and him—the teacher-student relationship

deemed as essential to khon, is clearly portrayed. In the politically charged Battle of Sang-

Athit which Klunchun criticises the anti-royalists, his loyal attitude towards the king is

prominent. As for Chui Chai, the obvious contrast between the traditionally dressed

Benyakai and Klunchun dancing together, as well as the visual conversion from the

traditional to contemporary Thai landscape brings out the meaning of the word chui chai,

transformation, which Thai people out of the traditional performing arts circle hardly know.

Baker 102

Klunchun states in his interview with the Nation that after all, what he aims to do is to

tighten the gap between the past and present—not merely transform tradition into something

foreign (Mahasarinand). The problem, however, is that the old and the new are usually seen

as total separation in Thailand. This view is confirmed by Chansuwan who expresses concern

in his interview that if people like Klunchun works, then the existence of the original

tradition might be fragile, and if all the teachers and schools accept his way, then Klunchun's

khon might eventually become original. Claiming that he admires Klunchun's attempt to

communicate with the younger generatiob who scarcely knows khon, Chansuwan still insists

that in a long run, this could cause damage more than gain, giving people wrong ideas about

khon and causing them to be unable to appreciate 'the real one'.

Echoing Diana Taylor's statement that [c]horeographers might draw from earlier

repertoires to reenvision and reinvent new work that honors its predecessors even as it breaks

new ground' (100), dancers, to Klunchun, can develop tradition into new works without

destroying the old methodology (Mahasarinand). After all, khon was originated and had been

developed for a long time as an evolving dance form, and it would make sense for

practitioners of khon to be dancers and choreographers, not merely conservators. If the FAD

wants to insist in its duty to preserve the dance as it was, then at least they should not be

opposed to the attempt to reconstruct the dance as it is related to contemporary Thailand and

its people. In this way, while the more traditional form guaranteed its existence that may be a

little distant from the modern lives, there is also contemporary force to help like the more

accessible and understandable to the codified past. The amicable co-existence of the two

camps would be most beneficial for the sustainability of khon, but sadly, many fails to see

this simple solution.

Baker 103

Works Cited

Texts

In Thai:

กรมศิลปากร [The Fine Arts Department]. 'ขาว/กิจกรรม' ['News/Event']. กรมศิลปากร n.d. Web.

15 Oct. 2010. <http://www.fabeta.finearts.go.th/event/ 2010>.

---. 'เก่ียวกับกรมศิลปากร: ประวัติและบทบาทหนาท่ี ' ['About Fine Arts Department']. กรมศิลปากร

12 Feb. 2010. Web. 15 Oct.2010. <http://www.finearts.go.th/node/453 >.

กระทรวงวัฒนธรรม [The Ministry of Culture]. 'เก่ียวกับกระทรวง: ประวัติกระทรวงวัฒนธรรม '

['About the Ministry']. กระทรวงวัฒนธรรม. 6 Oct. 2010. Web. 15 Oct. 2010.

<http://www.m-culture.go.th/about.php?sub_id=1039>.

คึกฤทธ์ิ ปราโมช, ม.ร.ว. [Pramoj, Kukrit, Mom Ratchatwong]. 'การสืบเน่ืองและการถายทอดนาฏศิลป

ไทย' ['The Maintenance and Transmission of Thai Dance-Drama']. นิออน, มัทนี และ

ศรีนวล [Snidvongs, Rutnin, and Boonyawat] 60–66.

---. 'นาฏศิลปไทย' ['Thai Classical Dance']. ลักษณะไทย ๓: ศิลปะการแสดง. กรุงเทพฯ: ธนาคาร

กรุงเทพฯ, 2541 [1998]: 36–67. Print.

งานประชาสัมพันธ มหาวิทยาลัยธรรมศาสตร [Thammasat University's Public Relations Office].

สมเด็จพระเทพรัตนราชสุดาฯ สยามบรมราชกุมารี เสด็จฯทอดพระเนตรการแสดงโขนธรรมศาสตร

เฉลิมพระเกียรติ ชุดศึกทศกัณฐ สีดาลุยไฟ และพระรามคืนนคร . 2552 [2009]. Web. 23 Oct.

2010. <http://www.pr.tu.ac.th/prnews/ prnews_a69.html>.

ทวี มุรธระโกษา [Muratharakosa, Thawee]. พระมหาธีรราชเจา. กรุงเทพฯ: แพรพิทยา, 2506 [1963].

Print.

Baker 104

ธนิต อยูโพธ [Yupho, Dhanit]. โขน [Khon]. กรุงเทพฯ: คุรุสภา, 2526 [1983]. Print.

นิธิ เอียวศรีวงศ [Eowsriwong, Nidhi]. 'วัฒนธรรมกระมพีกับวรรณกรรมตนรัตนโกสินทร '. ปากไกและ

ใบเรือ: วาดวยการศึกษาประวัติศาสตร–วรรณกรรมตนรัตนโกสินทร . กรุงเทพฯ: แพรว, 2538

[1995]: 17–290.

นิออน สนิทวงศ, มัทนี รัตนิน และ ศรีนวล บุณยวัฒน , บ.ก. [Snidvongs, Ni-on, Mattani Rutnin, and

Srinuan Boonyawat, eds]. รายงานการสัมมนา นาฏศิลปและดนตรีไทย ณ มหาวิทยาลัย

ธรรมศาสตร ๒๓–๒๕ มิถุนายน ๒๕๑๕ [Proceedings of the Thai Dance-Drama and

Music Conference at Thammasat University, 23–25 June 1972 ]. กรุงเทพฯ:

สถาบันไทยคดีศึกษา, 2522 [1979]. Print.

ประเมษฐ บุญชัย [Boonyachai, Pramate]. 'การรำของผูประกอบพิธีในพิธีไหวครูโขน -ละคร'.

วิทยานิพนธศิลปกรรมศาสตรมหาบัณฑิต . จุฬาลงกรณมหาวิทยาลัย, 2540 [1997]. Print.

ปน มาลากุล, ม.ล. [Malakul, Pin, Mom Luang]. งานละครของพระบาทสมเด็จพระเจาศรีสินทรมหา

วชิราวุธ พระมงกุฎเกลาแผนดินสยาม . กรุงเทพฯ: ไทยวัฒนาพานิช, 2518 [1975]. Print.

พิเชษฐ กล่ันช่ืน [Klunchun, Pichet]. พิเชษฐ กล่ันช่ืน. กรุงเทพฯ: ม.ป.พ., 2550 [2007]. Print.

ภัทรวดี ภูชฎาภิรมย [Patarawadee Puchadapirom] . วัฒนธรรมบันเทิงในชาติไทย : การเปล่ียนแปลง

ของวัฒนธรรมความบันเทิงในสังคมกรุงเทพฯพ .ศ. 2491–2500. กรุงเทพฯ: มติชน, 2550 [2007].

Print.

เมล็ดขาว. 'เบ้ืองหลังตำนานมหัศจรรยโขนพระราชทานชุดนางลอย '. สกุลไทย [Sakulthai] 14 ก.ย. 2553:

32–34. Print.

Baker 105

รจนา สุนทรานนท [Suntharanont, Rojana]. 'นามานุกรมนาฏยศิลปน: การศึกษาการสืบทอกนาฏยศิลป

สูกรมศิลปากร'. วิทยานิพนธศิลปศาสตรดุษฎีบัณฑิต . จุฬาลงกรณมหาวิทยาลัย . 2549 [2006].

Print.

วัลยวิภา บุรุษรัตนพันธุ , ม.ล., บ.ก. [Burutratanaphan, Wanwipha, Mom Luang, ed]. ' นานาทัศนะของ

การพัฒนารูปแบบนาฏศิลป '. สืบเน่ืองจากการจัดสัมมนาสาธิตนาฏศิลปไทย ๑๔–๑๕ มีนาคม

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Self-conducted Interviews in Thai

Aranyanak, Chulachart. Personal interview. 23 and 25 July 2010.

Boonyachai, Pramet. Personal interview. 19 July 2010.

Chansuwan, Supachai. Personal interview. 14 July 2010.

Chompee, Jitti. Skype interview. 15 Oct. 2010.

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Performances

About Khon. By Jérôme Bel and Pichet Klunchun. Hong Kong Cultural Centre. 22 Nov.

2008. DVD.

Chui Chai. Dir. Pichet Klunchun. Pichet Klunchun Dance Company. Patravadi Theatre,

Bangkok. 10 July 2010.

Hanuman Chan Kamhaeng. Dir. Pairoj Thongkhansuk. The Sala Chalermkrung's Khon

Baker 111

Project. The Sala Chalermkrung Royal Theatre, Bangkok. 22 Jul. 2010. Performance.

I Am a Demon. By Pichet Klunchun. Hebel am Ufer, Berlin. 27 Aug. 2006. DVD.

Nang Loi. Dir. Pramet Boonyachai. Main hall, Thailand Cultural Center, Bangkok. 25 Jul.

2010. Performance.

Mekhala and Ramasoon. The Thammasat University's Khon Troupe. 2006. YouTube. Web. 18

Oct. 2010. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQXAO1vfukk>.

Pichet Klunchun and Myself . By Jérôme Bel and Pichet Klunchun. Taipei Novel Hall,

Taiwan. 3 June 2006. DVD.

The Battle of Sang-Athit. Dir. Pichet Klunchun. Pichet Klunchun Dance Company. The

Alliance Française Auditorium, Bangkok. 12 Aug. 2009.