Thai Khon – a dance drama loosely translated as ‘masked pantomine’, can involve over a hundred actors, a large orchestra, narrators, singers, and a chorus. The actors do not speak their lines and only enact their specific characters on stage, using expressive gestures and movements. Khon plays are based on the Ramayana and the actors can be divided into four main categories: Heroes, Heroines, Demons and Monkeys. Originally, there were masks for all four categories but since the nineteenth century, only the Demons and the Monkeys have worn masks. Miettinen described that Khon is ‘the sum of varied elements’ which includes nang yai shadow theatre, ancient martial arts and Thai court etiquette. (Miettinen, 1992: 55-56) The choice of Khon would then makes sense in relation to the royal court narrative of Hamlet, the other martial arts used in the performance and the other forms of shadow theatre (Wayang Kulit) or shadow theatre influenced form (Wayang Topeng).

However, I draw your attention to an intrusion of Engelkes’ first monologue during Klunchun’s Khon sequence as an example [insert footage link: (cam 1 tape 1) 00:16:01.00 – 00:20:28.00] and illustrate how Miettinen’s definition of Khon is made problematic by Klunchun’s Khon. Contrary to being ‘a sum of varied elements’, Khon in this case does not easily ‘add up’ to exist as a cultural form. Instead, it is not just additions of elements. Instead, there are also ‘subtractions’. This scene is significant because the lack of a Khon singer and narrator is now replaced by Engelkes’ spoken presence. I call this an intrusion because the conventional singing voice is now replaced by Engelkes’ scripted monologue without, what I term, the performative consent of the Thai Khon dancers and the singer or narrator. Singing in Thai, inevitably produces a different feel to the performance and the lack of it draws our attention to a different interaction altogether (the spoken English voice and the physical movement of Klunchun; and also the replacement of Thai with an English-singing pop singer, Dichte). This new performative arrangement encourages a different interpretation of the speaker and the dancer. It is here that I also encourage you to make sense of this interaction and see how you can relate this to the relationship of Asia with the West in cultural productions. The entire dynamics of absence and presence of voices makes this moment all the more poignant in the performance’s commentary on intercultural interaction. How much does one remain silent in a cultural encounter and how much does one choose or is forced to assimilate, simulate or incorporate other art forms in this performance?

The sequence becomes more complex when Klunchun’s Khon sequence changes. [insert footage link and compare: (cam 1 tape 2) 00:25:19.00 – 00:27:35.00 with 00:27:37.00 – 00:33:12.00 ] As mentioned earlier, each Khon dancer in a performance has a fixed set of movement and gestural codes tied to specific roles in the dance drama. He changes from Nang (heroine roles) to the Phra (hero roles). These changes are very subtle, which are already inherent in Khon, and it is complicated by the lack of Khon masks that we could have used to guess the gender and role of the dancer from the masks (was he also a monkey or a demon? He can be a demon, if he simply tilts his head sideways). Therefore, it can be argued that Klunchun’s role in the performance illustrates a sense of both an external influence on the Thai dancer (or direct imposition of the English voice on the art form) as well as an internal hybridization of conventional roles as they are crossed over. [insert footage link: (cam 1 tape 1) 00:20:38.00 – 00:21:14.00] This process of hybridization may not fully answer the questions I raised in the previous paragraph, but it functions as a discursive forum, more so as more sequences change, and when two distinctly different cultural representatives and art forms interact. Interaction can still occur even if one of them gives a muted response. The physical appearance is heightened by this muteness and draws out a kinesthetic understanding of cultural interaction.

References

Miettinen, Jukka O., Classical Dance and Theatre in South-East Asia, Singapore : Oxford University Press, 1992.

Brandon, James R., Theatre in Southeast Asia, Cambridge, Mass. , Harvard University Press, 1967.