Diverse national forms and traditions
Although most of the dance and dramatic forms of Southeast Asia are related at least in the distant past, except in Vietnam and the Philippines, they acquired a very distinctive national and local character over the centuries. An examination of a few of these myriad forms will provide a more precise picture of the dense texture of the performing arts in Southeast Asia.
Cambodia
Court performing arts that had flourished during the Angkor period (802–1431) almost ceased in the centuries following the fall of the Khmer dynasty. Whether there was an organized court life or not is uncertain because of the scarcity of records, but in the 18th and 19th centuries performances in Thai form were produced by the Thai rulers of the western provinces of Cambodia. At Phnom Penh a classical ballet troupe was established by the royal family in the 19th century.
Court styles
The chief court forms are nang sbek shadow theatre, lakon female dance and dance-drama, and lakon kawl male masked pantomime. The puppets of nang sbek stand four to five feet in height, have no movable arms, and are manipulated from beneath by two fixed handles or sticks. The standing puppeteer either sways the puppet with his arms or he dances with it. In processional scenes, as many as 10 puppeteers parade completely around the screen, front and back. An entire tableau may be carved on one puppet, including several figures, forest scenery, or palace buildings, as if to bring to life the epic scenes carved in relief on the temples of Angkor Wat. Two narrators alternate a slow chant with dialogue. During dance sections, the large pi phat ensemble, augmented by a large drum, is played. Only plays based on the Ramayana are performed, and major puppet figures represent Rama, his consort Sita, the monkey Hanuman, and Ravana, a 10-headed demon king who kidnaps Sita. Khmer peasant figures have been inserted as rustic clowns in every nang sbek play. Performance has religious significance, the gods being invoked and honoured, and a performance may be arranged to assure rain or to halt an epidemic. It is not certain when and how nang sbek originated, but it seems probable that it was taken to Thailand in the 15th century and then brought back. This would explain the details of costume and headdress of today’s puppets that are in Thai style.
The lithe apsaras carved in Angkor’s stone show details of the lakon style of female dance, but neither these nor other records are evidence that their lively dance was used in relating the epic stories. The 19th-century Thai rulers of western Cambodia reintroduced lakon dance and dance-drama, which was indigenous to Thailand as well. At the same time, Thailand’s male masked pantomime was brought to Cambodia, as far as is known for the first time, and it became known as lakon kawl. Both male and female dance-plays were translated into Cambodian. In modern times, costumes and headdresses were redesigned in the style of the Angkor carvings. The stories, music, dance, and dramatic styles of lakon and lakon kawl are much like their Thai counterparts.
Popular forms
Lakon bassac, performed by some 20 professional troupes in Cambodia, is a highly eclectic form. Musical selections, dances for female characters, and costuming are borrowed from court lakon. The form was created by Khmers living in the Bassac River region of Vietnam. Villains wear Vietnamese costumes and move with Vietnamese opera movements, an evidence of the historical conflicts of the two peoples. Chinese, Jataka, or Khmer stories may be performed. Pi phat music alternates with Chinese and Vietnamese instruments and with the Western saxophone and piano. Prince Sihanouk, chief of state between 1941 and 1970, encouraged a few French dramatic productions, but such drama is scarcely known outside the Western-educated elite.
Thailand
Folk lakon jatri, lakon nai female dance and dance-drama, khon masked pantomime, and likay popular theatre are Thailand’s chief performing arts.
Folk performance
Lakon jatri began in the south, when male dancer-sorcerers performed, in simple folk style, the Manora Buddhist birth story as a dance-play. A troupe of three players was usual. One played the beautiful half-bird, half-human princess, Manora; a second played the hero, Prince Suton; and the third, often masked, played clown, ogre, or animal as needed. Flute, bell cymbal, and drums provided the music. The full Manora cycle of plays, staged in a village in the open, could last for two weeks. Probably after the 14th century, some jatri troupes moved to the Thai capital, where they established commercial theatres and staged a new all-male drama, lakon nok nok, “outside” [the palace], that emphasized plot and an often obscene humour. Advances in dramatic form were accomplished by court writers of lakon nok between 1800 and 1909. Likay troupes succeeded and completely supplanted lakon nok troupes in the early decades of the 20th century, but such popular lakon nok plays as Sang Thong (“The Prince of the Golden Conch”) are presented today in modified form by the Thai National Theatre.
Female court dance-dramas
The lakon nai nai, “inside” [the palace], female dance-drama of the court was created in the mid-18th century from a confluence of three previously separate elements: female court dance, the lakon nok drama, and the Javanese Pandji stories as subject matter. Romantic episodes from the long Pandji tale were ideal for staging in the elegant and delicate style of female court dance, accompanied by songs and the music of a large pi phat ensemble. In the unhurried court atmosphere, dance scenes lasted an hour or more, and dance figures might be repeated many times. In time, other stories came to be staged in lakon nai and were given other names, but the Pandji plays composed by the daughters of King Boromokot (1733–58), by Rama I (1782–1809), and by Rama II (1809–24) remain favourites. In this form, lakon nai was introduced into Cambodia within the 18th and 19th centuries.
Masked mime
Until recent years, a Thai version of the Khmer nang sbek shadow play, nang yai, occupied an important place in court as a Brahmanic-related ritual performance of the Ramayana. Thai scholars describe it as the source of khon masked pantomime, citing celebrations for King Ramathibodi II in 1515 that included a nang yai performance without puppets. Wearing heavy makeup, the puppeteers themselves danced the usual Ramayana episode as narrators told the story and spoke dialogue. Later, masks took the place of makeup, the screen was eliminated, and khon was born. In present-day Cambodia, one troupe can perform both forms. A number of lakon nai elements entered khon in later years, so that today a khon performance mixes the vigorous, masculine khon with gentle lakon nai singing style and female dance. All of the Thai dance-drama traditions (lakon jatri, lakon nok, lakon nai, and khon) are taught at the Department of Fine Arts in Bangkok, and representative plays from them are staged, often mixing traditions, at the Thai National Theatre.
Popular plays and puppets
The major popular theatre form is likay, which evolved in part out of lakon nok. It is now performed by more than 100 troupes in most parts of Thailand. Actors are skilled in improvising not only the dialogue and lyrics but also the plot of a play as well, weaving romantic scenes and fragments of lakon nai dance, set to pi phat music, into a story from a well-known Jataka, history, or court play. Likay plays are set to music of the Lao khen, a reed organ, in northeast Thailand. A type of shadow play called nang talung, in which a single, seated puppeteer moves small puppets of individual figures with movable arms, is very popular in southern Thailand. The performance technique undoubtedly came from Malaysia, while the plays and the identifying features of the puppet figures, mostly from the Ramayana, are from Thai khon and lakon nai. A similar shadow play exists in Cambodia, suggesting that the form traveled from southern Thailand to Cambodia, perhaps in the 19th century.
Laos
From the time Laos became a kingdom in 1353, the performing arts at the relatively small Lao court at Luang Prabang followed those of the more illustrious courts to the south, Angkor in Cambodia and then Ayutthaya and Bangkok in Thailand. Today, Lao dancers study in Bangkok, and the style of dance, music, and drama of the Royal Lao Ballet, the only remaining court troupe in Southeast Asia, is almost identical with that of lakon nai in Thailand. It is usual to perform excerpts from the very long dance-plays, the staging of a full-length spectacle being beyond the means of the court at present. Male khon dance is known but seldom performed. A number of Lao folk dances are studied and performed by the royal ballet troupe.
Scores of popular troupes perform plays derived from Thai likay and set to the lively and melodic Lao folk song style known as mohlam. Mohlam balladeers, accompanied by the khen (a complex reed organ), have for centuries traveled the Lao-speaking countryside, which includes Laos and northeast Thailand, singing bawdy songs of physical love and weaving into their performance local gossip and bits from the epics and court plays. When likay troupes from Bangkok played in northeast Thailand, the pi phat music and court dancing were not popular, although the plays themselves were. Enterprising mohlam performers then set the likay plays to the familiar mohlam song style, thereby creating a new popular theatre form, mohlam luong, or “story mohlam.” Of the mohlam troupes, a few large ones are located in major cities in the two countries, but most are small and travel from village to village, performing for a few days or weeks in each.
Burma
In spite of an old Burmese tradition of spirit dances stemming from animism and early contact with Indian culture, formal theatre did not begin until 1767, with the introduction of Thai khon and lakon nai to Burma following the capture and sack of Ayutthaya. Burmese courtiers and dancing girls immediately learned the two forms, and the plays were translated into Burmese. Because Rama was viewed as a previous incarnation of Buddha, pious Burmese were reluctant to alter khon scripts. For a time Jataka plays, including Ramayana episodes, were forbidden to live actors. Instead, marionette troupes doing plays based on khon brought the Rama stories to the Burmese countryside. But the Pandji plays were not considered Jatakas, and even the first Burmese version, by U Sa under the title Inao, departed from its Thai model, thus setting the stage for the creation of court drama, or zat pwe, based on myth and legend but capable of being independently developed. The three zat written by U Kyin U portray the futility of political strife and urge a life of Buddhist renunciation. U Pon Nya created a freer form of dramatic verse, and his Water Seller is noted for its comparatively realistic treatment of court life.
Court drama ceased after 1866, when the British conquered Burma. Thereafter, drama was staged by professionals in public theatres, primarily in Rangoon (now Yangon). U Pok Ni in Konmara (c. 1875), U Ku in The Orangoutan Brother and Sister (1875), and others created a new type of drama, pya zat, that mixed royalty and commoners, emphasized humour, and added songs to appeal to a popular city audience. Hundreds of these works were published. Popular troupes in contemporary Myanmar perform a long bill of attractions that lasts most of the night. It comprises songs and dances, a new contemporary play, and, as a final number, a classic zat in which remnants of old court music and dance are preserved. British touring companies in the late 19th and early 20th centuries brought examples of contemporary European melodrama and some classics to Burma. Subsequently a number of plays were written in Burmese and in English, following Western conventions and without songs or dance. Of these, The People Win Through (1950), by former prime minister U Nu, is among the most interesting examples.
Indonesia
The sober, majestic, and profound court arts of eastern and central Java, where Javanese is spoken, include wayang kulit shadow theatre, wayang orang unmasked dance, and wayang topeng masked dance.