Arts & Architecture - Thailand - page 1501

tourist community. Folk traditions have a broader appeal, though the era of village stage
shows is long gone.
Thailand's most famous dance-drama is kŏhn , which depicts the Ramakian , the Thai
version of India's Ramayana . Dancers wear elaborate costumes and some characters are
masked. The central story revolves around Prince Rama's search for his beloved Princess
Sita, who has been abducted by the evil 10-headed demon Ravana and taken to the island
of Lanka.
Every region has its own traditional dance style performed at temple fairs and provin-
cial parades. School-aged children often take traditional Thai dance lessons. Occasionally
temples will also provide shrine dancers, who are commissioned by merit-makers to per-
form.
Most often performed at Buddhist festivals, lí·gair is a gaudy, raucous theatrical art
form thought to have descended from drama rituals brought to southern Thailand by Arab
and Malay traders. It contains a colourful mix of folk and classical music, outrageous cos-
tumes, melodrama, slapstick comedy, sexual innuendo and up-to-date commentary.
Puppet theatre also enjoyed royal and common patronage. Lá·kon lék (little theatre)
used marionettes of varying sizes for court performances similar to kŏhn . Two to three
puppet masters are required to manipulate the metre-high puppets by means of wires at-
tached to long poles. Stories are drawn from Thai folk tales, particularly Phra Aphaimani,
and occasionally from the Ramakian .
Shadow-puppet theatre - in which two-dimensional figures are manipulated between a
cloth screen and a light source at night-time performances - has been a Southeast Asian
tradition for perhaps five centuries originally brought to the Malay Peninsula by Middle
Eastern traders. In Thailand it is mostly found in the south. As in Malaysia and Indonesia,
shadow puppets in Thailand are carved from dried buffalo or cow hides (năng) .