This paper is based on information gathered by both authors during trips to Southern Thailand over a period spanning the late 1970s to the early 1990s. Details about the performance and its history are based on many interviews with performers, villagers, and local college teachers. Except where the information relates to specific puppeteers and their opinions and styles, we do not cite individual interviews to make general points. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the 1991 meetings of the Association for Asian Studies (New Orleans, 11–14 April 1991) and at the Yale University Southeast Asia Program. The research was made possible by various agencies including the University of Victoria, the Center for Asia and Pacific Initiatives at the University of Victoria, and the Luce Foundation. Ian Baird translated some of the tapes from which we take excepts, and the Program in Agrarian Studies at Yale University provided a postdoctoral fellowship which enabled Peter Vandergeest to revise the paper presented at the 1991 Asian Studies meetings.

The Editors would like to thank Mr. Surasak Chinnaphongse for his assistance in printing material using the Thai script.

¹ A good recent example is Keeler, Ward's article “Release from Kala's Grip: Ritual Uses of Shadow Plays in Java and Bali”, Indonesia 54 (10, 1992): 1–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar, in which he compares Balinese and Javanese shadowplay stories to show how Javanese give great emphasis to personal autonomy, whereas the Balinese emphasize exchange relations.

² Keeler, Ward's Javanese Shadow Plays, Javanese Selves (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987)Google Scholar, awarded the Benda Prize, is one of the more recent in a history of acclaimed studies of the Javanese shadowplay. Others include Anderson, Benedict's Mythology and the Tolerance of the Javanese (Ithaca, NY: Cornell Indonesia Project Monograph no. 37, 1965)Google Scholar, Geertz, Clifford' The Religion of Java (Glencoe, Ill: Free Press, 1960)Google Scholar, and Peacock, James's The Rites of Modernization: Symbolic and Social Aspects of Indonesian Proletarian Drama (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968)Google Scholar.

³ A recent study of the Balinese shadowplay is Zurbuchen, Mary Sabina, The Language of the Balinese Shadow Theatre (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987)Google Scholar.

⁴ On the Malay shadowplay: Sweeny, P.L. Amin, The Ramayana and the Malay Shadow-Play (Kuala Lumpur: The National University of Malaysia Press, 1972)Google Scholar, Sweeny, P.L. Amin, Malay Shadow Puppets (London: Trustees of the British Museum, 1927)Google Scholar, and Wright, Barbara Ann Stein, “Wayang Siam: An Ethnographic Study of the Malay Shadow Play of Kelantun” (Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, 1980)Google Scholar.

⁵ Chalermpow used attendance at a 1973 conference for puppeteers and the number of puppeteers known to be active in the district where she did research to estimate that there were probably about two hundred active puppeteers during the 1970s. [Chalermpow, Paritta, “A Popular Drama in its Social Context: Nang Talung, the Shadow Puppet Theatre of South Thailand (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Cambridge, 1980), p. 93Google Scholar]. More recently, in an interview with Vandergeest in August, 1991, officials at Srinakarinwirot University in Songkla indicated that the number of puppeteers is not decreasing, and that the most popular puppeteers continue to draw new apprentices.

A recent study shows that there are traditions of shadowplay in central Thailand (Ayutthaya, Ratburi, Nakhonpathom, Petchburi) as well as northeastern Thailand (Khon Kaen, Roi Et; Mahasarakham), though not as popular as nang talung. They began about 70 years ago and evidence shows that they were adapted from the southern tradition. See 2535 (Suriya Samutthakhup, “Isan Shadow Play: Cultural Diffusion and Modification in Rural Villages, Northeast Thailand”. Khon Kaen: Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Faculty of Humanities and Social Science, Khon Kaen University, 1992).

⁶ The word means “leather” or “skin”. In the context of the shadowplay, nang refers to the leather puppets.

⁷ Hobsbawm, E.J. and Ranger, T., The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983)Google Scholar.

⁸ In thinking about the conditions surrounding the construction of national consciousness, we are following Hobsbawm, E.J., Nations and Nationalism Since 1780 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990)Google Scholar; Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983)Google Scholar; and Gellner, Ernest, Nations and Nationalism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983)Google Scholar.

⁹ Our use of this word corresponds closely to that of Keeler, , Javanese Shadow PlaysGoogle Scholar, and Errington, Shelly, Meaning and Power in a Southeast Asian Realm (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁰ See detailed descriptions of the opening sequence in Chalermpow, , “A Popular Drama”, pp. 137–54Google Scholar.

¹¹ Ibid., pp. 156–57, for a description.

¹² As did the Wayang Siam in Malaysia and the Malay speaking areas in Pattani in the far south of Thailand. See Sweeny, , The RamayanaGoogle Scholar, Sweeny, , Malay Shadow PuppetsGoogle Scholar, and Wright, “Wayang Siam”.

¹³ As did the shadowplay in Java. See, for example, Laurie J. Sears, “Javanese Mahabarata Stories: Oral Performances and Written Texts”, pp. 61–82 in Boundaries of the Text, ed. Flueckiger, Joyce Burkhalter and Sears, Laurie J. (Ann Arbor: Michigan Papers on South and Southeast Asia Number 35, 1991)Google Scholar.

¹⁴ On the construction of a national Thai language, see Diller, Anthony's “Thai Syntax and ‘National Grammar’”, Language Sciences 10, no. 2 (1988): 273–312CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and his “What Makes Central Thai a National Language?”, in National Identity and Its Defenders: Thailand, 1939–1989, ed. Reynolds, Craig J. (Clayton, Vic: Monash Papers on Southeast Asia No. 25, 1991), pp. 87–132Google Scholar.

¹⁵ Sweeny, , The RamayanaGoogle Scholar.

¹⁶ Chalermpow, , “A Popular Drama”, p. 185Google Scholar.

¹⁷ This is elaborated in Vandergeest, “Power and Morality in Pre-National Buddhist States” (forthcoming in Modern Asian Studies).

¹⁸ Discussed by Sweeny, , The Ramayana, p. 224Google Scholar.

¹⁹ Ibid., p. 225.

²⁰ Wright, , “Wayang Siam”, p. 109Google Scholar.

²¹ Ibid., p. 83.

²² See Thailand Ministry of Education (), (The Chronicle of Songkhla City), ( 3: 35–80) (Prachum Phongsawadan Book 3: 35–80).

²³ Chalermpow, , “A Popular Drama”, pp. 56–57Google Scholar. Another type of shadowplay performance, the nang yai, was associated with the courts in Siam (ibid., p. 56); it featured large puppets carried by the multiple performers, and as such it was less susceptible to innovation. The nang yai is no longer performed.

²⁴ Sears, “Javanese Mahabarata Stories”, p. 65.

²⁵ Sweeny, , The Ramayana, p. 24Google Scholar.

²⁶ Wright, , “Wayang Siam”, p. 165, n. 7Google Scholar.

²⁷ Ibid., p. 115.

²⁸ Sweeny, , Malay Shadow PuppetsGoogle Scholar.

²⁹ These relations are described for the Songkla area by Songmuang, Sangop (), in (The Development of the City of Songkhla), (, 2523) (Songkhla: Srinakarinwirot University, 1980)Google Scholar. We use the term “serf” broadly to refer to people who were not slaves but were tied to a master and had to fulfil labour or other kinds of obligations.

³⁰ Thus the wai was more than a gesture of respect and greeting; it was also the means by which practitioners gained access to the potency of their teachers. This argument, including its gender dimensions, is elaborated in Vandergeest, “Power and Morality”.

³¹ There is no direct evidence of the level of importance of commodity relations, but see Bowie, Katherine, “Unraveling the Myth of the Subsistence Economy”, Journal of Asian Studies 51, no. 4 (11 1992): 797–823CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for a discussion of the extent to which nineteenth-century peasants were involved in market relations in what is now Northern Thailand.

³² Interview with Suthiwong by Peter Vandergeest, July, 1991.

³³ F.W.K. Muller, Nang, Siamesische Schattenspielfiguren in KGL. Museum fur Volkerkunde zu Berlin. Supplement zu Band VII von Internationales Archiv fur Ethnographie (Berlin, 1894), and 19 1, 2536, 77–87.

³⁴ Cuisinier's observations are reported in Sweeny, , The RamayanaGoogle Scholar. Sweeny goes on, however, to show that her observations were unreliable, and our oral histories obtained from older puppeteers do not indicate that Rama stories were important during the 1930s.

³⁵ Zurbuchen, , Balinese Shadow Theatre, p. 227Google Scholar.

³⁶ Sweeny, , The RamayanaGoogle Scholar; Wright, “Wayang Siam”.

³⁷ Sears, “Javanese Mahabarata Stories”.

³⁸ Wright, “Wayang Siam”.

³⁹ Ibid.

⁴⁰ This observation is based on interviews with older puppeteers who were subject to government attempts to regulate the shadowplay, and the interviews with Suthiwong and other officials at Srinakarinwirot University in Songkla.

⁴¹ The displacement of temples by state schools in Buddhist areas in Thailand is described by Keyes, Charles F., “The Proposed World of the School: Thai Villagers' Entry into a Bureaucratic State System”, in Reshaping Local Worlds, ed. Keyes, Charles F. (New Haven: Yale Southeast Asia Studies Monograph No. 36, 1991), pp. 89–130Google Scholar; and by Chayan Vaddhanaphuti, “Social and Ideological Reproduction in Rural Northern Thai Schools”, in ibid., pp. 153–73.

⁴² See the comments of Sweeny, P.L. Amin on this point in “Epic Purposes in the Malay Oral Tradition and the Effects of Literacy”, in Boundaries, ed. Flueckiger, and Sears, , pp. 154ffGoogle Scholar.

⁴³ These processes are elaborated in Vandergeest, Peter, “Constructing Thailand”, Comparative Studies in Society and History 35, no. 1 (01 1993): 133–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴⁴ Chalermpow-Koanantakool, Paritta, “Relevance of the Textual and Contextual Analyses in Understanding Folk Performance in Modern Society: A Case of Southern Thai Shadow Puppet Theatre”, Asian Folklore Studies 48 (1989): 31–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴⁵ Paritta Chalermpow-Koanantakool, “Traditional and Modern Styles in Southern Thai Shadow Puppet Theatre”, paper presented at the Second Thai-European Research Seminar, June 14–18, 1982, Saarbruecken, Federal Republic of Germany.

⁴⁶ Tape of a Phrom Noi shadowplay performance.

⁴⁷ Suthiwong and others at Srinakarinwirot University's Southern Thai Cultural Center in Songkla believe that the majority of new puppeteers now enter the profession in this fashion.

⁴⁸ This account of Nang Prathum's life and her observations on the shadowplay is based on interviews with Paritta Chalermpow-Koanantakool, and summarized in Chalermpow, “Traditional and Modern Styles”.

⁴⁹ This account of Nang Nakharin's history and performance styles is based on interviews with Paritta Chalermpow-Koanantakool (October, 1977) and later with Peter Vandergeest (July, 1991).

⁵⁰ Interview with Paritta, 31 October 1977.

⁵¹ By Peter Vandergeest, July 1991.

⁵² Interview with Peter Vandergeest, July 1991.

⁵³ Interviews by Paritta Chalermpow-Koanantakool.

⁵⁴ Based on a video of a performance at Srinakarinwirot University in the Songkla, date unknown.

⁵⁵ The booklets are given titles such as “Theng in the Forest”; “Theng Goes to Town”; “Theng Meets Friends”; “Theng Goes to the Zoo”.

⁵⁶ Although small drawings of the puppet Theng on the back leaf do show these features.

⁵⁷ Interview with Peter Vandergeest, August 1991.

⁵⁸ National Archives of Thailand: S.Th. 0201.29/20, in which a directive sent out to the local administration ordered that “Anyone who is to do a play … must ask for permission from the Department of Arts by filling out the details on the permission forms … and sending in the script of the performance fifteen days before…. In inspecting the composition, if the department thinks it must be corrected and changed the practioner must obey the orders of the department.”

Local officials tried to force puppeteers to dress up the puppets with hats and pants. Spirit mediumship, essential to village healing practices and sometimes the means by which it was determined that a shadowplay performance was necessary, was also banned.

⁵⁹ Interview by Peter Vandergeest with Suthiwong Pongpaiboon, Srinakarinwirot University, August, 1991.

⁶⁰ 3 2522 (Handbook for Teaching the Shadowplay Profession, Regional Education Office, Region 3, ca. 1979). See also , , 2523 (Khanapkaew, Kasem, Ways of Making Humour in the Shadowplay, Songkhla: Department of Thai Language, Songkhla Teachers College, 1990)Google Scholar.

⁶¹ According to a well-known local writer on Southern Thai culture, those who did not join and continued to be critical found themselves followed by the police.

⁶² See for example , 2528 (Proceedings of the Nang Talung Seminar Project for 14 Southern Provinces, Songkhla: Songkhla Province Cultural Centre, Songkhla Teachers College, 1985)Google Scholar.

⁶³ Called the phithi khrop mu (). See Chalermpow, , “A Popular Drama”, pp. 100–108Google Scholar, for a full account of this ceremony.

⁶⁴ Interview with Nang Nakharin, July 1991.

⁶⁵ Nang Phom was interviewed by Peter Vandergeest during 1987/88.

⁶⁶ Interviewed by Chalermpow-Koanantakool. Details of his life are summarized in Chalermpow-Koanantakool, “Relevance”. Nang Kan was very well known in the Songkla area, and most college teachers and local intellectuals know the details of his life.

⁶⁷ Chalermpow-Koanantakool, , “Relevance”, p. 50Google Scholar.

⁶⁸ Ibid.

⁶⁹ Source: audio cassette tape of the performance.

⁷⁰ Sears, “Javanese Mahabarata Stories”, pp. 79–80

⁷¹ Wright, , “Wayang Siam”, pp. 131–39Google Scholar.

⁷² Ibid., p. 161.

⁷³ Ibid., p. 162.

⁷⁴ Sweeny, , “Epic Purpose”, pp. 154–55Google Scholar.

⁷⁵ Ibid., p. 155.