Young People's Theatre in Thailand

Abstract

How to make young people’s theatre today? This article examines this problem of young people’s theatre in Thailand through the lens of performance ecology. By viewing the young people’s performance-making process as something situated, holistic, interdependent, and evolving, this ecological perspective stresses several things about how young people’s theatre works to involve young people in representing and participating in theatre. First, it underscores the importance of awareness of its being grounded in a particular complex social and cultural setting full of diverse life processes centred on young people. Second, it emphasizes involvement with collaborative and participatory creative material and working methods with and for the young. Third, it highlights involving young participants and diverse audiences in the performance-making and staging process. To show how this ecological way of working and thinking operates in Thailand, I examine two cases in detail, one from rural and one from urban Thailand. This perspective seeks to view young people’s performance-making in an interactive culturally living space or ecology that productively engages the fragile, but adaptable, creative possibilities of young people’s theatre.