โขน

Khon (Thai: โขน, pronounced [kʰǒːn]) is a dance drama genre from Thailand. Khon has been performed since the Ayutthaya Kingdom. Born from the harmonious blend of traditional Thai performing arts, Khon has flourished into a distinctive cultural treasure of Thailand. It is traditionally performed solely in the royal court by men in masks accompanied by narrators and a traditional piphat ensemble. A variation of this genre with female performers is called khon phu ying (โขนผู้หญิง). ¹

Khon is a Thai traditional dance which combines many arts like dance and drama. The provenance of Khon was based on Ramayana and later developed to Ramakien in the Thai style. Moreover it is mentioned in Thai literature's Lilit Phra Lo (c. 1529) which was written before the reign of King Narai. ¹

Historical evidence shows that the Thai art of stage plays must have already been highly evolved by the 17th century. In 1687, King Louis XIV of France sent a diplomat Simon de la Loubère to record all that he saw in the Ayutthaya Kingdom. In his famous account Du Royaume de Siam, La Loubère carefully observed the classic 17th century theatre of Siam, including an epic battle scene from a Khon performance, and recorded what he saw in great detail: ¹

The Siamese have three sorts of Stage Plays: That which they call Cone [khôn] is a figure dance, to the sound of the violin and some other instruments. The dancers are masked and armed, and represent rather a combat than a dance. And though every one runs into high motions, and extravagant postures, they cease not continually to intermix some word. Most of their masks are hideous, and represent either monstrous Beasts, or kinds of Devils. The Show which they call Lacone is a poem intermix with Epic and Dramatic, which lasts three days, from eight in the morning till seven at night. They are histories in verse, serious, and sung by several actors always present, and which do only sing reciprocally .... The Rabam is a double dance of men and women, which is not martial, but gallant ... ¹

Khon roles are dictated by long-standing tradition. The principal characters are the heroes, the heroines, the ogres, and the monkeys. The monkeys are some of the most important roles in Khon. The best-known monkey characters in the story is the monkey warrior Hanuman. Modern Khon contains many elements from the lakhon nai and today, includes female performers playing female characters, formerly performed by men. While the ogre and monkey characters wear masks, most of the human characters do not. ¹

Khon language is the use of various dance and gesture movements by performers to convey their roles to the audience and to create enjoyment. In general, Khon language resembles everyday language, but it cannot be expressed through vocal tones. Instead, it employs bodily gestures and movements using the torso, hands, arms, legs, feet, shoulders, neck, face, and head to represent meaning. Some gestures in Khon can communicate meaning even more effectively than spoken words. For example, shaking the head is used to signify refusal. ¹

Khon is based on the tales of the epic Ramakien (Thai adaptation of Indian Hindu epic Ramayana), as Thai literature and drama draws great inspiration from Indian arts and legend. Khon Ramakien originally could be performed by men only. Women performed only as angels and goddesses. Today women perform as monkeys and demons. In the past, Khon was performed only by the royal family, with the sons of the king performing as monkeys and demons. Thai Khon stresses realistic dance moves, especially the monkey, which focuses on beauty and fine monkey-like dancing postures. Khon training is begun at a very young age, so that the performer can become flexible enough to do back flips, especially by the Vanara (forest dwellers or monkey) character. ¹

The text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Khon”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence. ¹

Khon is Thai theatrical performance, according to the structured record cited below. This entry was generated automatically from that record and has not yet been reviewed by a person familiar with the tradition. ²

The source record links this tradition to 5 external registers, which can be verified through the citation. ²