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Thailand's financial collapse and new constitution in 1997 brought issues of commercialization, education reform, and decentralization to the forefront of arts and culture. The paper focuses on three aspects of the current situation of the traditional arts and artists in Thailand. First, the commercialized globalization of the arts has prompted some artists to create drama companies and theatre events woven through with Western themes and contemporary forms, but grounded in traditional Thai performance. Second, the new emphasis on arts education by Thailand's recent educational reforms has prompted the creation of new arts education programs that train local artists to adapt themselves to a changing world. Thirdly, some artists trained in traditional techniques, like Pradit Prasartthong and Pichet Klunchuen, work on intercultural projects within and outside Thailand, bringing in new approaches to presenting their work in storytelling and choreography, and new modes of teaching. These three aspects point to the array of ways that artists can use traditional arts in the contemporary scene and make rigid forms of traditional arts more flexible and 1 Associate Professor, Department of Drama, Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand. exciting for today’s audiences. These trends and pilot projects make greater use of traditional knowledge for today’s communities, and better reflect the interests of these communities. They provide the groundwork of a new movement in Thai performance that can create new opportunities for traditional performers and performance. Introduction: two artists working between two worlds In Thailand, as in other parts of the world, it is common to distinguish the world of traditional singers and dancers from the world of those who perform in modern theatre. Like artists working elsewhere, however, some Thai artists familiar with the tools and aims of traditional performance and of modern theatre regularly contribute to both “worlds.” They participate in, while challenging, the two commonly recognized worlds of performance, and they do so by working between these worlds. As a result, these kind of artists are able to add to both worlds of performance in interesting and important ways. This paper will consider two such artists working between two worlds of performance – Pradit Prasartthong and Pichet Klunchuen – as a way of considering how popular (for Pradit) and classical (for Pichet) traditions can enhance Thailand’s performance culture, whether traditional or modern. Since these two artists were not trained in Thailand’s prestigious National School of Music and Dance (Wittayalai Natasilp), they remain marginal figures to Thailand’s world of traditional performance, which centers itself on that institution and its correlates, the Fine Arts Department and the National Theatre. Nonetheless, to many young people in Thailand, as well as artists Downloaded from Brill.com11/15/2019 08:25:51AM

Working Between two Worlds: New Roles for Traditional Thai Dance and Dancers