Engagement and Empowering the Students in Wat Makleu Community in Preserving the Narapirom’s Canal through a Shadow Puppet Performance: Hun Ngao Lao Reung Klong Nara.

Abstract

          This applied theatre project uses drama process and community-based learning in order to engage the students at Makleu Temple School to recognize the value and importance of the Narapirom canal and the life-style along the canal as in the old days. This project incorporates theatre gaming, drama process and puppetry to pass on community life-style and values to young generations nowadays. The students participated in this project practiced in artistic process, which were: theatre gaming and creative drama. This process enhanced the simultaneous response to any given circumstances and roles. The students had an intrinsic learning since they gained some new perceptions about themselves and their community. They also gained self-worth and learned to be responsible for their practice and performance. They also learned about a team working, which was the key to make their performance successful. For extrinsic learning, the students recognized the importance of the role as a change agent for their own community. In this project, these students appreciated the living-style in the old days along the Narapirom canal. The students reconnected with people in the community through this project. They recognized that they could help cutting, drying and selling water hyacinths in order to make the canal clean. This concept is highly important to be understood by people in the community that the Narapirom canal was once the center of people in the community in the past. It is highly important to create a concerned and active person who live in and belong to the community in order to preserve the canal and protect the root and history of the community from being forgotten. As the facilitator and the director of this project, I believe that learning through drama and participating in a community-based learning project would make the students to gradually think more about the Makleu community. This learning process will make students become active and change agents of their own community in the future.