Writing a Musical about The Narratives of Jit Poumisak’s Life

Abstract

From the past until now, narratives about Jit Poumisak’s life have been influencing Thai society, politics, art and culture, especially during the period before “the 14th October 1973” or “1973 Thai popular uprising” until after “the 6th October 1976” or “the Thammasat University massacre”. The researcher examined the productions of narratives about Jit Poumisak’s life as materials used to create stories and styles for writing a musical. The musical was determined to portray the construction of a political icon through narratives, to criticise the passing over of political ideology by using an icon, and to raise the audience’s awareness about the effects of excessive adherence to an icon that can cause conflicts resulting in violence. The researcher employed songs as a key element to tell the story and used multiple plot lines to achieve the aforementioned objectives. Throughout the process, the researcher studied concepts behind narrative productions, approaches to musical theatre writing, and the style of multiple plot lines. The finding of the study was inspired by a visual representation called “collage”. The musical was written as an assembly of three different plot lines, cut and re-edited to create a whole new plot line. This approach was to effectively require that the audience thinks critically about the topics the researcher intended to criticise. In the musical, the main purpose of the songs was not to move the actions forward, but to deliver the high emotion or the political ideology of the characters. This particular use of songs was meant for the audience to understand the motivations of the main characters, whose actions cannot be composed continuously according to the style of multiple plot lines.