Chiang Mai · Theatre & Mask · 1994 — 2026
Theatre artist, director, mask maker and peace educator. Her work moves through mask, ritual, autobiographical storytelling and intercultural performance across Asia.
Artist Statement
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The practice moves between mask theatre, site-specific ritual, autobiographical storytelling and peace education. Missing artist-approved language is left open rather than completed on her behalf.
Selected Works
A concise path through key works in performance, direction and archive. The full chronology is available in the CV.
Photo: courtesy the artist. Photographer: {placeholder}
A mask performance drawn from the story of Sukhahajara, the demon who gives himself for peace. The stillness of the pale face meets the pressure of a body in prayer.
Video: courtesy TERASIA
The audience walks the forest-temple path at Wat Pha Lat by night — a meditation on life, death and Buddhism, drawn from The Cat Who Went to Heaven. Restaged in Bandung, Indonesia, 2024.
Video: Thai PBS (embed)
A Lanna guardian-spirit legend staged with master performers of the North for the Lanna Wisdom School’s 30th anniversary — heritage carried to a new generation. Featured by the national broadcaster, Thai PBS.
Photo: courtesy the artist. Photographer: {placeholder}. Production photography: Caleb Ming / SURROUND, courtesy The Necessary Stage.
Migration and movement across Southeast Asia, told by an ensemble of nine. Kop is credited as both writer and performer. Commissioned for the Singapore Arts Festival 2006; toured to Kuala Lumpur and Tokyo.
Photo: courtesy the artist. Photographer: {placeholder}
Sixteen Asian artists build one work — “The Lohan Journey” — at Tokyo’s Setagaya Public Theatre. A high-water mark of the pan-Asian collaboration that defines Kop’s practice.
Poster: courtesy the artist. Designer: {placeholder}
Hideki Noda’s parable of the outsider and belonging — a landmark Japan–Thailand credit. Kop performs; the red brushwork of the poster is part of the work’s language.
Photo: courtesy the artist. Photographer: {placeholder}
More than 100 musicians from some ten countries, across Wat Suan Dok, Chiang Mai and Payap Universities — sacred music as an instrument of peace, inspired by the Dalai Lama’s call. Kop was project manager.
Video: courtesy the artist
Greek myth carried in mask, staged in Chiang Mai for International Women’s Day — the mask tradition turned toward women and story.
The paradox at the centre of her mask practice, made a title: what the mask hides, it also shows. Directed and performed by Kop for the Len Yai Program.
Performance & Media
Selected video documentation is embedded from source channels, with stills and captions held close to the work they document.
Additional video, captions and production credits: {placeholder}
Archive · 1994 —
Earlier documentation is shown at a scale that respects the source material: photographs, posters and records from performances made across changing formats.
About
Narumol “Kop” Thammapruksa works with theatre as a live meeting point: mask, body, story, ritual and civic practice.
Based in Chiang Mai, she is a theatre artist, director and mask maker whose record spans site-specific performance, intercultural Asian collaboration, autobiographical storytelling and peace education. She co-founded the International WOW Company with Josh Fox in {placeholder}; additional founding details are {placeholder}.
Alongside the stage she is a peace educator and aikido practitioner, a committee member of the Peace Culture Foundation (since 2016) and a regional representative of the Mekong Cultural Hub. Her work treats performance as a shared space for attention, conflict, memory and repair.
Thai-script name: {placeholder}. Preferred romanisation: {placeholder}.
Recognition
Selected public records, institutional pages and independent writing connected to the work.
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Contact
For performances, workshops, interviews, research enquiries and rights requests, use the contact details below.