Singing the lives of the Buddha: Lao folk opera as an educational medium

Lao folk opera is a unique blend of popular theatre and sung poetry performed among Lao-speaking people of rural Southeast Asia for a wide range of social and religious purposes. As a traditional medium for popular education, its primary function has been to preserve the cultural identity of the ethnic Lao by re-enacting ancient myths, local folk legends, and morality tales based on the penultimate lives of the Buddha. This dissertation explores the role of Lao folk opera as a medium for constructively addressing problems of cultural conflict and acculturative stress that have arisen among lowland Lao refugees and their children in urban America. The central focus of the inquiry is on the ways Lao folk opera currently functions as a learning medium in the resettlement context. The need for validation of such locally produced endogenous media has become increasingly apparent as long term resettlement issues continue to emerge as threats to linguistic and cultural identity. The review of literature encompasses the role of oral specialists in traditional societies, Buddhist epistemology in the Theravada tradition, and community education in rural Lao culture. These sources provide the background necessary to an understanding of the medium\u27s capacity for encapsulating culture and teaching ethical values in ways that connect past to present, distant to near. The field research, which was accomplished in collaboration with a Lao folk opera troupe based in New England, adapted the action research model originally proposed by Kurt Lewin to the principles of Buddhist community education. The videotaped performance of a drama based on the refugee experience and subsequent audience reactions formed the main body of qualitative data. Group reflections revealed that the medium provides a viable context for performance artists to assume the role of critical culture makers with a potent educational agenda. Recommendations include the encouragement of local media producers to take advantage of community access facilities to counteract the homogenizing influences of the dominant media and the more active inclusion of elders in the transfer of language and culture across generational borders