Abstract:
The Aesthetical Communication of Nora Rongkruu aims to exhibit communication strategiesin comprehending the Nora Rongkruus message, a ritual and a traditional media of some southern people. The specific points of examination are on the communication for aesthetics as well as the art of manipulating aesthetics for unveiling what might be called a traditional mindset. In-depth interviews and participant observation were required to read such cultural codes. After two years following Nora OmjitCharoensilp, one of the famous artists who is herself a spirit medium as a major source of information, the evidence shows that Nora Rongkruu is well designed to reproduce itself after the ancestor worship belief system and provide spaces for villagers to cooperate with the artists. Various communication forms are used to convey the encoded components of the theater which lead to the major theme of gratitude and righteous. In other words, gratitude is the major impulsive ideology to run the theater. Aesthetical elements are used to demonstrate the traditional pleasure through dances, myths and songs while the open situation of inviting ancestral spirits to come in can be flooded with questions that stimulate people to follow closely the trances. Since the local ancestral blood was combined with Nora teachers roots, Nora identity was established and reproduced where aesthetics play the crucial part over peoples behavior and minds. Emotional responses are expected to show in specific patterns, which are derived from a specific personality under Noras ideology. Gratitude is the key word related to the social structure and is the key concept to maintain the traditional society which imprints a unique personality that is anticipated by the audience. Then, local identity is created and reproduced on and on to maintain a southern Thai personality derived from ritual Nora. An ideal personality is expected to show over the play. The show ends with symbolic successes, and it would satisfy the participants with tears and joys. The sensitive emotions provoked would encourage the believers minds to face the troubles in everyday life. Reproducing gratitude towards ancestors contributed to the existence of Nora Rongkruu; the stage space provided only for Nora artists to manipulate the worshipping. In conclusion, the rotation of thought, action and emotion were repeated in the society by the influence of the promised ritual while Nora itself will be needed to be part of the cultural wheel, which will be circulated over and over as long as the belief system remains in its theatrical world