This creative research aims to design the movements of Unakarn in the Thai court drama, “Unakarn Panji Chom Suan Khwan” by essentially based on the Thai court drama literature of King Rama II. The author synthesized knowledge from texts, academic documents, self-training, experiences from teaching and performing, observation, expert interviews, and dance evaluations by Thai classical dance experts. Accordingly, all the data were analyzed to create and design the dance postures. The design was then qualitatively recorded and presented to the experts for evaluating and confirming the recorded qualitative data. The data collected from the assessment form were analyzed using basic statistics for the quantitative data analysis, including mean and standard deviation. The data were also presented by analytical description and performance. The finding showed that King Rama II created the character Unakarn that was different from Kuda Narawangsa in the Panji stories (the original version). This character corresponds to the character of females in Thai traditions as well as the sociocultural context. It makes Unakarn lively and enables Panji to question if Unakarn is a woman or a man. The character of Unakarn headed to the creation of the female character when she disguised as a man in the Thai court drama dance style. The choreographer uses three ways for the design: 1. choreography based on the Tamraram (dance recording textbook), 2. choreography based on the original dance, and 3. developing from the original dance. This creation is new. The choreographer guarantee that the character of Unakarn in “Unakarn Panji Chom Suan Khwan” is the most consistent with the Thai court drama literature of King Rama II. According to the four experts, the performance creation efficiency of “The choreography of Unakarn in the Thai court drama, “Unakarn Panji Chom Suan Khwan” is considered efficient. The choreography is rated at the highest level in creativity, with a mean of 4.75 and a standard deviation of 0.50. In suitability and experts’ satisfaction, the results show the highest with a mean of 5 and a standard deviation of 0.00.

Panji, Kuda Narawangsa, Unakarn, Thai court drama, King Rama II