Narumol (Kop) Thammapruksa

Kop is a theatre director, performer, producer, facilitator, cultural worker and social arts activist.  Her focus has been on using theatre and creative movement as a tool for social activism. Kop co-founded the “International WOW Company” with Josh Fox in 1997, which emphasized intercultural exchange through dance and theatre. Kop has been in several intercultural Asian theatre collaboration such as Noda Hideki’s AKAONI, the Setagaya Public Theatre’s Hotel Grand Asia, the Necessary Stage’s “Mobile", Ringokun’s “Retire-Men”.  Kop was an artistic director and co-ordinator for several arts events such as The World Festival of Sacred Music, World Artist for Tibet, Arts Against War, Mekong Project, Shadow Puppet Exchange, Kitakanay Music Exchange. Kop also teaches autobiographical writing and performance workshop. The scripts resulted from the workshops such as “He-Me-She-It” was staged in Taiwan and the Philippines and “Sound of the Ocean” produced in Taiwan by Spring Wind Theatre group. In the past five years, she conducted series of mask making workshops in many countries and performed in several intercultural collaborative mask performances. Recently, as a member of Mekong Cultural Hub (MCH), Kop involves with numbers of artistic projects among Mekong su-region as well as Taiwan artists. Her interests in alternative living brought her to organize a number of workshops on natural mud house building, five-senses playground, and recently, educational board game design. She is also an aikido instructor at Renshinkan Dojo, Chiang Mai, Thailand. She tries to apply aikido philosophy of peace to life styles as portrayed in her aikido school’s activities.