A DRAMATIC FEAST
A round-up of our favourites from the 14th edition of the Bangkok Theatre Festival
It is a fact more and more widely known that theatre-going in Bangkok has become quite a draining enterprise. The past two weeks were particularly hectic with the 14th edition of the Bangkok Theatre Festival (BTF). The Bangkok Art and Culture Centre was the main venue alongside smaller venues throughout the city.
While veteran theatre companies like 8x8 or Anatta Theatre came up with the expected and the usual, our attention was drawn elsewhere rather than the centre stage itself, whether it was a relatively new face like a small production from Splashing Theatre Company or Thonglor Art Space-produced Low Fat Art Fest in which we saw collaborations between Thai artists and those from Korea and Japan.
At the award-giving ceremony by the International Association of Theatre Critics (Thailand Centre) last Sunday, it was an echo of the festival last year with theatre companies from abroad being nominated, and they secured quite a few awards. While a collaboration between Theatre Momggol and B-Floor Theatre for Something Missing won Best Movement-based Performance, Peel the Limelight got Best Direction of a Play/Performance/Musical and Best Performance by an Ensemble for The True History Of The Tragic Life And Triumphant Death Of Julia Pastrana, The Ugliest Woman In The World. Culture Collective Studio’s The Lisbon Traviata won Best Play.
Here are the picks of our favourites this year.
THE ART OF BEING RIGHT
SPLASHING THEATRE COMPANY
Awarded Best Script at this year’s Bangkok Theatre Festival, promising young playwright and director Thanaphon Accawatanyu’s The Art Of Being Right was a slow-moving yet intense story of a couple, played by Jetnipit Sahusyotin and Chayutpol Sukkaew, in a relationship of love and tension. Staged in Art Cafe on the ground floor of Bangkok Art and Culture Centre, the audience sat surrounding the table, observing a conversation between the two characters which went from random topics to arguments on issues that indirectly revealed tensions underneath. Different from Thanaphon’s previous production Whaam! earlier this year, which although impressive was too much of a mix of everything, The Art Of Being Right in many ways reminded us of why we go to the theatre in the first place — to see life just as it is transformed onto stage.
— Kaona Pongpipat
ART DEPARTMENT OF DRAMATIC ARTS, FACULTY OF ARTS, CHULALONGKORN UNIVERSITY
French playwright Yasmina Reza’s Art is already an excellent play that not only engagingly explores the notion of contemporary art but is an entertaining study of human characters. So when Sasithorn Panichnok took up the directorial helm, the only task left was to find the right actors with the right energy and chemistry. And she did, quite successfully indeed. With translation by Pawit Mahasarinand, it was a smooth and engaging story of three close friends — Nuttapong Mongkolsawas, Setthawut Chanpensuk and Train Prinyaknit — whose friendship is put to the test when one of them purchases a very expensive painting, with only a few white lines on a white canvas. While discussing art on the surface, what the cast simultaneously did was dig into the nature of human interaction in Thailand’s contemporary society which is in many cases the very cause for ongoing conflicts in the country in a wider context.
— Kaona Pongpipat
THE SETTLERS
HOMEMADE PUPPET
Thailand is famous for nang yai, a form of shadow play with puppets made of buffalo hides, while the story is told through songs, chants and music, but Homemade Puppet’s The Settlers is different. Despite being just 30 minutes long, the team of two — Sutarath Sinnong and Sirikorn Bunjongtad — managed to tell a striking and delightful adventure of travellers, from the discovery of a new planet, its civilisation to its eventual downfall. All this was easily comprehensible without using a single word in the storytelling process. Aside from being an exciting adventure story with a prophetic hint of mankind’s future, The Settlers was in many ways Sutarath’s and Sirikorn’s field for experimentation, pushing the limits of what simply a shadow and a screen can do.
— Kaona Pongpipat
KRAPHOM (SET-ME)
KHAMPHA DANCE THEATRE
This solo dance piece may remind theatre and dance enthusiasts of Pichet Klunchun’s I Am A Demon, in which a dancer’s self is inextricably bound to dance. Ronnarong Khampha, a Lanna and contemporary dancer from Chiang Mai, ties together dance and identity, tradition and taboo. Unlike Pichet’s I Am A Demon, this gorgeous piece deals with Ronnarong’s identity as a homosexual man from northern Thailand. He plays with the idea of effeminate behaviour through movements plainly adapted from Lanna dance as if to suggest that his body belongs to the artistic tradition as much as to himself. Throughout, the dancer struggles to hide and reveal himself as he wraps his body in a female sarong and later paper. A beautiful piece about coming into one’s own.
— Amitha Amranand
THE LISBON TRAVIATA
CULTURE COLLECTIVE STUDIO
American director Loni Berry delivered a fine production of Terrence McNally’s 1989 play, this time set in Bangkok with other slight tweaks in detail. Bangkok theatre audiences are rarely treated to plays with complex gay and transgender characters or normalised depictions of gay relationships. Not only was it an interesting choice for the city, Berry and the cast of four showed us how fulfilling a conventional stage play can be. The actors gave moving and committed performances. Steven Fry and Pan Narkprasert, especially, shone as opera obsessed friends Stephen and Mendy.
— Amitha Amranand
STRATEGIC LONELINESS
(LOW FAT ART FEST)
Written and directed by Mikuni Yanaihara, this quirky and at times very funny play was inspired by, surprisingly, the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011. A sense of chaos, guilt, friendship and loneliness permeated the play as three characters, Tea (Pavinee Samakkabutr), Ice (Ornanong Thaisriwong and Milk (Nozomi Kawata), embarked on a journey to “the other side”. The most magnetic aspect of the production was not the obscure story, but rather how Yanaihara pushed the three actresses to the limit by making them run, jump and speak at lightning speed. It was a true acting and physical feat. And the ensemble pulled off a stellar performance, especially Ornanong, whose energy, precision and comedic timing lifted the spirit of the show.
— Amitha Amranand
SOMETHING MISSING THEATRE MOMGGOL AND B-FLOOR THEATRE (LOW FAT ART FEST)
Rarely have collaborations between two artists from different countries yielded such a strong result as Something Missing. South Korean Jong Yeon Yoon of Theatre Momggol and Thai Teerawat Mulvilai of B-Floor Theatre presented a work about censorship and repression so physically aggressive it was difficult not to watch and react with your entire body. These themes have always interested both artists, but Yoon seemed to have brought to the table a quality of rhythm, sharpness and sparseness that we don’t usually see in Teerawat’s work. Performers tumbled down the stairs and were shoved underneath our seats, eyes wide in terror; stillness was broken by a sudden rush to shush and subdue. The directors and the charismatic cast brought us deep into the world of fear and oppression.
— Amitha Amranand
THE TRUE HISTORY OF THE TRAGIC LIFE AND TRIUMPHANT DEATH OF JULIA PASTRANA, THE UGLIEST WOMAN IN THE WORLD
PEEL THE LIMELIGHT
This is the company’s boldest production yet. For the entire show, our sight is taken away by blindfolds. And the result is an intense sensory experience that provokes the imagination. American director Peter O’Neill takes full advantage of the intimate size of the space at Spark Drama and envelops the audience in a grotesque and malicious world, playing with smells, sounds and touch. A mere brush of an actor’s costume on your legs can make you shiver; the proximity of the performers amplifies emotions. The excellent cast vividly brings the hideous side of the circus to life as the sweet-voiced Siree Riewpaiboon, as Julia Pastrana, offers a glimpse of redemption and beauty.
— Amitha Amranand
The True History… continues this Friday to Sunday and on Nov 27 and 28 at 7.30pm at Spark Drama, Jasmine City Building. Tickets are 500 baht and can be reserved at peelthelimelight.com/tickets or by calling 08-9448-0838 (Thai and English) or 09-1070-6597 (English only) or by emailing ticketing@peelthelimelight.com.