The leading lady who set the stage for theatre studies
What was slated as a small conference at Chulalongkorn University early this month turned out to be a powerhouse gathering for the Thai entertainment industry.
Onchuma Yuthavong, a renowned actress and acting coach, was invited to speak to students about her mentor Sodsai Pantoomkomol, the pioneer of Western-style drama training in Thailand.
Top representatives from entertainment companies, including JSL Global Media, sat among students at the faculty of arts building where Sodsai, winner of the National Artist Award in 2011, began building a theatre programme from scratch over five decades ago.
Onchuma, 69, a former lecturer at Chulalongkorn’s faculty of arts, recalls the struggle of getting the value of theatre recognised in academia.
“We had to fight to make people understand what we were doing. When we told people we planned to perform a play, they would think we were going to perform traditional Thai dance,” she said. “Back then, some students cried because their parents did not approve of their decision to study dramatic arts. Parents tended to think acting wouldn’t make a living. It’s not like today when people are clamouring to get into the entertainment industry.”
In the early 1960s, Sodsai took up a lecturing position at Chulalongkorn’s English department. The theatre programme did not exist at the school at the time, nor was it available at any other university in Thailand.
Sodsai, now 83, formed a group of students and lecturers with a shared interest in theatre, including Onchuma. Together they rehearsed and performed Englishlanguage plays.
The success of their performances would later lead to the founding of the dramatic arts department in 1971. The department has since produced a slew of renowned directors, actors and producers in the Thai entertainment industry.
In the programme’s early years, making a living in entertainment was considered a foreign concept, as was the idea of offering a contemporary theatre curriculum in Thailand’s oldest university.
“When Ajarn Sodsai was seeking out the budget for stage props like fake eyelashes for costumes, the university’s budget office would ask, ‘What for?’” Onchuma recounts to the students.
Sodsai, known among her students as “Kru Yai”, meaning “principal teacher”, fought hard against the conservative stance of the university. Over the course of her career, she became something like the Lee Strasberg of Thailand.
“Ajarn Sodsai is a miracle woman,” said Onchuma.
Sodsai did not attend the department’s conference. Despite having played the leading lady many times, she’s kept a low profile, limiting her public appearances over the years.
Her latest work is a short video titled “CU Polka Dance” for which she penned the melody and lyrics of a song and dance celebrating the anniversary of Chulalongkorn.
Onchuma says that Sodsai was “the first Thai who went to Hollywood”.
After graduating with a bachelor of arts degree at Chulalongkorn, she received a scholarship to study teaching English as a second language in the United States.
However, after further thought, she requested to study theatre at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She later transferred to the University of California, Los Angeles, to advance her professional opportunities. Her acting and singing talent began to get her noticed.
Sodsai made an appearance on The Tonight Show, hosted by Jack Paar, to talk about her work. She also enrolled in the Miss Universe Contest in 1959 in which she won the Miss Amity Award or Miss Congeniality for her vibrant character.
At UCLA, Sodsai, going by her stage name of “Sondi Sodsai”, penned and starred in a musical titled Yankee Don’t Go Home for which she received four awards for Best Actress, Best Production, Best Directing and, finally, the Oren Stein Award from Lee Strasberg, who had attended the event that year.
“It’s the most coveted award in the drama community,” said Onchuma.
Strasberg wasn’t the only influential figure in the crowd — also among the play’s attendees was a 20th Century Fox executive who, after noticing Sodsai’s star potential, offered her a seven-year contract for a lucrative US$500 per week.
Instead, she opted for a two-year training course to keep improving at her craft.
“She turned down the financially lucrative deal in Hollywood to come back to Thailand and receive a monthly salary of 1,050 baht per month at the university instead,” said Onchuma.
Sodsai founded the dramatic arts school under Chulalongkorn’s English department in 1962. Later, in 1972, it became its own independent department. Sodsai made unprecedented moves like introducing Western plays to local audiences, including a Thai version of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth and Bertolt Brecht’s Waiting for Godot.
The school had no formal theatre venue at the time. Stage workshops were often held in the attic of the university’s auditorium.
“It was painstaking to seek out the budget for even, say, two light bulbs for our performance,” said Onchuma. “Ajarn Sodsai had to explain exactly what each prop was for. But she’s a good writer. She always convinced the budget people to give us the funds we needed.”
Sodsai’s contribution to the theatre and entertainment industry has gone beyond Chulalongkorn. She set up the first acting school for Channel 3, which has shaped several of Thailand’s most successful actors and actresses of today.
Onchuma considers herself lucky to have worked with Sodsai.
“She always inspires the people around her,” she said.
An accomplished artist in her own right, Onchuma has directed, written and performed in several stage plays, including playing the lead role in Mother Courage
and Rashomon.
Asked what she’s learned from a life devoted to the dramatic arts, Onchuma says: “What drama teaches us is how to be empathetic and not judgemental. And how we can understand each other.
“To work in drama, you have to be creative and constantly searching. It isn’t rocket science. The actor constantly has to improvise and find what is right for them.”
As for what Kru Yai has taught her, Onchuma replies: “Ajarn Sodsai shows me that, no matter the problem you’re dealing with, there’s always a solution.”