Customers of the Government Savings Bank (GSB) and members of the press pretty well filled Muangthai Ratchadalai theatre last Wednesday night as the curtain rose on the first performance of “Thiraracha The Musical”.

Funded by the GSB and produced by JSL’s Mind Matters, the company behind the annual outdoor staging of “Klai Kangwon The Musical” in Hua Hin, the musical celebrates GSB’s 103rd anniversary and honours its royal founder.

Set in the reign of King Vajiravudh, it tells the story of an up-and-coming civil servant Luang Chai Phithet who also moonlights as a journalist voicing his social and political commentary under the pen name “Antonio”. His arch rival goes by the name “Anonymous” and he later finds out that she’s the young woman he was supposed to marry with the blessing of her parents. Coming in-between them is an army officer Captain Luang Thoet Bodinthon who’s loyal to the throne.

While this might sound like another melodrama, it’s actually a compelling drama set in a society in which freedom of speech was just starting to develop and democracy was being tested as part of the modernisation of Siam. Most importantly, the drama conveyed the message that we are all entitled to voice our opinions and we all must listen to and accept our differences with open minds, this at a time when we cannot say anything negative about the draft constitution.

There were also subtly hidden messages of the conflict between the Thais and Chinese, with corruption being blamed for the relationship between the former’s civil servant careers and the latter’s commercial benefits. And there was a jab at a rival bank that happens to be a patron of this venue. Perhaps that’s why the air conditioning wasn’t fully functional that evening.

However, just as the musical play was reaching its climax, the plot stopped developing and the show veered off in another direction, becoming just another presentation of King Vajiravudh’s contribution. This part looked and felt like scenes from another royalist musical drama “Si Phaendin” (“Four Reigns”). It’s as if GSB, whose slogan is “guaranteed by the government”, was afraid that the audience wouldn’t be able to see it already, indirectly yet clearly enough, in the play.

And so, while it set off as being a play the audience could enjoy, learn from, relate to our contemporary situation, and open our minds for discussion, the ending of this musical was more like a documentary stuffed with clear messages yet zipping our minds and our mouths.

Thanks in part to award-winning director Bhanbhassa Dhubthien, the audience watched a good flow of one scene into another while also witnessing a fine performance by Kornkan Sutthikoses as Luang Chai Phithet, who was much more comfortable here than he was in another period musical drama “Hom Rong”. Also memorable was Nuengthida Sophon, who was given a more mature role as Prayong than in her previous stage and TV productions and whose acting and singing was much better than that in “Rak Chap Chai”. She should however have a heart-to-heart talk with the costume designer.

Completing this love triangle but with less stage presence and more problems with his microphone was Pattarapon Tooun as Captain Luang Thoet Bodinthon. In lesser roles and yet delivering more arresting performances were Thanaporn Waekprayoon as Prayong’s mother Khunying Yuean, Chaiwat Anutrakulchai as Thep’s supervisor Phra Boriphanraksa and Sukanya Sompiboon as Thep’s mother Yok.

Standing out from the cast, but unfortunately in the wrong way, was Wasu Saengsingkaew as Chao Phraya Sena Phakdi, whose understanding of stage acting seemed to be shouting and stressing the last syllable of every sentence and whose singing made me wonder why he was once a teen music idol.

You don’t have to be a theatre scholar to know that King Vajiravudh, himself a playwright, actor, director and producer, introduced a then-new form of theatre here, namely lakhon phut, or spoken drama. The monarch wrote scores of original plays as well as translations and adaptations, including some Shakespearean plays, with a wide range of subject matter. And with the ongoing Shakespeare 400 celebration worldwide, I’m wondering if the cultural and educational merits would have been greater had GSB instead organised a festival to promote new and smaller stage productions of the king’s translations of Shakespeare by professional companies and university students.

But then again, I’m just a lifelong GSB customer whose mother buys one GSB lottery ticket as a gift on every birthday. And so, “Thiraracha The Musical”, while truly serving the celebration purpose, was just another one-off theatrical event, a one-weekend talk-of-the-town that had little effect on society and the development of contemporary Thai theatre.

The Pichet Klunchun Dance Company returned earlier this month to Singapore’s Esplanade – Theatres on the Bay, where a few years ago as artists-in-residence, he and his troupe developed “Black and White”, a compelling contemporary dance work now on tour and which helped company members further develop their artistic and personal bonding. The Esplanade’s support continues with the commissioning of “Dancing with Death”, the company’s largest work to date.

This was a true company work as, except for the latter part, in which Pichet stepped out and through his movements became a spiritual leader conducting this celebration of life and death, but always remained part of this tightly knit company.

Taking inspiration from Loei’s Phi ta khon festival, Buddhist teachings, works by late world-class choreographers like Kazu Ono and Pina Bausch as well as each individual dancer’s background, the work risked being an intercultural hodgepodge. Instead it was a keenly unified performance that reflected the many influences on Thai culture from past to present.

The venue was also experimenting, as the set featuring a large yellow oval with many slopes was too large for the theatre studio where “Black and White” was staged, and the audience’s sightline in the main theatre wouldn’t fit either. The Singaporean producer then turned the upstage area of the main theatre’s huge stage into a medium-sized theatre. The new temporary space nicely fit the performance but the slope degree of the stand was too low and many in the front section didn’t get the angle Pichet wanted. With the oval shape of the slope stage and the fact that he wanted to involve the audience, at least spiritually, I’m wondering if a theatre-in-the-round format might better suit.

Flynow’s designer Piyaporn Bhongse-tong’s costumes showed the sharp contrast between the Phi ta khon-inspired costumes and the off-white attire of the dancers when they represented the spirits. Working in a totally new space, Japanese lighting designer Asako Miura’s job wasn’t simple and while all the dramatic requirements were met successfully, I would have liked to see the dancers float more up and down the slopes. Her compatriot, sound designer Hiroshi Iguchi, keenly combined the soundscape he recorded in Dan Sai and Northeastern Thai tunes led by the khaen, a reed mouth organ, with electronic sound.

Five days before the Southeast Asian premiere of “Dancing with Death”, Pichet conducted a two-hour workshop with local dancers, choreographers and advanced dance students. I wasn’t present at that workshop but like the rest of the audience watched as many of them walked from backstage and the audience stand to join and blend in with Pichet Klunchun Dance Company dancers towards the end. Their movements, and more importantly their celebratory spirit, were an excellent reminder of the Dan Sai people, who are not professional dancers, at the Phi ta khon festival. This once again provided proof that sheer understanding can always accompany skills in performing arts, no matter whether these are traditional or contemporary.

LIFE AFTER ‘DEATH’

– Pichet Klunchun Dance Company didn’t find the funding to bring “Dancing with Death” to Thailand so the company will take a brief pause.

– Next year, “Dancing with Death” will head Down Under, to the Arts Centre Melbourne’s Asia-Pacific Triennial of Performing Arts and the Adelaide Festival Centre’s OzAsia Festival. For details, check Facebook.com/PKLifeWork.

– Back in Singapore, the Esplanade is hosting the first “Super Japan – Japanese Festival of Arts” until Sunday. For more details, check http://www.Esplanade.com.

 

THANKS TO ITS welcome diversity in programming, Thong Lor Art Space is a great place to visit on a regular basis. Just like the vibe from the restaurants, bars and nightspots for which this neighbourhood is famous, TLAS keeps its lights on, its curtains up and its vibrancy throbbing all year round.

Last month, Thong Lor Art Space hosted “Suk-ka-sak-ka-raj”, an interdisciplinary performance in which cellist Yui Cello shared the stage with an actress/illustration drawer, a ghost writer, a physical theatre artist, a contemporary dancer, independent musicians, a sound designer and a documentary filmmaker. Although they didn’t have time to work across fields, the fact that artists from so many disciplines could be seen in one work was a rare treat in this country.

Now, it’s the contemporary Japanese performance “1969: A Space Odyssey? Oddity!” by Kaimaku Pennant Race (KPR), making its Southeast Asian premiere. From the title, which was drawn from Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece “2001: A Space Odyssey” and David Bowie’s song “Space Oddity” released in 1969, and the fact that the show was at Avignon OFF Festival, audience members were expecting either a dance performance or non-verbal comedy with plenty of music. We were all caught by surprise.

Three performers in white unitards, namely Takuro Takasaki, GK Masayuki and Yuri Morita occupied the stage while playwright and director Yu Murai, in street clothes and with a globe attached to his hat, remained downstage watching in front of his sound effects control board. Occasionally during the show, Murai poured milk from a jar and drank it from his glass. Towards the end we could see a spaceman miniature at the bottom of the jar.

Among many scenes dwelling on absurd situations, there was one in which two performers argued about a new pair and a worn-out pair of white shoes. In another – compulsory audience participation is enforced by keeping the full house lights on – all three of them, wanting to cross the border, walked into the audience stand and asked us, in Thai and English, which direction was south. We pointed them in various directions.

The show was heavily text-based and yet, thanks to the English and Thai surtitles on the four monitors placed on four corners of the stage and visible to all in the audience stand at all times, we could all understand what they were talking about. I noticed that Japanese audience members or Japanese-speaking Thais laughed more than us, so this was perhaps another case of slightly lost in translation.

The whole experience brought back a fond memory of watching Samuel Beckett’s absurdist drama masterpiece “Waiting for Godot”, which, brought me many more smiles and laughter when I was in my early 30s than it did when I was in my late teens.

“1969: A Space Odyssey? Oddity!” pleasantly reminded me that I was born and raised in the space exploration era, when there was neither Internet nor smartphones. I recalled how excited I was to watch “Star Wars” and “Star Trek” at the cinema. I also remember how my Grade 7 classmates were impressed with my class presentation on the space shuttle, using a toy my cousin brother brought for me from the US.

But I don’t think the purpose of this show was to remind me that I am now middle-aged.

In fact, while in no way political, it made me realise that in much the same way as space exploration during the past half century hasn’t progressed very much and man’s landing on the moon remains the most exciting moment, our country has been led by one military prime minister after another, with several coups in-between. Of course, we have Internet and smartphones now, but our democracy hasn’t progressed that much. Could the new constitution be a way out or would it be 1932 eternally?

MORE SHOWS

– “1969: A Space Odyssey? Oddity!” by Kaimaku Pennant Race runs until Sunday at Thong Lor Art Space, a five-minute walk from BTS: Thong Lor. Shows are at 7.30 nightly with a 3pm matinee on Sunday. It’s in Japanese with Thai and English surtitles. Tickets are Bt500 (Bt450 in advance, Bt350 for students). Call (095) 924 4555 or go to Line ID “@lvj7157z”.

– June will have Pattarasuda Anuman Rajadhon’s staging of Josh Ginsburg’s “Stick Figures”, with Thai- and English-speaking casts alternating. For more details, Facebook.com/ThongLorArtSpace.

Last year, with support from the Culture Ministry’s of Culture’s Office of Contemporary Art and Culture (OCAC), Pichet Klunchun conducted research into the Phi ta khon festival held in Dan Sai district, Loei, in preparation for his company’s new work “Dancing with Death”.

Premiered at Kanagawa Arts Theatre in February as part of Tokyo Performing Arts Market, “Dancing with Death” received a warm reception from both audience and critics and next month makes its Asean debut as part of the Esplanade’s da:ns series in Singapore.

Thai audiences though, are unlikely to see the piece, even though it is firmly based within their own culture.

While disappointed at the lack of support at the local level, Pichet is nonetheless enthusiastic about his latest creation and happy to talk to XP about his research and the results it produced.

“My main question was how these villagers, more than half a century ago and without proper training, could create such an art,” the recipient of the John D Rockefeller 3rd Award says. “We found that in this unique community there is a spiritual leader Chaopo Khuan, who is assisted in administrative matters by someone called Thaen. For example, it is he who decides the dates for the Phi ta khon festival, and not the district director nor the tourists. What’s intriguing is that the three-day festival shows the sheer balance of power between spirituality, religion, people and government agency.

“And to answer our main question, we found that ‘intuition’ is the key answer. We’re all born with intuition, but when we go through an education system that is bound by many restrictions, it may be suppressed and as a result never shows itself. City people, as a result, cannot fully make use of their intuition. It’s the opposite for the villagers who focus on certain practices for a long period of time and with perseverance. They can really see what they’re doing, instead of just doing it automatically. This intuition can also sustain the creation of many other things.

“I’m not saying that highly educated people don’t have intuition. They can but they have to realise first that the knowledge they gain from their education system is only a frame. There’s a lot of other stuff that has been with us since birth.

“We also conducted various workshops with people there, from various walks of life, and in the end we arrived at a theory, or an image, of a circle with exits in all directions.”

This theory became the core of Pichet’s choreography for this work, which deals with ancestors, spirituality as well as sacrifice.

“For example, I created a short piece of choreographed movements for my dancers, they repeat it, and we see what it leads to or, mixed with each individuality, which exit each takes.”

This is different from most of Pichet Klunchun Dance Company’s previous works which are based on the techniques of khon, the classical Thai masked dance theatre, and that’s why Pichet writes in his note for the programme: “the process has been truly arduous and I’ve known since the beginning that there is more chance to fail than succeed. However, if we fear the unknown and change, we will fall into the old pathway of those choreographers who finally give up creating dance performance and then change their career.”

He continues, “I would like to put the best effort into my work – and if I fail, I will not regret it.”

And he has definitely not failed.

Writing after the performance in Tokyo, a critic for Australia’s major arts magazine RealTime Arts noted: “‘Dancing with Death’ is situated in the spiritual everyday. It boasts liminal figures: gods and the godlike.

“When the dancers come together they exert a palpable force, the force of common humanity.”

No surprise then that the work has already been invited to the Arts Centre Melbourne’s Asia-Pacific Triennial of Performing Arts (Asia TOPA) and Adelaide Festival Centre’s OzAsia Festival next year.

Commissioned by the Esplanade—Theatres on the Bay, “Dancing with Death” will be in Singapore next week and will be the first Thai performance ever to be staged in the main theatre. The audience, though, will not be in their regular seats in the auditorium, but on the stands on the stage, around the set.

“The audience should be able to watch the performance from above and the audience seats in the Esplanade Theatre are not sharply raked. We’ve been exploring many options and I think this is best,” Pichet explains.

Pichet will also conduct the “Bridging Traditional and Contemporary” workshop this coming Sunday, and the participants will also be part of the performance the following weekend.

The original idea was to stage the performance in Thailand in June. To this end, a few months ago the company set up a crowd funding programme online, where anyone could donate any amount of money to support the performance cost in Thailand, estimated at nearly Bt4 million. Just four days remain and the money is still well short.

“If we don’t reach this goal, then, unfortunately, this [Thai] production cannot be staged here for now. We’ll keep it in our repertoire, tour to other countries and see what will happen.

“This has created another issue. A lot of people are questioning why we need that amount of money for this. Even the Culture Ministry is doubting that figure, though they can easily support a Thai film production with the same kind of budget. We have to rent a venue, and we’re looking at M Theatre, whose rental cost in addition to the rental of lighting equipment amount to about Bt1 million. A lot of people don’t realise there are many other costs involved in stage production. For example, when we promoted this campaign and conducted workshops at the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre (BACC) earlier this month, we paid Bt60,000 just to transport the set.

“Many [foreign] producers and artists say this is a very odd case. Usually, artists raise funds so that they can stage their works overseas. This is the opposite and I think, notwithstanding our decision four days from now, it’s a lesson for us, dance and theatre artists, the public as well as the government.

And the major question is, of course, ‘Why?'”

DANCING AT THE DURIAN

<“Dancing with Death” by the Pichet Klunchun Dance Company will be perfomed at 8pm on May 6 and 7 at Esplanade Theatre in Singapore.

 

Stage designer, actor and director Surachai Petsangrot must have been taking artistic methamphetamine or perhaps he just has a highly inspirational muse. His interdisciplinary work and collaboration with many others “Lone Man and the Flowers” took up all floors of Thong Lor Art Space in late February, and now his new work “Home”, or in Thai “Bam sam wan song khuen”, is running a few hundred metres down Soi Thonglor at the B-Floor Room.

Entering the small studio one person at a time, we walked past the four performers – namely Sasapin Siriwanij, Chanida Panyaneramitdi, Narit Pachoei and Jirakit Sunthornlapyos – at the centre table on which sat cardboard box models of houses belonging to each of them. Even glancing at each model, it was possible to see the amazing detail with the miniatures and accessories in each providing the audience with knowledge about each performer’s characteristics.

Once all audience members were seated on the stand at one end of the room, all four performers went back to their corners, each of which were decorated with props – probably their own – which revealed more about who they are.

For example, young actress Chanida’s corner was filled with cuddly dolls.

For the next 100 minutes, we heard their stories – a blend of truth and drama – through monologues and dialogues delivered both from their small corners and at the centre table. These were heartfelt at times and often comical, especially when they seemed to be talking about the same topic though in fact they were not.

While the structure of the performance is set, each evening differs as the topics of their monologues and dialogues change, a good thing as I’m sure some audience members will go to see the piece more than once. The work has been described as “short films performed live” and that’s a fitting definition.

Each segment is complete in itself and it was easy to draw connections between them as well with parallels to our lives. Also noteworthy was how they listened and responded to one another. And despite their various theatre backgrounds and experiences, they formed one strong ensemble in which no one was, or tried to be, more dominant than the rest. This was most evident in the scene when they all brought their model houses back to the table, lining them up next to one another and performing a scene as if they were neighbours.

This was followed another scene in which, one by one, they were visited by another character, invisible on stage. A performer would knock at the table and the audience could see that there was a doorknob and the table was actually a door lying horizontally on two boxes. The pace of the performance never changed – there was no conflict, climax or turning point – but such is life, and not theatre in the traditional sense.

Between scenes, narration – probably Surachai’s notes, statement or introduction – was projected onto the space between the two boxes, like punctuation marks or chapter breaks. Perhaps he didn’t want us to read them completely, as the flash was too brief and audience members in the side section had a restricted view.

Like “Lone Man”, Surachai has given artistic freedom to and as a result gained a lot from his collaborators, including his assistant director, Art de Ground’s Kwin Bhichitkul. And when the artist doesn’t want to preach a strong message but instead leave room and space for our appreciation and interpretation, we gain a lot from his work too.

LAST SHOW

– “Home” will be performed once more at 8 tonight in the B-Floor Room at the Pridi Banomyong Institute, between Thonglor sois 1 and 3 . It’s in Thai – no English.

– Tickets are Bt450 (Bt350 for students and Bt300 for those who’ve already watched it).

– For details call (089) 130 6305.

 

There’s no typo here. Brook is not far from the century mark and thanks in major part to his longtime collaborator, Marie-Helene Estienne, who shares the directing and script adaptation credits, he hasn’t shown any sign of slowing down. “Battlefield” premiered at Paris’ Theatre des Bouffes du Nord, where Brook stepped down from the artistic directorship after almost four decades, and after travelling to many countries, enraptured the audience at the 44th Hong Kong Arts Festival last month.

Hearing that Brook and Estienne were adapting Jean-Claude Carriere’s play “Mahabharata”, many theatregoers thought that we would get to see a redux of Brook’s most famous nine-hour production from the 1980s. After learning that “Battlefield” would run for a little more than an hour, we then thought it was an abbreviated version of the Indian epic. In fact, it was neither of the above. Rather, Brook and Estienne focused on what happened after the great war in which the casualty toll reached 10 million. Through encounters with other characters who recounted allegorical tales and fables, the new king Yudishthira couldn’t really enjoy his victory with so great a loss, and meanwhile the defeated blind king Dritarashtra pondered if such a war could have been prevented in the first place. And with this title, the play had even more resonance – the most important part of any war is not the battle itself, but its aftermath.

Just as Brook is a master storyteller, his four performers of different nationalities, namely Carole Karemera, Jared McNeill, Ery Nzaramba and Sean O’Callaghan also had a great time telling various tales and fables with highly efficient use of their limited set and hand props – fabrics and bamboo sticks. Manipulated in different ways by the actors, these turned into various objects and beings. Always present on the stage, Toshi Tsuchitori’s percussion became another character. In this almost empty space, the artists used plenty of their imagination and so did the audience. And in an era when our senses are being overloaded with visual images from social media, this was much needed.

Brook wrote that when his production of “Mahabharata” premiered at Festival d’Avignon in 1985, not many people knew how the title should be pronounced. Seated next to me at the Hong Kong Cultural Centre’s studio theatre last month, a woman taught her friend that the first two syllables should be pronounced as “Mahab” -silently I tried using the same criteria to pronounce my family name. Perhaps that’s part of the reason why in this age of information technology when we can easily access information on anything, we love going to the theatre, to watch and listen to stories we’re not yet familiar with and from which we can learn.

The tagline of the recently ended 44th HKAF was “What comes after”, and of course this “Battlefield” fit right in, asking us to think what came before and what is happening in a time when terrorism is never far from the headlines.

On the Web:

http://www.BouffesDuNord.com

http://www.HK.ArtsFestival.org

Opera Siam last week presented two performances of “mozart & ME”, an extraordinary one-man show by the Australian bass Damian Whiteley.

Whiteley works at the Zurich Opera and commutes between Europe and Sydney, and in transiting through Thailand recently he’s appeared in operas as varied as “The Magic Flute” and “Sakuntala” and three by Somtow Sucharitkul, “The Snow Dragon”, “Bhuridat” and “The Faithful Son”.

In “mozart & ME”, Whiteley is more than a smooth-tongued operatic bass. He plays the piano, sings, changes clothes, does wild accents and even “makes love” to a coat – all with maniacal intensity and verbal humour. The show flies by so quickly you could miss a lot if you blink.

This entertainment is the story of Lorenzo da Ponte, the Italian poet in the Viennese court who wrote the libretti of three of Mozart’s greatest operas – “Don Giovanni”, “The Marriage of Figaro” and “Cosi fan Tutte”.

Da Ponte, of course, takes all the credit for revolutionising music, and much else besides. The conceit of the playwright, Melvyn Morrow, is that da Ponte, who emigrated to America and become professor of Italian at Columbia University, has somehow survived into modern times and is now in Hollywood writing commercial jingles. In this show, we have him telling his story.

And how he tells it! A greater genius than Mozart, a more passionate lover than Casanova, a more brilliant poet than Metastasio and a lustier priest than – well, nothing is left to the imagination.

It is rare for a single artist to be able to act and sing and play the piano all at the same time (not to mention do his own wardrobe). Whiteley’s lightning transformations stunned the audience.

The small but rapt audience at the Siam Society was blown away and gave Whiteley a lengthy standing ovation on opening night. He returns to Bangkok again in June for the premiere of Somtow’s “The Chariot of Heaven”, the fifth opera in his “Lives of the Buddha” series.

With the 450th anniversary of his birth marked two years ago and the 400th of his death a few weeks from now, the Bard has retained his top spot as the world’s favourite playwright. Over the past few years, many of us have watched more productions than ever before. And one of the delights of watching a Shakespearean production is seeing how the production concept differs from what have previously experienced, with extra fun coming from watching a play with which we’re familiar in another language.

Such was the case for Tang Shu-wing Theatre Studio’s Cantonese-spoken “Macbeth”, a co-commission of Hong Kong Arts Festival and Shakespeare’s Globe. This cooperation stems from the immense success of Tang Shu-wing’s “Titus Andronicus”, which was among the 37 productions in 37 languages staged as part of the Globe to Globe Festival during the London Cultural Olympiad 2012. This “Macbeth” premiered in London last summer and closed the 44th Hong Kong Arts Fest last weekend.

Tang cut some scenes and edited others and the play ran at a good pace, clocking in at a little over two hours. It was clear that he had both English and Hong Kong audiences in mind, as the title character, arrestingly performed by stage veteran Ng Wai-shek, and his wife, the equally mesmerising Rosa Maria Velasco, were attired in modern Western clothes while others wore traditional Chinese costumes – though that wasn’t simply to point to the villains of the piece.

Rather, as the prologue and epilogue by this modern day couple were set in the here and now, this bridge reminded us that what happened in this play, no matter how dreamlike or imaginative, is still recurring now. The performers’ movements showed influences of both Western physical theatre and Chinese traditional theatre techniques, and made it unnecessary for the audience to read surtitles all the time.

Set designer Ricky Chan’s backdrop looked like a Chinese landscape painting while the barren floor allowed lighting designer Leo Cheung to efficiently paint with western lighting techniques. Facing the stage and seated just in front of the audience’s first row was multi-instrumentalist Billy Leong whose rendition on Chinese, Japanese and Korean instruments, coupled with other soundscapes on his laptop computer, added aural texture to the production.

While this “Macbeth” might not be as astounding as his “Titus”, Tang Shu-wing proved once again that Shakespeare is indeed our contemporary and there’s plenty more we can explore with his plays.

ALL EYES ON HK

• The 45th Hong Kong Arts Festival is set for February 16 to March 17, 2017. Highlights include Bavarian State Ballet, Les Ballets Jazz de Montreal and Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch. Ticket sales begin in October. Visit http://www.HK.ArtsFestival.org.
• The Tang Shu Wing Theatre Studio offers physical-theatre training for youths and adults in addition to workshops by international masters. For more details, check http://www.TSWtheatre.com.

AFTER TOURING CITIES in Indonesia, the 34-year-old Japanese company Ryuzanji will be in Thailand this Sunday for the first time.

The Ryuzanji Company has its origins in Kabuki as well as Angura – Japan’s underground theatre movement of the 1960s, a time when Japan’s contemporary theatre culture underwent a revolution. Show Ryuzanji founded the company in 1984 after participating in two of the major Shogekijo movement theatre companies, Jokyo Gekijo, led by Kara Juro and Wazeda Shogekijo, led by Tadashi Suzuki.

Adapting and reinterpreting Broadway musicals, Shakespeare’s and Chekov’s plays as well as Kabuki’s scripts, the company has created more than 300 works, collaborated with leading Japanese theatre artists in addition to young producers and performed in the US and the UK as well as Egypt, Iran and Russia.

The company operates under the vision that “theatre is an asylum”, creating a new theatre network within Japan and around the world together with “friends we haven’t met yet”.

In selecting his performers, Show says, “I’m not particularly looking for any special skills, but how they can work with other people, especially those they’re not yet familiar with. We’re putting on six to eight productions in a year and spending about two months on domestic and international tours and so they need to be in good health and able to work under pressure. And as theatre is a composite art, we’re also training designers and producers.”

Show has selected an epic Chinese folk tale “Journey to the West” because “it shows the diversity of Asian cultures and at the same time how some of them influence and blend with one another.”

The original tale of course is very long and in this version the performance time is about 100 minutes. Show explains, “From the original story, we have the recurring images of the immortal Monkey King Sun Wukong and the unreachable Bharata Land. In our version, we want the audience to enjoy the endless imagination and the story doesn’t have a definite ending.

“Our main mission is to reinterpret the old tale in the framework of contemporary theatre and the director Tengai Amano achieves this by using various techniques from lighting and sound, computer graphics to dance and sword fights. We also adapt to various styles of performance venues, going from a 200-seat studio theatre to a 500-seat concert hall to an outdoor stage at Borobudur. The computer graphics will change in accordance with the local audience’s language and culture. It’s like we and the audience are creating this work together.”

“In Jakarta, Yogyakarta and Borobudur, audiences, adults and kids, have various emotional reactions throughout the play -they’re amused, excited, surprised and even stunned.”

This is the first time Ryuzanji Company is performing in Thailand.

“We have to thank especially [B-Floor Theatre’s] Teerawat ‘Ka-ge’ Mulvilai. I met him for the first time on a flight back from at a festival in Cairo, and I always remember the date because it was September 11, 2001. We have kept in touch ever since. We are also grateful to the ‘World Performances @ Drama Chula’ programme, which is hosting us.”

Ka-ge will also make a special cameo performance in “Journey to the West” this Sunday. On Monday, the Monkey King Sun Wukong will meet our Hanuman, and on Tuesday, another surprise from this gay capital of Asia.

The theatre company’s first trip to Thailand is being made possible with the support of the Agency for Cultural Affairs, Government of Japan, the Japan Foundation Bangkok and the “World Performances @ Drama Chula” programme.

The writer wishes to thank Piyawat Thamkulangkool for his translation assistance.

ROOTS RUN UNDERGROUND

– “Journey to the West” runs from Sunday to Tuesday at Chulalongkorn University’s Sodsai Pantoomkomol Centre for Dramatic Arts. It’s a 10-minute walk along Henri Dunant Road from BTS Siam, Exit 6. Shows are at 2pm on Sunday and 7.30pm on Monday and Tuesday. It’s in Japanese, with English and Thai surtitles and is followed by a discussion. Tickets cost Bt600 (Bt300 for students; Bt400 for professional artists and those younger than 27).

– Show Ryuzanji will lecture on “Japanese Underground Theatre” and hold a “Body Practice for Performer” workshop from 1 to 4pm on Tuesday. It will have Thai translation. Admission is free but is limited to 25 participants.

– For details, call (02) 218 4802 and (081) 559 7252 or check http://www.Facebook.com/dramaartschula.

 

Paula Vogel’s Pulitzer Prize winning drama “How I Learned to Drive”, Peel the Limelight’s fourth work in less than two years, met with such an enthusiastic response that the two-weekend run at the intimate Spark Drama’s studio sold out completely and an additional performance had to be added to cope with the waiting list.

The company continues to fly high after the highly acclaimed “The True History of the Tragic Life and Triumphant Death of Julia Pastrana, the Ugliest Woman in the World” staged last year as part of Bangkok Theatre Festival 2015.

Director Peter O’Neill’s arresting production stayed true to the original spirit of the play. And even though the story was set in the 1960s-1970s, way before sexual harassment and child abuse became hot issues, and in rural Maryland, far away from our tropical paradise, the pivotal messages travelled well across time and socio-cultural differences. While the audience was mainly made up of expatriates, the well-translated surtitles meant that Thais understood and enjoyed the play too.

The story was a reminder, as powerful as it was heartfelt, that in such a case the physically weaker and younger need not always be the victim.

The two main cast members, Thai actress Siree Riewpaiboon as Li’l Bit and British actor James Laver as Uncle Peck, and the three members of the chorus, American actor and musician Nick Gallagher, South African actress Mandi Manson and British singer and musician Claire Stanley, formed a strong ensemble. However, sitting on a side section, it seemed that some of them forgot about the 10 audience members on the two side sections, thus forcing us to peek round at their actions. Their speaking and singing voices, though, filled the small space and occasionally I wondered if the pace of the play would be quicker and the performance more realistic if they lowered the volume.

Thanks to her good command of English, Siree blended in with the native speakers although her characterisation of Li’l Bit in her early to mid-teens was questionable. And while Laver’s work on his accent and physicality as a married middle-aged man was praiseworthy, his sexual desire was so subtle that, despite being the initiator, he was clearly the victim from the beginning.

Working with the limited space and probably a limited budget, production designer Kochawan Chayawan efficiently selected the necessary set props. These included the car seats, which were significant to the telling of the story and also served as dining chairs and a bed. I do wish though that she had made use of the traffic light pole – the only set prop not to be pressed into service.

The audience could see how Li’l Bit matured over the course of the play thanks to Kochawan’s choices of costume, although those frequent onstage costume changes looked clumsy and delayed the pace.

All Peel the Limelight performances are followed by discussion between cast and crew and the audience, which confirms the company’s aim to provide theatrical food for thought in this culinary heaven.

GO ASK AGNES

– Peel the Limelight is planning to put John Pielmeier’s controversial drama “Agnes of God”. For details, check http://www.PeeltheLimelight.com or Facebook.com/PeeltheLimelight.