Country girl yearns for urban life

Review

Many of the urban middle class population probably have little idea of what it's like to be a farmer in Thailand. Yet more and more urban middle class long for the life on the farm, to have an organic vegetable and fruits patches, to wake up far away from the streets cacophony and closer to endless stretches of green. In a commercial asset management company advertisement that claims to support a "new theory of agriculture" and "self-sufficient living", the handsome (and airbrushed) Bangkok-born veteran actor Nirut Sirijanya plays himself in a farmer get-up with a hoe slung over his shoulder. Long rows of vegetable patches lie behind him.

In Sao Chao Na (Girl of the Soil), adapted from a Japanese play of the same name by Hideki Noda, we see a portrait of a girl who comes from a family of farmers in Udon Thani - a portrait first imagined by a Japanese man, then re-imagined by a Thai team of adaptors, a director (Nikorn Saetang of 8x8 Theatre Group) and an actress (Oranong Thaisriwong). This girl, Mali, who longs for the city life, boards a train to Bangkok one fine day with the intention of leaving her rural upbringing behind forever. Street-smart and charming, she manages to make it all the way to Bangkok with no money.

The adults in her hometown think she's a "good girl" because she doesn't dye her hair. But in truth, she's already lost her virginity to a drummer, the 15-year-old Mali reveals with a dash of sass and nonchalance. The portrait of Mali may not conform to the typical image of a country girl. However, some of the urbanites who have ventured into the seedier side of the rural life may find Mali to be an ingenue compared to how sexually aggressive provincial girls can be.

The fact that the harsh reality of the city life doesn't crease her skin or slump her shoulders is another departure from what we like to romanticise about the innocence of the rural folks and what we imagine as their struggle in the concrete jungle. Mali seems to breeze through the chaos of Bangkok, finding herself a posse, a much-older botanist boyfriend and a comfortable place to stay in no time. She goes through a series of volunteering jobs, changing causes like she does her underwear. Mali's cause-hopping stirs unease in Prawit (Kantee Anantagant), her boyfriend, who grows increasingly confused by Mali's caprice and lifestyle.

The major force behind Mali's fast-changing passion is Seubsak (Nat Nualpang), a compelling speaker and leader of the Agriculture Club to which Mali belongs. His admirers, comprising youngsters who don't go to school, follow him like a herd of sheep. When Mali comes up with the idea of an organic rice product, Seubsak turns her dream into a deceptive marketing scheme that reaps profit for his organisation.

When the feisty girl discovers that her idea has materialised into a fraud, she returns home heartbroken and disillusioned. Prawit finds her back in Udon Thani, growing rice on her own, deaf to sounds of people calling out her name.

Sao Chao Na is a story of illusion, disillusionment and deception. Mali sees her idea of organic rice farming as a chance to prove her self-worth. When she realises that it has been corrupted by her hero and will never become a reality, her sense of self is shattered along with it. Her sudden return to her family's farming root and her apparent newfound love for farming may seem unconvincing at first. Yet this return is not a return to her roots as agriculture is something she has always hated. It's an act of desperation to prove that a provincial girl like her is capable of something important.

In the heartbreaking final scene of the play, this sense of self-loathe does not belong only to Mali. The character becomes a symbol of the state of agriculture and her self-loathe a reflection of how this sector of society has been made to hate itself through the illusions created by a materialistic and consumerist culture.

Sao Chao Na ran for four performances in Bangkok during the Bangkok Theatre Festival and took part in the Mekong Festival at the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Space last week. Nikorn faced the challenge of having to adapt this play into the Thai context for both the Thai and Japanese audiences. Noda has stacked volumes of complex issues into his play. The first viewing of this play can feel like being tangled in a web of threads. It's no wonder that some of Noda's Japanese audiences return to see his work with the intention to collect the details and better understand it with each viewing.

Napat Deepalad's clean, simple set comprising white blocks, green flooring and a strip of train track that opens to become a rice paddy came to life with Nikorn's dynamic blocking and choreography, which imbued the most mundane of actions and objects onstage with humour and vivacity. It's difficult to forget actors placing mobile phones into rows like they are planting rice. It's also not easy to erase the image of Mali planting green stalks of rice into the train track, her feet dirtied with wet earth.

Nikorn still has to fully own the play. It seems he has yet to find the courage to cut and question. Why can't Mali hear anybody? To a Japanese audience, the reason may be obvious, but to a Thai audience, it's a giant puzzle. The train track, the "rust-coloured pillow" that Mali likes to press her ear to as if waiting for someone to dash her away, is a symbol of longing, of progress, and ultimately, of illusion. For the Japanese, it's understandable why a train can evoke the idea of a brighter future. For the Thai, our train is so romantically slow it can only evoke nostalgia for bygone times.

Mali's language in the final scene is similar to Prawit's when he first meets her on the train and falls in love with the provincial girl. She compares agriculture to a forgotten woman and finds comfort in the warmth of the earth. Prawit, in his first encounter with the 15-year-old, becomes intoxicated by her innocence or what he terms "her poison". Like Prawit, our inability to fully grasp Mali and our tendency to romanticise someone like her is perhaps a reflection of how disconnected we are from her reality.

Relate Search: Nirut Sirijanya, In Sao Chao Na