Last week I attended a stage play here in Bangkok that gave me a warm and fuzzy feeling.
Such news is not going to wipe army Lt Gen Manas off the front page and no, that feeling had nothing to do with the hip flask deep down in my Superdry manbag.
I went to a play called The Death Of Miss America, reviewed in the Bangkok Post last Thursday. For that reason I won’t go into too fine details for fear of no longer being seen as a trailblazer in the cut-throat world of Bangkok columnists.
It was a play performed by six young Thai people; a satire on beauty pageants as well as a look at Asian women in the Asean era. You could say it’s a case of Dream Girls meets a plate of som tam and sticky rice.
It’s about the final round of an international beauty contest held in Thailand where the favourite, Miss America, drops dead when the results are about to be announced. Hilarity ensues, until the very end where things get serious and a little hit-over-the-head.
I loved it. And if you get a chance, go see it. Not because it is a perfect play — structurally it’s a bit wobbly — but simply because we are witnessing a renaissance, or perhaps the birth, of English fringe theatre in Bangkok.
You may not see that as a magnanimous event, but I do.
What a great city Bangkok is, steeped in tradition and history as much as it is frenetic in its modernity. The food is fantastic, the people not counting the politicians are wonderful. Is there anything I miss at all being here?
Just the one; fringe theatre in my mother tongue.
I used to love going to the theatre. I have even dabbled in the craft myself. As a teenager I was a key member of the Sunnybank Repertory Company, famous for its Neil Simon bedroom farces that entertained the local community. The chief actor was the company’s carpenter; it was “understood” he would not construct the sets if he didn’t get a leading role. Hollywood may have had the casting couch; the Sunnybank Repertory Company had buzz saws and nails. But we performed a purpose, even if the floorboards were hardly the most wooden things found on stage during any performance.
Here in Bangkok we have the Bangkok Community Theatre that puts on the likes of Gilbert and Sullivan, Oscar Wilde and more recently, Jack And The Beanstalk. I have attended a number of BCT performances over the years, both enthusiastically and begrudgingly depending on whether I knew a cast member, and it certainly does perform a function in the expat community. But like the Sunnybank Repertory Company it is hardly cutting-edge (nor up to date; its website is trumpeting upcoming performances for 2008).
Theatre, both dramatic and musical, flourishes in the local language. There have always been stage shows adapted from famous Western plays to the local language and setting. Thai opera is alive; the country’s leading maestro, Somtow Sucharitkul, is at this very moment writing the seventh opera in a series of TEN about the lives of Buddha. Even Wagner wasn’t that crazy!
But English performance art has always been lacking, if not non-existent at times. Perhaps we can take heart that over on the Thai side, it was much the same for a while.
There used to be a very popular live theatre style known as likay in this country. These were travelling theatre troupes that set up at temple fairs, funerals, ordinations and housewarmings (though never at weddings, since the stories featured lost or unrequited love).
Wearing kabuki-style make-up and elaborate costumes, the actors performed original stories set in ancient kingdoms in a style that was probably an Asian cousin to vaudeville. There were allusions to politics along with sexual innuendo and in the end everybody lived happily ever after.
Turn on Thai TV and watch any of the older comedians. They all came from likay, which explains the wide-eyed stares, whooping noises and whistles, and the melodramatic double-takes.
The advent of television and cinemas killed likay right about the time TV and movies were killing vaudeville. Also, bigger likay troupes swallowed up smaller ones, but they can still be seen at temple fairs and are hilarious to watch … providing you know the language.
Things started to change about 10 years ago when there was a concerted attempt to revive stage shows, in particular dramas and musicals, with the construction of the Ratchadalai Theatre on Ratchadaphisek Road. It is Thailand’s West End or Broadway. A local producer called Boy Takonkiet Virawan put on a number of grand musicals and suddenly Bangkok had a theatre culture — in Thai.
English shows pass through Bangkok albeit for limited runs, for which we can thank my dear friend Evil Neil, who can be revealed for the first time ever in this column as being Neil Thompson from BEC-Tero Entertainment. He, along with Boy, are two important reformers of entertainment when it comes to stage performance.
But what if you are looking for something a little more … edgy? Fringe? Non-musical? And in English.
Fringe theatre, in Thai, is certainly around. But in English — nah, forget it. Never worked.
That is why The Death Of Miss America is forgiven for its flaws. Isn’t that what fringe is all about? I watched that show on the third floor of Chatrium building; who would have ever thought there was a theatre in there? It’s called a “black-box studio”, a space that seats no more than 50, and the actors were a mere two metres in front of me. This is how I could announce afterwards that Miss Singapore’s mouth stole the show; go see it and you’ll understand.
Fringe is all about intimacy, experimentation and the pushing of limits. It is often frayed at the edges, and its ideas are often adapted into mainstream. It doesn’t happen that regularly in English here.
It turns out this show (performed by the Culture Collective Studio) is not alone. There are other English theatre troupes in Bangkok, such as Peel The Limelight. This troupe put on a show in February with the brilliant title of Gruesome Playground Injuries in another off-Ratchadapisek black-box studio in Asok.
Then there is the Pico Theatre over in Silom that pushes the theatrical envelope. It has to be mentioned that all these three theatre troupes are run by Americans, but everything is a progression.
So what was it that really gave me a warm and fuzzy feeling during The Death of Miss America? I liked the fact I was watching six Thais performing in English. What a fantastic thing for Thailand to have, a culture of English theatre reflecting Thai society via original plays. There’s even a Bangkok Theatre Festival coming up in November featuring 60 theatre troupes. SIXTY! Ya gotta believe me; it was never like this before!
If Bangkok is indeed shedding its nerdy image, becoming more trendy and upbeat, could this also extend to fringe theatre? If it does, we all need to rally behind and support it.
So much of Bangkok’s character is being obliterated before our eyes thanks to the frenzied capitalism of condominium construction. We are about to lose the bustling food hub of Sukhumvit Soi 38, torn down in order to build studio apartments of a size ideal for a Lilliputian family of three.
But with the city’s increasing sophistication is the faint hope that changes will extend to live theatre. And why shouldn’t it: Isn’t the best art born of oppression? n
