At the end of each year, I usually end with a summary and pick of the best theatre productions of the year. However, 2020 has been such an unusual year for everyone, a year of cancelled performances, cancelled travel plans, and digital migration of festivals and panel discussions.
Thailand has been relatively lucky though. We had our first show back in July (FULLFAT Theatre's Save For Later at the BACC). As youth activists began pouring onto the streets the same month, some theatre artists followed, making the streets their stage and later bringing the images, sounds, and spirit of the street back onto the stage. Fortunately, the Bangkok Theatre Festival (BTF) also wasn't forced to cancel or shift completely online in November.
Save For Later by FULLFAT Theatre was the first show to return after lockdown measures were lifted. (Photos: Pimpika hongsapiwat)
Since my engagement with theatre this year has been mostly online conversations in webinars and interviews, I want to end 2020 with a series of questions for 2021 and beyond. Some of these questions come from ongoing discussions, while others I feel have yet to be asked and need to be considered, and some may be meant for private reflection. Perhaps, this will be my new year-end tradition, one which brings a sense of continuity rather than closure.
The worldwide lockdown inevitably led to questions about whether theatre was essential. Theatre professionals naturally began reflecting on what theatre is and what it means. The crisis forced us to return to essential questions about theatre. Although Thai theatre professionals talk about development all the time, it's difficult to truly develop it without knowing what we value and without returning to essential questions about what we do.
B-Floor Theatre took to the streets and took the streets back to the stage for Flu-Fool. (Photo: Jukkrit Hanpipatpanich)
- Artists, critics, art managers, theatregoers, educators, policymakers, what do you value about theatre?
- Artists, what do you value in your work and expect from your colleagues?
- Theatregoers and critics, what do you expect from artists?
- Theatre critics, what do you value in theatre criticism?
- Editors, artists, theatregoers, what do you value about theatre criticism and theatre critics? What do you expect from them?
- Citizens and residents who work in theatre in Thailand, what do you expect from policymakers?
The Land Of Frang Frang In 1684 at the Bangkok Theatre Festival (BTF), which featured only local productions this year. (Photo: Nitaz Sinwattanakul)
- For everyone involved in the arts-and-cultural ecosystem, what kind of relationship do you want to have with one another?
This year, I spent weeks on Zoom reaching out to and building connections with performing-arts professionals in Southeast Asia through "Under The SEA" webinar series by the Bangkok International Performing Arts Meeting (BIPAM). It made me interested about the lack of connections right here in Thailand -- between the contemporary and traditional theatre worlds. Increasingly, I found that there are many misconceptions about one another and how we all need to explore the general understanding of the words "tradition" and "contemporary", which are too limiting.
- Contemporary theatre artists, what is your relationship with traditional Thai theatre forms? Is your practice informed by them in any way? If so, how?
- If not, to which aesthetic and artistic tradition do you belong to?
- How can we bridge the divide between contemporary theatre and traditional (classical and folk) theatre in Thailand?
- Contemporary and traditional theatre artists in Thailand, what common stories do you think you share with one another? What traditions do you think you share with artists beyond Thailand? What have you inherited and what do you want to transmit?
- Why do traditional and contemporary theatre artists not get the same treatment and level of support from the government?
- While members of the media often criticise the Culture Ministry for their neglect of contemporary theatre artists, how can we better equip ourselves to give more space and the same level of intellectual engagement to traditional theatre?
- How do we better record, archive, preserve and disseminate literature and other materials related to theatre?
- For art-lovers and everyone in the arts-and-culture sector, especially those in the Ministry of Culture, what does it mean to own and what does it means to belong when it comes to art and cultural heritage?
Though it's been a year of unusual levels of isolation and physical distance, it's also been a year where we all shared and experienced at least one common story together as human beings: the pandemic. To everyone who's reading, no matter who or where you are --in a year defined by the inordinate individual and collective losses but also some discoveries -- what have you lost, what have you found, and what have you taken ownership of?
