In the league of Gentlemen

In Pichet Klunchun's “Nay Nai” (“Gentlemen-in-waiting”), commissioned and produced by the Singaporean company TheatreWorks and presented at their home studio 72-13 last June, the men in question – or as they are called in Thai, suphap burut – took their lead from Chanon Yodhong’s famous book “Nay Nai Samai Ratchakan Thi Hok” (literally “Gentlemen-in-Waiting During the Reign of King Rama VI”), which asks: “When women were not welcomed in the royal court, who replaced the nang nai (ladies-in-waiting)?”

Using high-energy classical and contemporary dance, “The Gentlemen” sets out to investigate not just the male and female roles in contemporary Thai society but also the training process that pushes both genders to the apex of power and influence and leads to their forgetting such virtues as “gentleness, rules, manners and morals”. 

Writing about the Singapore performance, Today critic Mayo Martin started his review with, “A Pichet Klunchun piece with club music and crazy strobe lights? Who would’ve thought?” He ended with, “As to what specific political comment he’s making, I’d rather not venture a guess. Not so much because it’s apparently a potentially sensitive topic given what’s happening in Thailand right now but because I just used the word ‘apparently’. Can’t claim to know what other codes are embedded in this fun, unusual work from Klunchun. Still, the guy deserves a fist bump.” 

The work, which is designed to look like a reality TV contest, sees the four male performers fight one another to gain the most power at the top. An extract from my review for The Nation reads, “On the surface, as evidenced by frequent laughter from the audience, ‘Nay Nai’ appeared to be the company’s most light-hearted work to date. It was also considerably cheekier than anything they have staged before”.

Apart from working with theatre professor Orada Lelanuj who joins the team as the dramaturg, Pichet also collaborated with King Mongkut’s University of Technology Thonburi’s engineering professor Priyakorn Pusawiro and her team from the Edutainment and Socio-Interaction Computing (ESIC) Lab.

 “We started by attaching the lighting censoring system to such set props as the four poles,” Pichet explains. “Later, we pushed the envelope further by discussing the idea with the costume designer [Piyaporn Bhongse-tong]. The question is how we can create the world of theatre for this final part, with the absence of performance. The answer is that we have to create a fantastical – not realistic – world, which is totally different from that of the audience. We’ve decided that our costumes should made of transparent plastic through which the performers’ bodies are visible, then we line the small fluorescent light tubes along the structure of these costumes. The effect is like that of deep sea water fish, and that’s clearly another world.”

Pichet, who two months ago became the first Thai artist to have received the prestigious John D Rockefeller III award from the Asian Cultural Council in New York, was pleased overall with the reaction to the work’s world premiere in Singapore.

“The work has a very specific Thai context and the audience needed a considerable amount of historical and socio-cultural background in order to understand it. Many of them, instead, focused more on the work’s queerness.

“Stylistically though, Esplanade – Theatres on the Bay’s producer Faith Tan and TheatreWorks’ Fred Frumberg noted that it was evident, with my deep roots in khon and classical Thai performing arts, that I always come up with new methods of creating contemporary performances. For them, it was totally unpredictable.” 

The Silpathorn Award laureate hasn’t made major changes to the work for this Thailand premiere though he has changed the title from “Nay Nai” to “The Gentlemen”. “I’d like to focus more clearly on the issue of the manhood,” he says. “And although I was inspired by the story of the gentlemen-in-waiting, the title ‘Nay Nai’ may distract the audience and have them thinking of other issues”

Pichet has also added a female dancer to the work, explaining, “This is to make my point clearer and the audience can see what happened before the gentlemen-in-waiting came into power.”

Unlike the company’s other works such as “Black and White” which was seen last month in Bruges, Pichet doesn’t expect “Nay Nai” or “The Gentlemen” to go off shore again, “Thai people and foreign expats who live here will understand and enjoy it better.”

Critics will lead a post-show discussion with the audience after each performance here, but Pichet has declined to join them. “I’d rather not,” he says. “The work has some strong and clear political comments. If any audience member has anything to discuss with me, please come to see me backstage.”

But would he get a fist bump from the NCPO?

 

PAIN AND GAIN

 “The Gentlemen” will be performed at 7.30pm on Friday and Saturday and 2pm on Sunday at Chulalongkorn University’s Sodsai Pantoomkomol Centre for Dramatic Arts at, a 10-minute walk along Henri Dunant Road from BTS Siam Exit 6.

Tickets are Bt600 (Bt 300 for students and Bt400 for artists and under-27s). Visit www.ShowBooking.com or call (02) 218 4802 and (081) 559 7252. 

Pichet’s “Body Pain” workshop is from 1 to 4pm on Saturday. To pre-register, e-mail [email protected].