Paws for thought

Working with animals – or even people dressed up as animals – is renowned for being difficult and now Dreambox Theatre Troupe is facing up to an ever greater challenge as it prepares to bring the much-loved doggie story “Mom” to the boards next month.

Written by the late MR Kukrit Pramoj and based on his love for his pooches, the story focuses on Mom, a mixed-breed Thai-German shepherd who is raised with plenty of love by a couple and their young daughter. A smart and protective pooch, he is loyal to his master until the day when he leaves home to fight for Thailand in World War II, leaving his wife and child. The dog’s life changes radically when their home is bombed and his family is killed. He becomes a stray but is later adopted by a rich family. But while the canine seems happy enough, he still pines for his former master.

Once compulsory reading for secondary school students, most Thai people of a certain generation have been touched by Mom’s loyalty to his master. However, with the story no longer in the textbooks, younger Thais know more about the Japanese dog Hachiko, a Shiba Inu who waited 10 long years for his master at Shibuya station in vain than they do Mom. The story has been made into both a Japanese and Hollywood movie, the latter starring Richard Gere.

“When we talk with young generation actors, they always cite Hachiko’s story or else they mix Mom up with other dog stories,” says Dreambox director Suwandee Jakravoravudh, adding that originally she had no intention of turning Mom’s story into a play or musical. 

 Even though Dreambox has experience with bringing animal characters to the stage, among them a horse in the “Mahajanaka” and a buffalo for “The Voice”, they have always used either animatronic robots or costumed actors.

Dogs, says Suwandee, are much harder, as they are much smaller in stature than people and this story is actually told through the eyes of a dog.

“We all know that the story is touching and everyone loves it but I had no idea how to bring dogs to play on stage,” she says.

“People, as used in the musical ‘Cats’, were out of the question and the puppets used ‘The Lion King’ the Musical werent feasible either,” she continues. “‘Mom’ is a story of a dog and a human with a realistic storyline. ‘Cats’ is just about cats and ‘The Lion King’ is fantasy.

She finally decided to combine actors and puppets, with the 10 dog characters in the show being animated and voiced by puppeteer-actors.

The director is well aware that getting audiences to accept puppets won’t be easy, so she has worked hard to set the scene from the very start of the show. 

“I think that once when they understand how we are going to present the dog characters, the storyline will lead them into Mom’s world,” she says.

The puppeteer notion takes a cue from the Broadway musical “Avenue Q”, in which actors manipulate puppets that are similar to those on “Sesame Street”. However, controlling the dog puppets is harder, given their size and thus the puppeteers require physical strength and a talent for balancing singing, acting and animating the puppet.

Bending over to control the dogs stance when the animal is only thigh-high risks the actors developing back pain and requires a high level of focus as they have to sing and act at the same times.

“If they can’t balance their emotions while acting, they’ll be in trouble. If they cry, then they can’t sing and they don’t have hands to wipe away their tears,” explains the director.

Suwandee cast her actors on the basis of their vocal skills than looked at whether they would also be able to act, manipulate a puppet and bark and howl convincingly. 

“Some of them were better at it than others so we chose the ones with the most potential then trained them.”

“Our actors need to be very flexible so they can bend over, get up and get down while also singing and acting at the same time. They’ve trained every bit as hard as athletes and require proper warm-up and cool-down sessions before and after rehearsals.”

Mom is played by Songsin Sirikhunarat who appeared in Dreambox’s previous “Fame the Musical”. Former teen singer Jitrakup “Bogie” Suntornsilpchai takes the role of Mom’s master while musical actresses Teeranai Na Nongkhai and Pijika Jittaputta alternate as his mistress.

“For human characters, we looked for actors who look fairly ordinary, as dog’s can’t really differentiate between one man and another by sight,” says the director.

Bogie, a member of RS Promotion’s now-defunct Bogie-Dodge duo in the early 2000s, starred in the TV musical drama “Phol Nikorn Kim-nguan” on the True4U channel, which was also produced by Dreambox and directed by Suwandee.

Songwriter and regular collaborator Suthee Sangsereechon has penned 30 songs for the show and Suwandee is delighted with his work, saying the theme song is so touching that people cry when they hear it. “I think it comes from his heart as I know his own dog died recently,” she says.

The story is very dear to Suwandee and indeed both she and playwright Daraka Wongsiri were involved in writing the script for an animation project for “Mom” some 30 years ago only to see the idea being scrapped. 

“Mom” was also made into a TV drama in 1997 starring Thapakorn Disayanan and Jintara Sukkhaphat as Mom’s masters.

 

BARKING OUT LOUD