Lost for lack of translation

Just two weekends after playwright and director Toshiki Okada and chelfitsch staged “Super Premium Soft Double Vanilla Rich” in Japanese with Thai and English surtitles, Bangkok audiences had the chance to watch another contemporary theatre production from the Land of the Rising Sun.
Thanks to support from Japan Foundation’s Asia Centre and Arts Council Tokyo in marking the 130th anniversary of Thailand and Japan’s diplomatic relations, Japanese director Yasuhito Yano and his Theatre Company shelf staged “Antigone/Border-line” as part of Thong Lor Art Space’s (TLAS) ongoing “2nd International Low Fat Art Festival”, which blends and blurs the lines between dance, music, theatre, visual arts and performance art. 

This was the company’s second outing at the festival Notwithstanding her engaging delivery of the famous commencement address, seasoned Thai thespian Sumontha Suanpholrat only had a brief period to rehearse with her Japanese costars. followed on the heels of its much-acclaimed “deprived” in 2015. Photo/Nutpajee Praparat/TLAS

At the cafe on TLAS’s second floor waiting for the curtain to rise, a couple of European theatregoers were heard voicing concern at learning from the programme that the performance would be in Japanese and Thai with no surtitles “for artistic reasons” despite the poster promising English and Thai surtitles. A staff member suggested we read the synopsis in the programme and re-familiarise ourselves with the play, causing my dramatic literature professors and Cliff Notes to pop into my head.
That in turn reminded me of my experience of attending international theatre festivals overseas. Because I believe that theatre is plenty more than spoken words, I’ve never been turned off by a chance to watch a performance in a language I don’t understand. However, that wasn’t the case for this “Antigone”.
Walking down to TLAS’s ground floor studio theatre, we saw five performers onstage and heard through loudspeakers a male actor reading choral odes introducing the background story of Sophocles’s “Antigone”, in Thai with no surtitles. 
Yano himself then appeared onstage and clicked off the air-conditioning in the room. Supertitles, in Thai and English, on a screen explained that this was to allow the audience to experience silence, and perhaps focus our attention on his actors. Yano had probably forgotten how busy Thonglor traffic is even on a Sunday afternoon and just how loud Thai motorcycles sound.

A Japanese actress not named in the programme was compelling as Antigone, a true rebel with a cause.  Photo/Nutpajee Praparat/TLAS

We were then taken into the world of Antigone and her timeless socio-political tragedy, entirely in Japanese. The four Japanese thespians who portrayed the title role, her uncle Creon, his son and her fiance Haemon and Apollo’s blind prophet Tiresias were so compelling that I didn’t notice another performer standing downstage right watching all dramatic events unfold. And it remained that way until award-winning veteran actress Sumontha Suanpholrat started to speak, in Thai with no English surtitles towards the end of the play, giving the famous “A Left-Handed Commencement Address”, which Ursula K. Leguin delivered to Mills College’s class of 1983. 

The whole performance was complemented by Thai motion graphics designer Techit Jiro’s muted video interviews with the five cast members and the director with English and Thai sentences highlighting the play’s key messages in addition to live video broadcast of the sidewalk just outside TLAS. Perhaps the aim here was to link the dramatic situations to the everyday world. These occasionally drew our attention away from the play’s dramatic actions. And despite the participation of these two Thai artists, I’m not sure if any audience member would call this a fine example of Japan-Thailand collaboration. Indeed, it would better be described as Japanese-Thai lingual confusion and the target audience should have been either Japanese-Thai bi-linguals or students of the Japanese language. 
With “Antigone”, of course, “Low Fat” lives up to its promise of presenting “less nonsense, low sugar, more cream” through “small performing art experiences”, although I don’t think, with the key letdowns mentioned above, it’s really “impactful”yet.
 
MORE ‘LOW FAT’
- “The 2nd International Low Fat Art Festival” continues at Thong Lor Art Space (three minutes on foot from BTS Thong Lor, exit 3). 
- “What We Are and What We Live In”, Darnui Parnui’s first solo watercolor painting exhibition starts tomorrow and continues until May 4, with live painting session daily. 
- On Saturday, “Low Fat Experimental Music Night” will present a unique party filled with ambient and experimental music by Thai sound designers and musicians. 
- Find out more at Facebook.com/ThongLorArtSpace, or call (095) 924 4555.