PREDICTING THE UNPREDICTABLE

After “Pinocchio” and three episodes of political drama adapted from “Caligula” over the past year, All Soul Production is set for a new series of shows in 2012.
The company’s artistic director Maurizio Mistretta calls it “cabaret of quality” and explains that he’s putting on “a one-year project divided into five sections, each lasting two months.
“I’ll be exploring several forms of comedy with a huge interactive part,” he says
Having worked professionally in theatre in Italy for many decades before relocating to Thailand, Mistretta says, “This is not a recent idea but a revival of one of my past activities there and often presented as part of my theatre activities.
“It’s a homogenous ensemble of short performances written or re-written by myself and inspired by Commedia dell’Arte, the political German cabaret of Karl Valentin and Bertolt Brecht, the traditional style of Avanspettacolo of Petrolini e Toto as well as the recent schools of Dario Fo and Roberto Benigni. It’s a satire on contemporary society and politics in Thailand, of course, but also in Europe and all around the world.”
In “Manco Li Cani” (“Not Even Dogs”), the first show of the series that he’ll also direct, Mistretti will perform alongside Patchanee Poonthong, Massimo Galieti and Marco Berti.
“It’s Roman dialect that’s used to define some unpredictable situations that even dogs cannot stand,” says Mistretta of the title. “It’s apt as the main subject of this show is about some unlikely situations that we are experiencing in Thailand—political fights, natural disasters … our life here is not really paradisical.”
Mistretti says that the show will also offer amusing views on Bangkok by “a multicultural group of comedians playing, among other characters, a Roman centurion working as a waiter in an Italian restaurant and a nervous Anglo-Saxon businessman whose factory was inundated.
There are also “moments of physical theatre using pantomime to meta-theatre situations involving the audience.”
Mistretti admits that his choice of a light theatrical form of cabaret is an attempt to draw bigger audiences to their small theatre studio in the eastern suburbs. But he also says, “Being light doesn’t mean being stupid. To laugh intelligently is rare. This is not because people are not intelligent anymore but basically it is due to a lack of comedy proposals and the tendency to imitate television clich