Remnants of a recent past

ONE of the joys of going to a show at a venue you don’t frequent is that you leave enough time before the curtain to make sure you get there on time. Thanks to the notorious evening traffic that forced me to make a U-turn back to the office and take the Skytrain, my enough time last Thursday meant a couple of drinks and some snacks at WTF’s bar. I spent that quiet time getting excited about the fact that Dee-Ng’s Kwin Bhichitkul and B-Floor Theatre’s Surat Kaewseekram are performing in each other's work in this new double-bill “What’s Left: Resonance from the Discarded”. I was also thinking of how many works by other senior artists I'd seen them perform in in the past five years. 
Kwin’s “Soapernatural” was staged on the second floor and saw performer Surat trapped in a living room that could well be a crime scene. Kwin did his photographic research on carcasses of animals who had died prematurely – and we got to see these photos only when we were about to go home. He deftly turned it into a performance that also included a Thai-dubbed “Ultraman” TV clip, an Ultraman suit, a number of red and pink women’s underpants, a vacuum cleaner and a portable washing machine – all of which as well as Surat’s interaction with them inspired the audience to think beyond what we were seeing and link them to our current socio-political situation. 

One floor up in extremely bright light was Surat’s “Coherence” and saw Kwin moving among the many plastic bags of trash, mostly plastic water bottles, Surat had collected in his research over the past year. 
The movements, music and actions were repetitive at times and occasionally grotesque and comical, although I wish there had been some quiet moments when the audience was allowed to look at this intriguing environment and respond to it. Also, the trash might have been more meaningful had it been more diverse in terms of content. 

While both works were well connected, thematically and stylistically, I also wish they had worked with another veteran director who would have added more coherence and perhaps even more surprise to the staging. 
But for now and the foreseeable future, the audience can rest assured that once physical theatre trailblazers like Silpathorn artists JarununPhantachat and Teerawat Mulvilai retire, we will still get to see engaging movement-based performances and “hear” messages that may not be possible in other media. 

Ten Shows Left
“What’s Left: Resonance from the Discarded” continues from Wednesday to Sunday and July 3 to 7 at 7.30pm, at WTF Gallery in Soi Sukhumvit 51 (BTS Thong Lo’s Exit 4). 
There’s no spoken dialogue. 
Tickets are Bt550, Bt2,400 for a pack of five, and Bt500 for students, at (094) 494 5104 and (092) 463-9569. 
Find out more at Facebook.com/BFloor.Theatre.Group.