Opening up the world

In almost a decade of travelling to dance and theatre festivals around the globe, I can perhaps count the number of untraditional Thai productions I have watched overseas on one hand. So it was with great delight that during my recent five-day visit to Offene Welt: Internationales Festival Ludwigshafen, hosted by Theater im Pfalzbau, three of the nine performances I watched were from Thailand. And unlike Thai works that are staged at most international festivals elsewhere, these three had nothing to do with the image we constantly promote in tourist campaigns. 

And although the programme booklet stated that all of them were having their European premieres at this festival, these were actually international premieres. Contemporary Thai performance that’s not based on tradition rarely leaves our shores.

At the Studiobuhne, Thanapol Virulhakul’s “Hipster the King”, a commentary on our obsession with social, political and cultural icons presented through a series of tableaux vivant by six actors with Thai and German surtitles, was as poignant as it was when I watched it almost a year ago at Democrazy Theatre Studio. As I read the surtitles repeating that these icons are doing everything for us and that we should get up and applaud them with love and appreciation, I couldn’t help thinking of what has been happening in Thai politics since the turn of the century and how we have succeeded in creating leaders simply by being fascinated by them.

If the subject matter of “Hipster” was universal, then Thanapol’s “I Am Thai”, last seen at the Bangkok Theatre Festival last year, staged at the Glasernes Foyer the following evening was specific to our current political climate. Five performers, their hands tied with red rope, were ushered to the stage. Playing contestants in a game, the winner of which would get to travel back home to Thailand, they were asked a series of questions. To the first on Thailand’s political system, one answered, by the book, “constitutional monarchy” and another, cheekingly, “Thai-style democracy”. Other questions like “What’s the German people’s favourite province in Thailand?” posed with the help of a German-speaking Thai translator, involved the audience, who voted on their favourite answer. While the overall tone of the performance was entertaining – reflecting our sanuk nature perhaps – it also made the audience understand that the world-famous Thai smile now has a different connotation.

Taking “Hipster” and “Thai” together, it was also evident that the line separating dance and theatre as well as performance and audience and art and society in contemporary Thailand, like elsewhere, is blurring.

Another characteristic of contemporary Thai theatre, that of adaptation, was evident in Cucumber the Killer’s “Virginian: The Body of Mickey Mouse”, a solo performance also premiered the Bangkok Theatre Festival by seasoned actor and composer Gandhi Wasuvitchayagit, who was inspired by Alessandro Baricco’s “Novecento”. With the help of sound designer Wardphan Diloksambanh, the performance also featured a computer program that detected his physical movements and translated them into soundscape. 

German dramaturg Sarah Israel enjoyed the works. 

“In ‘Hipster the King’, I saw a very intelligent, beautiful and playful work being presented in a very choreographic way. It reflects how time pushes something to a certain limit and questions the relationship between the performers and the audience who need to ask themselves ‘Will I have to get up and clap my hands?’ or ‘What does the show actually want from me, and vice versa?’ It pushes the audience to a point of reflection. I realised that when I got up and clapped, I wasn’t just participating in a performance, but also a political act,” she said.

“I think ‘I Am Thai’ is a very playful game about identity and like ‘Hipster’, it involves the individual and the political system. Both works are minimalistic and good examples of how artists work in a very calm way on a very deep subject matter.

“I always have a problem when people comment ‘This is not Thai’ because I don’t know what ‘Thai’ actually is. The artist who created it was born in Thailand. Is he a Thai Thai? Who defines it? I think this exchange of aesthetics is also a result of the international theatre market.”

Israel recently worked on a Cuban-German theatre exchange, which resulted in the production of “El Mal Gusto”, premiered to critical acclaim at Offene Welt. 

“I think we can learn a lot from your traditions and how they are reflected these days. I am referring particularly to the fact that foreign influences have been there from the beginning; while Germany is only now becoming more mixed yet we’re still using words like ‘the other’,” she said.

“I’m now interested in the humour German and Thai people perhaps share and how differently we talk about problems in different theatre forms. In Germany, we always define theatre as a discussion of life in the society.”

And thanks to this exposure, we’re happy to report that a new play project about German-Thai married couples in both Germany and Thailand is now in development.

Just like the name of the festival, this “open world” was as much for the European audiences, artists, producers and curators as for the 13 contemporary Thai artists who travelled to Germany last week. It’s the beginning not just of a festival but also the possibilities for a deeper cultural relationship between Germany and Thailand. And while Thailand hasn’t seen much of contemporary German performance in recent years, this is a great leap forward in our exchange. Of course, neither our foreign affairs nor culture ministries supported or took notice of this. And that, again, reflects the state of contemporary dance and theatre in Thailand.

Offene Welt also hosted a concert by popular Muslim musician Sami Yusuf and Ludwigshafen Sound Surround featuring various music traditions, as well as “Serbinale”, a collective of Serbian films, music and visual arts, curated in Berlin. 

In HKD Teatar and International Small Scene Theatre Festival Rijeka’s production of “Aleksandra Sec”, Croatian playwright and director Oliver Frljic revisited one of modern history’s dark spots from 1991, when a 12-year-old girl and her parents were murdered by a Croat militia. With his non-sensational approach, the specific and personal stories became more universal and, now that many years have passed, it’s easy to relate them to what’s happening today.

Contemporary German theatre was glimpsed through Munchner Kammerspiele’s production of “Das schweigende Madchen” by Nobel Award-winning writer Elfriede Jelinek, who parallels the trial of National Socialist Underground’s last member with our Judgement day.

Theaterperipherie Frankfurt’s “Ich rufe meine Bruder” offered another observation on intercultural society by Swedish-Turkish playwright Jonas Hasse Khemiri. Meanwhile, the issue of migration of labour was explored in “Erdbeerwaisen”, a collaboration between Germany’s Staatstheater Braunschweig and Romania’s Nationaltheater “Marin Sorescu” Craiova. 

Most performances were followed by a discussion led by artists and critics. There were also three public forums on “fear of the foreign”, “intercultural theatre” and “what are the boundaries of art?”, guaranteeing that this new festival is not merely a one-off showcase but a small think tank with eyes looking eagerly towards the future. 

 

The writer’s trip was fully supported by the Goethe-Institut and Offene Welt. He wishes to thank Marla Stukenburg, Jurgen Berger, Elena Krueskemper and Jochen Lamb for all kind assistance.

 

On the Web:

www.OffeneWelt.Ludwigshafen.de