A lesson in collective playwriting
But even deft staging is unable to save a collage of thoughts in the latest For What Theatre production
Theatregoers are well aware that Wichaya Artamat and For What Theatre love experimenting with how we enjoy theatre. The spirit of artistic adventure and the level of aesthetic risk are always high in their works. And like in all scientific experiments, some work and others don’t.
For the latest experiment “Mai mi arai cha phut” (“What we talk about when we don’t talk about the elephant in the room”) which ended its two-week run on Saturday, he asked five professional writers who had no experience in playwriting to write short plays. They were Lukkana Punwichai, Tomorn Sookprecha, Wiwat Lertwiwatwongsa, Yingcheep Atchanon and Prajak Kongkirati, all of them thinkers whose views on life, society and politics are sharp. Screenwriter and film director Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke then wrote a parody of these and the scripts were later compiled, edited and rearranged in a collage by Wichaya himself.
The end result was billed as “a post-contemporary remodernist naturalistic surrealism romantic tragicomedy non-political performance.” And indeed it did have a little of everything they promised. But therein lay a major problem.
With a few main storylines involving “a developed country”, a search for a legendary animal named Hoi Sumoi, and a famous wonton shop with a secret recipe, the play took jabs at contemporary society, culture and politics. While occasionally hilarious and frequently thought provoking, it sadly lacked any coherence.
The 100-minute experience at Crescent Moon Space and B-Floor Room in Pridi Banomyong Institute last Friday reminded me of a movie with a script credited to many writers. Whenever I spot this type of screenwriting on a poster, an alarm bell usually rings in my ears.
The play had a cast that mixed veterans with less experienced actors and included the writer Tomorn, who never seemed comfortable in his performance here. The four seasoned thespians Sumontha Suanpholrat, Natthaya Nakavech, Saifah Tanthana and Panchana Sunthornpipit carried the play and the rest couldn’t really match them. But while they shifted from one character to another depending on the storyline, the audience couldn’t clearly see the differences in their characters despite minor changes in costume details and this made the play even more difficult to comprehend.
Crescent Moon Space and B-Floor Room are almost identical in size and shape and separated by a small hallway visible through windows and doors in both rooms. This was not the first time a director has made use of both rooms concurrently for a performance, although it was the most ingenious.
My favourite scene was when two gay men from two countries met at a restaurant while being watched by a stage manager, fully clothed in black and smoking a cigarette. This scene had little to do with the main storylines, though. It would have been nice to see the two stage managers play a greater role in the work apart from the usual opening and closing of doors and moving set pieces, but that didn’t happen.
The audience was informed at the beginning that we could sit in either room and change to the other when prompted by the actors. Set design in both rooms was minimal and didn’t obstruct views. I chose Crescent Moon Space and positioned myself in such a way that I could also see the actions in the hallway and B-Floor Room as well. When I was given the opportunity to move, I chose not to. And towards the end when the audience was invited to the hallway, the weight of the play had already taken its toll on my brain that’d been through a full day of work and I found I didn’t have the energy to move my limbs.
The sound system made sure the audience in each room could hear what was happening in the other and the hallway. We heard more than we saw but, like in life, we didn’t get to see and hear everything.
A script of a play is like a blueprint of a house--you simply cannot build a nice, durable and practical one from a flawed plan.
Collaging works better in visual arts: we can choose to stand back and take in the whole work or step closer to inspect the details and analyse how or why pieces are put together. That was impossible to do in this otherwise daring and courageous stage work.
