Abstract
The 2013 Makhampom Theatre Group performance of The Miracle of the Blood Throne at a commemorative democracy event by the Makhampom Theatre Group marked a turning point for Thailand’s contemporary theatre movement. On the back of decade-long ‘colour-coded’ political conflict, the 2014 military coup revived memories of Thailand’s 1970s political contest between democratic forces and the patrimonial ‘Theatre State.’ Makhampom, as a child of this era’s emergent contemporary theatre movement, was propelled into a role of political resistance. The group’s newly devised method, called Dialogue Theatre, emerged as the dominant mode of Makhampom’s praxis. This chapter explores the development of this praxis in response to the repressive conditions of the military rule.
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Notes
- 1.
On October 14, 1973, student-led demonstrations led to a brutal military crackdown, the collapse of the Thanom Kittikachorn dictatorship, and the establishment of a new constitutional democracy.
- 2.
On October 6, 1976 (referred to as the October 6 Event), paramilitary and state forces attacked students inside Thammasat University, precipitating scores of deaths, disappearances, and exiles and the return to military rule.
- 3.
Jungwiwattanaporn describes these Three Pillars as the hegemonic construct of Siamese nationalism to counter Western imperialism. See Parichat Jungwiwattanaporn, ‘Kamron Gunatilaka and the Crescent Moon Theatre: Contemporary Thai Theatre as Political Dissent’ (PhD diss., University of Hawai’i, 2010), 61.
- 4.
See Thongchai Winichakul interview in Drennan, Justin. ‘Interview: Thai Democracy Is Gone and Won’t Return Anytime Soon,’ Foreign Policy, November 25, 2014, accessed February 12, 2018, https://foreignpolicy.com/2014/11/25/interview-thai-democracy-is-gone-and-wont-return-anytime-soon/.
- 5.
Likay troupes, at their most prolific in the early 1900s, were estimated to be in their thousands throughout Thailand. The ‘dominant’ popularity of the genre was, however, contrasted by its stigmatisation by conservatives and traditionalists due to its subaltern context, the sexualisation of actor-patron relations, and the use of popular tropes such as melodrama, vulgarity, and slapstick humour.
- 6.
Parichat Jungwiwattanaporn‚’ Contemporary Theatre in Thailand: A Profile,’ SPAFA Journal 9, no. 2 (1998): 9.
- 7.
Richard Barber, ‘Performing Praxis, Community Culture, and Neo-Traditionalism: A Study of Thailand’s Makhampom Theatre Group’ (PhD diss., Monash University, Melbourne, 2007), 135.
- 8.
Barber, Performing Praxis, 147.
- 9.
In Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Freire describes praxis as a process of reflection and action directed at the structures to be transformed. See Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (New York: Continuum, 2007).
- 10.
Jungwiwattanaporn, Contemporary Theatre in Thailand, 6.
- 11.
The economic depression in the 1930s led to the emergence of a politicised Thai working class and a constitutional political movement led by progressive intellectual, Pridi Banomyong. See Barber, ‘Performing Praxis,’ 36–37.
- 12.
In 1976, the Goethe Institute invited German director, Nobert Mayer, to give a workshop on Brechtian theatre theory and practice for Thai theatre practitioners.
- 13.
Taken from the Makhampom Foundation’s Mission Statement. See Barber, ‘Performing Praxis,’ 297.
- 14.
‘Cry of Asia’ ran from 1989 to 1997 as an annual Philippine-led Asian theatre collaboration with actors from up to a dozen Asian countries touring internationally in Asia and Europe. ‘Big Wind’ was a Hong-Kong-produced Asian theatre collaboration, touring seven Asian countries from 1994 to 1995, inspired by ‘Cry of Asia,’ and described as ‘a collaboration of popular theatre workers—East and West.’ References are taken from Makhampom documentation.
- 15.
Kittisak Kerdarunsuksri, ‘The Transposition of Traditional Thai Literature into Modern Stage Drama: The Current Development of Thai Theatre’ (PhD diss., University of London, School of Oriental and African Studies, 2001), 9.
- 16.
Jungwiwattanaporn, Contemporary Theatre in Thailand, 10.
- 17.
Barber, ‘Performing Praxis’, 75.
- 18.
Makhampom received multi-year funding from international development agencies to deliver theatre for community development projects in village communities in four provinces, addressing social and health issues such as child sex trafficking, human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) stigmatisation, and indigenous rights.
- 19.
The Makhampom Foundation was founded primarily to increase access to funding, in order to retain the pool of senior volunteers and sustain its praxis.
- 20.
Romulus der Große (Romulus the Great) was written by German playwright, Friedrich Dürrenmatt, in 1949, as a melodramatic portrayal of the demise of the Roman Empire.
- 21.
Matthew Yoxall, ‘Making Theatre, Discerning Silences: Engagements With Social Change In Burma/Myanmar And Thailand’ (PhD diss., The National University of Singapore, 2016), 329.
- 22.
Members of the Crescent Moon Theatre group and Songs for Life musicians were amongst those exiled in the 1970s, following the October 6 event.
- 23.
See Human Rights Watch, ‘Thailand: Theater Activists Jailed for Insulting Monarchy,’ Human Rights Watch, August 20, 2014, accessed January 30, 2018, https://www.hrw.org/news/2014/08/20/thailand-theater-activists-jailed-insulting-monarchy.
- 24.
Chiang Mai University denied access to the booked venue for the commemorative event in recognition of scholar Nidhi Eoseewong and due to the pro-democracy nature of the forum that included Makhampom’s work.
- 25.
Bang Lamerd, performed by B-Floor in Bangkok in 2015, involved military video surveillance at each performance. Ironically, this resulted in full houses with attendance becoming seen as a form of political resistance.
- 26.
Susan Haedicke, ‘Dramaturgy in Community-Based Theatre,’ Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism XIII, no. 1 (1998): 132.
- 27.
A series of 6–10-day conflict transformation training programmes in Thailand and parts of the Asia-Pacific region led to Makhampom producing a training module and manual titled Art of Peace.
- 28.
Forum Theatre is the renowned Theatre of the Oppressed technique pioneered by Brazilian theatre worker Augusto Boal, and it involves audience members engaging in the solution to staged oppressions.
- 29.
Augusto Boal, Legislative Theatre (London and New York: Routledge, 1998), 4.
- 30.
Tim Prentki, Applied Theatre: Development (London and New York: Methuen Drama, 2015), 21.
- 31.
The Dara’ang, also known as the Palaung, is an indigenous ethnic minority group located along the Thai-Burma border. Several communities in northern Thailand arrived as refugees from civil war in Shan State in the 1980s. Makhampom has worked with the Pang Daeng Nok Dara’ang community in Chiang Dao for 20 years.
- 32.
Prentki, Applied Theatre, 76.
- 33.
The ‘toolkit’ of dialogue methods consist of the Chat Circle (small group discussions), Hot Seat (grievance-based discussion with individual characters), Stage Debate (audience participation on stage in debate on divisive conflict theme), and Missing Voice (individual audience members on stage proposing other voices for dialogue). These methods are applied to complement the Open Dialogue and Closing Dialogue with these adapted to audience and performance contexts.
- 34.
The term salim was originally coined in reference to the multi-coloured shirts, as a derivation of the Yellow-Shirt movement, before morphing into a word used by Red-Shirt activists to describe middle-class Bangkok people who take the middle ground in Thai politics.
- 35.
Peter O’Connor and Michael Anderson, Applied Theatre: Research: Radical Departures (London: Bloomsbury, 2015), 69.
- 36.
The likay joker is a multi-functional character whose role straddles slapstick clowning and improvised social commentary.
- 37.
Ban Saithong by Ko Surangkhanang was a 1950 serialised romantic novel adapted for stage, film, and television, including a popular 2000 TV drama version.
- 38.
See Prajak Kongkirati, Democracy in Transition: On Democracy, Violence, and Justice (Bangkok: Fa Diew Kan Publishing House), 2015.
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Barber, R., Saphakhun, P. (2020). A Transformative Theatre of Dialogue: The Makhampom Theatre Group’s Negotiation of Thailand’s Likay (Theatre) State. In: Tan, M., Rajendran, C. (eds) Performing Southeast Asia. Contemporary Performance InterActions. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-34686-7_6
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