The Struggle for (Self ) Possession:
The Political Bodies in Contemporary Thai Performing Arts
Amitha AmranandIceberg (Sodsai Pantoomkomol Centre for Dramatic Arts,
Chulalongkorn University, 2014), directed by and featuring
Teerawat Mulvilai (Kage), one of the actors in Pratthana.

The year 2018 marked the fourth year of Thailandʼs military regime. The government was installed in 2014,
following a coup dʼetat, the countryʼs 19th since the year 1932 when Thailand changed from absolute monarchy to constitutional monarchy. It was Thailandʼs second military coup in eight years and the third in 23 years.
For Khao Sing, the principal character in the play Pratthana - A Portrait of Possession, the 2014 coup is his
third. His body and those of others he came into intimate contact with have known since their youth what it islike to live in a state where freedom is fragile and ephemeral. They are as intimate with power as they are with
their own bodies and each other. And as a result, these bodies know what it is like to live under the watchfuleye of authority figures. These bodies know what it is like to never be in full possession of their own bodies.
Rang Khong Pratthana (The Body of Desire), the novel by Thai author Uthis Haemamool from which director
Toshiki Okada adapted the play, begins with a description of not a man per se, but a young male body̶nameless. The body is being secretly observed by a man who is also using that body as a model.
The young man is aware of the observerʼs presence and his own position as the object of anotherʼs gaze. He
also imagines himself as an object of the gazerʼs sexual desire. The nameless man enjoys the power of his own
beauty and almost challenges the gazer by being playful, teasing the gazer by disappearing under the water
before splaying beside the pool to soak in the sun and putting his body in full view of the gazer once again.
What the gazed-upon does not realize is that he is merely a body to the gazer. When that body of his coughs, itturns into a living being for the gazer, causing former to lose interest in his subject. The sound of a cough,coupled with something akin to speaking, is a sign not only of life, but of a human being. The gazer has nointerest in what the gazed upon has to say. The gazer has no interest in his subject as a human being.
In the theatrical adaptation, the entire stage is under the watchful eye not only of the audience but also ofcameras. The cast and the crew are visible to the audience at all times. From one side of the stage, the actors
watch fellow actors perform while along the other side of the stage the crew sit behind their equipment. All
the props and materials for sound effects are exposed. Less conspicuous, however, is a camera. It is sitting there
somewhere, and sometimes, the object, person, or action under its gaze is projected onto the screen for all tosee. The stage and all that takes place on it is under surveillance.
Once the actors have positioned themselves along one side of the stage, some members of the crew begin tocreate the sound of water; a string of light on the floor lights up, blue like water; an actor stands up andremoves his shirt to reveal his naked torso. He sets the scene: a swimming pool. He gazes into the water as he

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speaks about a young man who he is trying to take a selfie of his reflection in the pool̶a modern-day Narcissus. Another actor, lying flat on his stomach with a phone in hand, is filming the stage, panning the camera
back and fourth.
In Thailand, an erotic or sexual portrayal of the body in words and pictures are more commonplace andaccepted than on screen and on stage. Even on screen̶TV and film̶portrayal of physical and sexual intimacy
has been more explicit than on stage. Reading about the characterʼs sexual adventures in the novel never felt
like an act of transgression. If the author had wanted to portray these characters and their bodies as productsof a long history of political oppression, it never came through.
But whatever struggle with oppression the characters feel, they rebel against it through their body. The
swimmer challenges the power of his observerʼs gaze through the assertion of the erotic and sexual power ofhis body. Sex makes them feel alive, powerful and transgressive. These are private acts of rebellion̶insignificant on the structural level, but cathartic and empowering to the sense of dignity in these characters. Sex andart are ways of dealing with the sense of powerlessness and restore the sense of dignity denied by a long andshared history of oppression. These are powerless bodies struggling to break free to claim possession of theirown being.
In undemocratic times in Thailand, speech and words in the public space become the easiest to suppress. Whenwords are dangerous, it is no surprise then that contemporary Thai theatre artists often resort to the body.
My Body, My Art
The Thai body in the performing arts has long been linked with the countryʼs most sacred institutions. When
Thailand was still an absolute monarchy, the palace was where the classical dances and dance-dramas developed and where dancers were trained. National Artist Mattani Mojdara Rutnin［1］writes in the preface of herbook, Dance, Drama, and Theatre in Thailand: The Process of Development and Modernization, of the influential role the monarchy once played in the development of Thai performing arts, noting that “[i]n the past, once
regional folk dances and dramas were adopted by the royal court, they became royal prerogatives and taboo forthe general public.”

1

National Artist Mattani Mojdara Rutnin is a former
professor of drama and literature at Thammasat

University. She helped found the universityʼs Drama
Department and spearheaded the establishment of
the Faculty of Fine and Applied Arts. Apart from her
writing on theatre and literature in Thai and English,

In 1932, the kingdom became a constitutional monarchy. The following year, the Department of Fine Arts wasestablished under the Ministry of Education. Performing arts that were once under the patronage of themonarchy came under the control of the government. Witthayalai Natsain, or the College of Dramatic Arts［2］,was founded in 1934 to educate and train students in Thai performing arts. The higher education institution istoday under the Ministry of Education and Ministry of Culture and offers training in both Thai and Western
performing arts.

she has also written TV scripts and translated andadapted Western plays, including Macbeth, The
Threepenny Opera, and A Streetcar Named Desire.
2

Wittayalai Nattasin was founded in 1934 by Luang
Wichitwathakan, a Thai historian, writer, diplomat,
and politician, who modeled it after LʼÉcole desBeaux-Arts and LʼAcadémie de Danse et Musique.

With 12 locations across the country, the school
currently offers secondary and higher education andBeing the most elaborate and sumptuous, khon, the classical masked dance-drama, has become one of the mostinternationally recognizable symbols of Thai culture. Queen Sirikit under the Reign of King Rama IX has
played a major role in reviving the art form with the modernization of the set and the restoration of thecostume to its old glory. There has been an annual staging of the Royal Khon (Khon Phra Ratchatan)［3］since2007. Last year, UNESCO inscribed khon on the Representative List of Intangible Cultural Heritage of
Humanity.
While Thai audience get to see both traditional and contemporary performances from foreign countries thatare supported by their embassies in Thailand, the Thai government still mainly brings khon to showcase on theinternational stage and pays little to no attention to contemporary theatre artists. Throughout the history ofThailand, khon has been used by both the court and the government for various purposes, including politicalones［4］. Today khon is an important tool of the government for diplomacy, cultural promotion, and tourism.

has expanded its curriculum to include Western
performing arts.
3

Royal Khon is a project initiated by Queen Sirikit thatbegan with the queenʼs effort to revive the khon

costumes. Through the queenʼs SUPPORT

foundationʼs collaboration with a range of artisans

and arts experts, a new set of new khon costumes,
including the masks, were created. The first public
performance of the Royal Khon was in December
2007. It has since become an annual event, with thenumber of performances increasing each year.
4

Mattani Mojdara Rutnin, Dance, Drama, and Theatrein Thailand: The Process of Development andModernization, (Chiang Mai, Silkworm Books, 1996),
XIV

5

Dancer-choreographer Manop Meejamrat was one of
the students of veteran Thai theatre director andplaywright Patravadi Mejudhon, who founded her

It is no surprise that the government and its exclusive support for traditional art forms is an easy target ofcriticism for independent theatre artists. But pride in Thai classical dance is instilled in Thais at an early age
through primary and secondary school curriculum. Thais are thus taught from youth that Thai classical danceis an integral part of the national identity.

eponymous theatre company in 1992. Patravadi
Theatre was known for its stage adaptations of Thaiclassic literature that combine Thai and Western
theatrical forms. Manop emerged in the 90s as one of
the most internationally recognized dancers andchoreographers who fused Thai classical dance with

When Thai classical dance began to be combined with Western theatre aesthetics and contemporary Western
dance techniques in the 1990s, a few artists who were trained in Western dances began taking up Thai classicaldance, most notably Manop Meejamrat of Patravadi Theatre［5］. Some of these artists saw it as a return to their
Thai roots. Fusing Thai and Western dances became another way to pay respect to tradition and express prideThe Struggle for (Self) Possession: The Political Bodies in Contemporary Thai Performing Arts

modern dance. He is the 2005 recipient of SilpathornAwards in the performing arts category. The awards,
established and presented by Thailandʼs Ministry of
Cultureʼs Office of Contemporary Art and Culture,

honor mid-career artists across seven fields of art.

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6Founded 1998, Komonlagoon Dance Troupe was aThai contemporary dance company that blended Thaiclassical dance with contemporary dance and various
dance techniques. After the death of its founder,in Thainess. Komonlagoon Dance Troupe［6］founder, the late Thongchai Hannarong［7］, who was trained inballet and Indian classical dance ottamthullal［8］, also combined Western dances with Thai and Indian classicaldances in his creations that were often inspired by Buddhism, Thailandʼs major religion.

Thongchai Hannarong, in 2011, one of the students,
Supachai Dontri, founded another dance troupe in2012, Komonlasilp (By Komonlagoon), to continue
the vision started by Thongchai. It is not clear
whether the company is still active.
7

Thongchai Hannarong was an award-winning dancerchoreographer. In 2007 and 2008, he won awards forhis choreography at the International Dance Festival
in Jakarta, Indonesia, and in Beijing, China,
respectively. In 2007, he collaborated with Japanesechoreographer Zan Yamashita for the celebration of
120 years of diplomatic relationship between
Thailand and Japan in Yokohama, Japan.

8

Ottamthullal is dance-drama originating from Kerala,
India.

9

Dancer-choreographer Pichet Klunchun founded
Pichet Klunchun Dance Company, formerly called
LifeWork Company, in 2004. He received a Silpathorn

But an encounter between a contemporary artist and a performing art long upheld and safeguarded by themost powerful forces in the country is sometimes not without tension. For a contemporary performer like
Pichet Klunchun［9］, one of the most internationally recognized Thai performing artists today, an encounter
with the Thai classical dance is at times an encounter with the Establishment. In the past decade, more theatre
artists are using Thai classical dance as a tool of subversion and to critique state power. And more dancers
trained in Thai classical dance are following in the footsteps of Pichet, asserting their own identity andcrossing the border into contemporary dance territory.
Classical dancersʼ bodies dictate what role they will play. And they train for a role that they will most likely
play for the rest of their career. In khon, a male performer can be trained to dance a human, demon, or monkey
role, depending on the size of his body. Khon dancers wear elaborate glittery costumes, exposing little skin.
The heads and faces of male dancers in monkey and demon roles are covered with a mask, and they neverspeak or sing. The narration, singing, and dialogues are executed by non-dancers.

Award in 2006.
10 Chaiyot Khummanee was a respected khon dancer (inthe demon role) and teacher at the College ofDramatic Arts. He was one of the 12 khon dancers
selected to be bestowed the status of khon teacher(krob khru) by King Bhumibol in 1984. According to
Pichetʼs interview with Thai-language Manager
newspaper in 2012, Chaiyot left the College ofDramatic Arts due to his disappointment with its
curriculum. Pichet met Chaiyot when the former was
16. Chaiyot was teaching khon in his own home, notan uncommon training practice for the older

In Pichetʼs I Am a Demon (2005), created as a tribute to his late teacher and khon master Chaiyot Khummanee［10］, the body of a khon dancer is seen and his voice heard. Pichet, clad in only a pair of skin-tight shorts,
begins the piece with not a dance, but a khon drill of foot stomping. The piece then moves into a performanceof a scene from the Ramayana. In Thailand, the piece was performed in a small space that could accommodate
fewer than 50 people in the audience. You could hear Pichet breathe; you could see the expression on thedancerʼs face, instead of the frozen one of the mask, and the muscular working of khon on the body. At one
point in the performance, a video plays. It is of a conversation between Pichet and his late khon teacher about
the development of the art form.

generations of dancers. Pichet credits Chaiyotʼsteaching as an inspiration for him to continually

I Am a Demon is a personalization of khon and a declaration of personal ownership of the art form. To strip
away the ornate khon costume is to remove khon of its grandeur and status symbol. The act reveals the humanform. The stripping away of Thai classical danceʼs power, which is tightly bound to the power of the state, is areclaiming of the power of the individual body.

question how khon could become a more integral
part of contemporary Thai society.
11 Sasapin Siriwanij is a director, producer, andaward-winning performer. Her performance in Oh!
Ode won her the Best Performance by a Female
Performer award from the International Association

The struggle for ownership of self, body, and identity through classical dance can also be seen in Oh! Ode by
Sasapin Siriwanij［11］. While for Pichet, Thai classical dance is the roots from which his artistry and aesthetic
branch out and blossom, for Sasapin, a member of physical theatre company B-floor Theatre and co-founder ofexperimental theatre company For What Theatre, Thai classical dance is a form of oppression.

of Theatre Critics – Thailand Center (IATC – TC).
Her first solo work, I Didnʼt Launch a Thousand
Ships, also tackles the relationship between the Thai
female body, Thai beauty ideal, and Thai politics.

Sasapinʼs training is not in Thai classical dance, but she first came in contact with it in The Test of Endurance(2015), directed by B-floor Theatreʼs co-founder Jaa Phantachat. In it, the faces and bare torsos of the two
performers (Sasapin and Jaa) were painted with colorful abstract designs. They performed a sequence of dance
that was repeated non-stop until the last audience member decided to leave the room. It was a physicallydemanding creation that sometimes lasted over two hours.
Sasapinʼs involvement in The Test of Endurance led her to create Oh! Ode two years later. “[E]very part of mybody realized how unnatural the ideal form of female beauty of this culture was,” Sasapin writes of her
experience in The Test of Endurance in a note that appears at the end of Oh! Ode. The title is the play on theThai word ode, which means to complain, moan, or wail. Together with “oh,” the title evokes pain anddiscomfort.
At the beginning of the show, Sasapin stands topless, wearing only a pair of skin-color underwear. Then agroup of artists crowd around her, painting her entire body it into an image of a Thai classical dancer as she
performs a Thai classical dance routine, moving fluidly at an excruciatingly slow pace. Once the artwork on
her body is completed, she freezes in a Thai dance pose and is roped off like a museum exhibit.
After a few minutes, Sasapin bends her body and stretches her face to break free from the paint that inhibits
her body. Before our eyes, this body/art object, transforms into a human once again.
It is important to note that public nudity is a misdemeanor in Thailand. Sasapinʼs choice to bare her body is
not only an aesthetic one, but a political one. In the piece, the bare body is a free body. In an undemocraticsociety, freedom is vulgar to those in power. To cover a free body with an image of the highest of a Thai

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performing art form is to impose on it a moral ideal, thereby erasing the vulgarity of freedom and individuality. Sasapinʼs body struggles not only against a beauty ideal that Thai classical dance represents, it also fights
against a moral ideal that values obedience and modesty in women.
The Body Censored / The Body Erased
One of the most protected institution in Thailand is that of the monarchy. The kingdom has a draconian lèse
majesté law, also known as Section 112, which has been much weaponized against political enemies by politicians and citizens alike. Government censorship in the past five years has been at its worst in decades. As aresult, self-censorship in the media and the arts has been heightened, especially on subjects that have long beentabooed in Thai society.
Since theatre receives little attention from the government and the general public, it has largely escaped
censorship. The theatre has been the place the see art that is critical of the countryʼs most sacred institutions.
And few other theatre artists in Thailand have addressed the issues of censorship or critiqued Thailandʼs mostvenerable institutions as much as the artists of B-floor Theatre and dancer-choreographer Thanapol Virulhakul［12］.
Only twice did the theatre faced censorship in the past decade. The first, and the most severe, was in 2015
when two theatre activists involved in the play Jaosao Mapa (The Wolf Bride)［13］, staged in 2013 as part of anevent to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the October 14 student uprising, was convicted of lèse majesté
and sentenced to five years in prison (commuted to two and a half years for the guilty plea).
The second incident happened to the B-floor Theatreʼs revival production of Bang La Merd (2015), a solo
performance written and directed by Ornanong Thaisriwong［14］. Before the premier, authorities contacted the
production to inquire whether it had obtained permission to stage the show from the government̶a non-existent practice. For the entire run of Bang La Merd, two military officers were present each evening with avideo camera to record the performance. Following the productionʼs run, no legal action was ever taken
against the artists involved or the performance venue, but that was the most intrusive the military government
has ever gotten with a theatre production.

12 Thanapol Virulhakul is an award-winning
dancer-choreographer and co–artistic director of
Democrazy Theatre Studio. His Hipster the King won
three awards from the IATC – TC and was selected
for the Offene Welt Internationales Festival in
Ludwigshafen, Germany, and the STORE HOUSE
Collection in Japan. In 2016, he collaborated with
Badisches Staattheater Karlsruhe for Happy Hunting
Ground, which was staged in Thailand, Germany, andThe significance of Bang La Merd is not what happened to it, but rather how it explicitly addresses censorshipand Thailandʼs lèse majesté law through both words and movement. Most theatre creations tackle issues
relating to the monarchy or the current military regime through cryptic words, if words are used at all, but
mostly through the body.

Switzerland. His most recent work, The Retreat, waspart of the Ghost series at BANGKOK CITYCITYGALLERY and had a work-in-progress open
workshop at this yearʼs TPAM.
13 The staging of Jaosao Mapa was a reunion of
Prakaifai Karnlakorn theatre troupe, which was
founded in 2010. The troupe performed at politicalIn the first version of Bang La Merd (2012), Ornanong confesses that she had initially wanted to do somethingwith the Royal Anthem but eventually decided against it because toying with something that has to do with themonarchy in a way that could be deemed disrespectful was not worth the risk. Ornanongʼs body goes on togasp for air and stiffens and convulse in agony. She puts her body in a structure with holes so that only parts ofher body can be seen just like the incomplete video clips, texts, interviews with political prisoners that sheplays for the audience. From a whole human being, walking and talking in plain sight, to a body hidden andincomplete̶a censored body.

protests and in rural areas free of charge. The staging
was broadcast on Asia Update channel, the clip ofwhich was screened to members of an ultra-royalist
group to plan legal actions against those involved in
the play. Even some members of the media urged legal
actions. Three people involved in the play werecharged. Pornthip Munkong and Patiwat Saraiyaem
were sentenced to two years in prison and released inAugust 2016. Jaran Ditapichai has been granted
political refugee status by the French government.

In the second version of Bang La Merd, staged in the aftermath of the Wolf Bride incident, the censored bodyis also a vulnerable body, exposed to danger. Ornanong hangs hundreds of razor blades from the low ceiling ofa shophouse where she performed. At one point, she stands on a chair and puts her head into a sea of razor
blades. The performance moves outdoors, where Ornanong, now stripped to her underwear, climbs up to theroof and stands defiantly, with little to cover or protect her body.

14 Ornanong Thaisriwong is a performer, director, andproducer best known for her political solo
performances. She has received awards for both her
film and stage roles. The first version of Bang La

Merd, Ornanongʼs directorial debut, won her two
awards from the IATC – TC: Best Original Script of aPlay and Best Performance by a Female Performer.
Her most recent solo performance, Sawan Arcade,

Like in Bang La Merd, we also see bodies gasping for air in Oxygen, directed by B-floor co-founder Teerawat
Mulvilai［15］and choreographed by Thanapol Virulhakul, a physical theatre piece about Thailandʼs long historyof political violence. The bodies in Oxygen sometimes soften and submit to power, sometimes inflate and fills
up with the spirit of rebellion.

won her another performance award earlier this year.
15 Performer and director, Teerawat Mulvilai is a 2018
recipient of Silpathorn Awards. He was part ofThailandʼs seminal political theatre company,
Crescent Moon Theatre, some of whose members
co-founded B-floor Theatre in 1999. Teerawat has
won the most awards from the IATC – TC for his

While Oxygen depicts political repressions that fuel and deflate the human body and spirits, the bodies arepractically lifeless in Thanapolʼs Girl X (2015), a re-make of a Japanese play of the same name by director
Suguru Yamamoto of Hanchu-Yuei theatre company. The bodies lying on the floor represent works of art “inwhich the artistsʼ names do not appear.” The bodies move ploddingly from one tableau to another when thedate and artwork description change. We soon find out that these works of art were made during major wars

The Struggle for (Self) Possession: The Political Bodies in Contemporary Thai Performing Arts

physical theatre productions and performances. He iscurrently B-floor Theatreʼs co–artistic director with
Jaa Phantachat, a 2014 recipient of SilpathornAwards. Teerawat has collaborated with numerous
artists in Asia, most recently in the three-year-longSomething Missing trilogy with South Korean director
Jongyeon Yoon of Theatre Momggol.

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16 The Satapana (Establishment) trilogy̶Satapana:and violent political events in the 20th and 21st centuries. The events in Thailand, especially, are the ones thathave been systematically repressed or erased by those in power.

Red Tank (2014), Satapana: Iceberg (2014), andIceberg: The Invisible (2015)̶comprises solo

performances staged in the immediate aftermath of
the 2014 military coup. The trilogy addresses politicalviolence, censorship, and forgotten historical eventsin Thailand.

All are nameless in Girl X, the casualties of wars, the artists who depict them, and the authors of these violence. The limp bodies on the floor are not only the lifeless remains of the war, they are also anonymous andunacknowledged in history. But anonymity here erases the powerless and protects the powerful.
Perhaps the most visceral depiction of the body that has long suffered the violence and indignity of politicaloppression and censorship is in Teerawatʼs solo performance Iceberg, the second installment in the Satapana(Establishment) trilogy［16］, performed only a few months after the 2014 coup. The violence depicted in the firsthalf of this show is brutal and carried out by a masked and gloved figure. A block of ice becomes a stand-in forthe human body. Holes are drilled into it. Red paint is poured into it. It gets violently hacked and dragged
around the stage as it melts and fills the stage with a trail of blood-colored liquid.
Eventually, Teerawat sheds the mask, the gloves, the jacket, the shirt down to his bare torso. He is no longer aruthless figure of power, but an ordinary man. In this role, he dances a desperate number, flailing his limbs,
throwing himself to the floor, and slapping his own face to silence his own thoughts. It is a body that is at once
humiliated and defiant. A body that has been taught to self-censor and that certain thoughts are criminal. But
in that desperation and obsequiousness, there is a body longing to be free.

Amitha Amranand
Bangkok-based writer, translator, and teacher. She has
been writing about theatre in Thailand and performing
arts festivals in Asia and Europe since 2006. Her artsand culture writing has appeared in both Thai- andEnglish-language publications in Southeast Asia,
including Art4D, BK, and ArtsEquator. She is currently
a contributing theatre critic for the Bangkok Post andsits on the artistic board of the Bangkok International
Performing Arts Meeting (BIPAM).

OH! ODE (Oh! What Joy, What Goodness, What Beauty
Calls for an Ode No.7012) (WTF Gallery and Café, 2017), a
performance project by Sasapin Siriwanji (Pupe), one of
the actors in Pratthana.
Photo by Wichaya Artamat

The Test of Endurance (B-Floorʼs Room, Pridi Banomyong
Institute, 2015), directed by and featuring Jarunan
Phantachat (Jaa), one of the actors in Pratthana.
Photo by Wichaya Artamat

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