Jaa Pantachat's revival of her 2015 experimental comedic whodunnit Ceci N'est Pas La Politique (This Is Not Politics) may have maintained its original structure and storyline, but in this trimmed and funnier version, it has gained both clarity and poignancy.
Written by Pattareeya Puapongsakorn, who won the Thailand chapter of the International Association of Theatre Critics (IATC) award for this script, the play puts us right in the staging of a play entitled The Death Of Jitra And The Missing Dog. We watch the last day in the life of wealthy resort owner Jitra unfold as her friend, relatives and employees fight over a 66 million baht painting, accusing one another of various wrongs and trying to come up with alibis for themselves. In between each scene, audience members are asked a series of multiple-choice questions, most of them unrelated to the previous scene. We answer by raising our popsicle sticks with coloured paper. Our answers are tallied, and we are informed of the most popular answer.
Unlike in the original, where an actor simply never returned to the stage after the game session with the audience, this time a figure covered from head-to-toe in black physically removes the actors one by one from the play. Sometimes this figure drapes a piece of cloth over parts of the structure. Sometimes he covers one of the remaining actors with a bag. The "disappeared" actors reappear in a house-shaped structure draped in gauzy white fabric. As the action of Death Of Jitra continues in the foreground, with fewer and fewer performers and as if no one had been removed, those inside the house move backwards and forwards silently in straight lines, only their silhouettes visible.
The more chaotic atmosphere and the confusion caused by the unexplained disappearances of the performers in the original felt like a critique of the justice system and democracy in Thailand -- a fraudulent and laughable system. As the play progressed, the audience received increasingly fragmented information, as though the play was being censored little by little in front of our eyes.
In the new version, the focus on the issue of lack of transparency is sharpened: we are requested to trust in the process of this secret deliberation a few times throughout. Of course, we have no idea what the deliberation is about or what its purpose is. And as in the previous version, our participation -- our answers and votes -- feels irrelevant to the entire process.
I watched the press preview last Wednesday evening. The play was performed in Thai, and the entire show felt more controlled and succinct than the original, despite its abrupt ending. To me, though, the addition of the figure cloaked in black was ineffective and inelegant. The rewrite is clean and funny enough that it doesn't need a comedic distraction. Nor do I think the message of the play needs to be more obvious.
But what gives the play its twinge of poignancy is the shadowy presence and silence of those who have been removed from the scene in the foreground. While the absence of the actors in the original version forces us to deal with an increasingly censored piece of art, the ghostlike figures and their soundlessness in the new version serve as a constant reminder of those who have been disappeared and silenced. The image is at once eerie and violent.
Ceci N'est Pas La Politique continues until Sunday at 7.30pm, at the Studio, Floor 4, Bangkok Art and Culture Centre (BACC). Thursday and Saturday shows are in Thai. Friday and Sunday shows are in English.
Tickets are 550 baht (500 baht for advance payment) for participants and 750 baht for non-participants.
Call 082-692-6228 or 094-494-5104 or email bfloortheatre@gmail.com or visit the event page on Facebook.
