Being in the presence of Thai visual artist Pinaree Sanpitak’s work, whether a print or an original, has always put me in a state of calm. Her minimalist style is neither cold nor distant, but intimate and nurturing. It somehow invites you to breathe and expand as it envelopes you in its warmth.
Performers onstage at Ngao-Rang.
Pinaree’s body of work, which consists largely of depictions of breasts through sculptures, ceramics, installations and abstract paintings, recently inspired Silpathorn Award-winning theatre artist Sineenadh Keitprapai to create a deeply personal movement piece entitled Ngao-Rang (Shade Borders). The production not only takes inspiration from Pinaree’s works, but also seems to find solace in them.
Ngao-Rang, originally a one-night-only performance in March as part of the 10th anniversary of Silpathorn National Awards at Chang Theatre, was restaged last weekend for the third edition of the ongoing and strangely named Performative Art Festival at the Bangkok Art & Culture Centre (BACC). I unfortunately missed the original performance at Chang Theatre and so am not able to report on whether the creation has changed or not.
As soon as we received our tickets, we were given post-it notes on which we were asked to write down the first words that came to mind when we thought of nom (colloquial Thai term for both milk and breasts). These were then collected and put up along the hallway leading towards the stage, as well as onstage. They provided an entertaining and light touch to the show, but when the performers later tore them down from the wall to read in rapid succession, they only served as brief comic relief and nothing more.
The first hint of Pinaree’s influence could be felt even before we entered the auditorium. Before the production began, the apron-clad female performers navigated through the audience carrying trays full of tiny dome-shaped milky-coloured coconut jelly. This was an obvious nod to Pinaree’s “breast-stupa cookery” series in which the artist collaborated with chefs to serve food in breast-shaped bowls to diners in restaurants. The dessert, coupled with the performers’ friendly smiles and gentle demeanours, sets up an intimate atmosphere for the upcoming show.
Throughout Ngao-Rang, the performers recount stories of what it’s like to be girls and women through both words and movements. This includes having to learn how to act weaker (“I’m better at sword fighting than my older brother, but I always pretend to lose”) to dreaming of becoming a sexy gun-toting undercover agent (“I don’t have a gun though, but my brother does”) to being excluded from the male domain since childhood (“My father never let me climb up there with my brother”) to learning feminine behaviour from a gay playmate.
All of the tales are delivered by the four performers as a collective, as if they all lived through them together and recognised one another’s stories as their own.
Some of the funniest and most moving parts of the performance are the scenes about the female body. In one scene, four performers file out, each carrying a black chair. They set them down and sexily and sensually settle themselves on the chairs. The actresses then launch into recitations of famous verses that extol women’s beauty in Thai and English, which gradually turn from words into gibberish.
In another, the stage turns dark, except for slim streams of light from the flashlights that each performer is holding. The flashlights are then used to bring different parts of bodies into focus. The dim lights gradually turn into something more violent: laser beams piercing through the darkness and targeting the performers’ bodies across the stage. The performers then hand them over to members of the audience, who are invited to point them at different body parts of each performer. The actresses then speak on the targeted body part. They discuss not only what they think of these organs, but also how others perceive them and what they find the most feminine. They recount childhood memories and talk about how age has changed their bodies, how certain parts of their body reflect their personality and, little by little, build up a biography of their physical and internal selves.
These ensemble scenes are interspersed by solo pieces by the show’s creator, Sineenadh. In the first one, she enters wearing a tattered dress with a sculpture of a pair of breasts attached to the chest and carrying a large black basin. A painting by Pinaree of a breast-shaped bowl that seems to be suspended in mid-air is projected as the backdrop.
Sineenadh then dances on the basin she carries with her, charting the story of her life — from birth to giving birth to her child — her movements full of strength. She then lies down on the basin, unmoving, as the painful tortured sound of the violin and piano plays. Sineenadh stands up once more and plucks at the ribbons inside the sculpted breasts, making them bleed and weep. She wanders the stage, lost, and tries to speak, but no sound comes out. The actress exits the stage in shame, hiding beneath the dark container.
Sineenadh’s solos tend to tilt the show off-balance as there are no other solos by other performers. Since the creation is more focused on the breasts than any other parts of the body, we see and hear what the director has to say about them, but not what the other performers think and feel about their own. The courage and power of her solos, however, are undeniable. Sineenadh shares her pain and shame of loss as openly as she shares the visual and physical reality of her mastectomy.
I have to say, though, that despite being the inspiration for Ngao-Rang, Pinaree’s artworks are not used as effectively as they could or should have been. The images of her works are mainly only projected as two-dimensional backgrounds. Whether the selected pieces are paintings, a breast-shaped pillow installation (Temporary Insanity), hanging sculptures (Anything Can Break), they are all treated in the same visual way and the performers do not interact with them. As a result, the works lose their power, presence and sensuous qualities.
The only scene in which the presence of Pinaree’s work feels powerful is in Sineenadh’s final solo, in which the performer’s striped dress echoes the projected image of one of the drawings from the “Womenly Bodies” series, where Pinaree depicts the female body with only straight black lines. Here, the drawing is slightly animated, adding energy and dynamism to Sineenadh’s dancing body. Later in the scene, Pinaree’s tear-shaped mirror installation Quietly Floating is projected, lending the solo a grounded energy and bringing it into the realm of internal reflection.
This is a courageous and uplifting work by all the performers in Ngao-Rang. Stage creations dealing with women and gender issues by both male and female directors seem to be dominating the theatre scene this year. This is very much welcomed in a country like Thailand, as we do need more feminist art and intelligent and sensitive narratives of the female experience.
The Performative Art Festival continues at the BACC until December. For more information, visit www.bacc.or.th.
