Life on the small stage

Three new English-speaking theatre companies in Bangkok make a name for themselves.

Small starts

American Robert Thompson has seen the musical Hedwig And The Angry Inch at least 20 times, both in the US and Thailand, where he has chosen to retire. He often attends university and Thai-speaking productions. So long as they are small.  

Thompson's love for small theatre led him to found Pico Theatre ("pico" means small in Spanish) company last year.  

For decades, the Bangkok Community Theatre (BCT), a voluntary, non-profit organisation established in 1972, was the main source for English-speaking theatre productions. 

But that's no longer so, with three new English-speaking theatre companies — Pico Theatre, Peel the Limelight and Culture Collective Studio — popping up in the past year. 

The men who founded these companies — Thompson of Pico Theatre, Loni Berry of Culture Collective Studio and Peter O'Neill and Jaime Zuniga of Peel the Limelight — have used their diverse theatre backgrounds to create troupes that stand apart from one another.

Pico Theatre debuted in December with Jane Wagner's 1985 play The Search For Signs Of Intelligent Life In The Universe, a one-woman show that requires the performer to portray about a dozen characters. In the pipeline is Jerome Bixby's Man From Earth, a 2007 sci-fi film that was adapted into a play in 2012, about a professor who claims to be a man who is thousands of years old. 

"I would like Pico Theatre to be known for [being] small, wordy, and for making the audience think," Thompson said. 

When he arrived in Bangkok six years ago, Thompson didn't wait long before making his way into the local theatre scene, first working backstage with the BCT. He then became the assistant producer in a production of The Fantasticks by the now-defunct Theatre Guild, where he met young Thai actress Tangmo Rodvanich, who starred in Pico Theatre's first production. 

"I was really surprised at the number of small theatres and the number of people working in the small theatres. It was really amazing to me," Thompson said. "When I lived in Dallas, they didn't have that many small theatres. And when I lived in Los Angeles, small theatres were producing shows from acting schools." 

Finding a space and getting a team together to put up Pico's premiere production proved to be easy. The Search For Signs Of Intelligent Life In The Universe was staged at a well-known venue among avid theatre-goers, Democrazy Theatre Studio in Silom.

Dream big

Slightly delayed by Thailand's unstable political situation, Peel the Limelight's debut production of Martin Sherman's Bent premiered in late May of last year, at Petralai Management Theatre, a venue founded and operated by Chulalongkorn University's Faculty of Commerce and Accountancy.  

O'Neill, who directed the play, revealed the reason he opened with Bent, a play about the lesser-known persecution of homosexuals in Nazi Germany.

"I wanted to make a statement about what theatre should be ... I like confrontational pieces. I don't like my audience to hide. I want them to be a part of it. I want to move them and change them and make them question."  

Whereas Pico Theatre is a one-man operation born out of passion, Peel the Limelight has an artistic director (O'Neill), a producer (Zuniga), a more long-term plan and a regional connection. In less than a year, the company has produced two plays. 

In February, Peel the Limelight staged Rajiv Joseph's 2011 play Gruesome Playground Injuries. The two-character play found a home in the tiny black-box space of Spark School of Dramatic Arts at the Jasmine City building in the Asok area.  

Originally from New York, O'Neill was classically trained as an actor. After finishing his graduate degree at California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) in Los Angeles, O'Neill gave up acting and relocated to London, where he worked in theatre for 20 years. He relocated to Bangkok after his partner, a former lawyer, decided to retire early.

O'Neill first met Zuniga in the acting class O'Neill was conducting for the BCT when he first arrived in Thailand almost two years ago. Born and raised in Nicaragua, Zuniga fell in love with theatre in college. After relocating to Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam, Zuniga co-founded Dragonfly Theatre, a professional English-language theatre company. Through Zuniga's relationship with Dragonfly Theatre and the Vietnamese media, Peel the Limelight's Gruesome Playground Injuries's four-day run in late April in Ho Chi Minh City received considerable national media attention.

"Our idea is world domination," O'Neill joked. "It's not world domination. It's actually Asean domination." Zuniga and O'Neill also plan to bring English-speaking productions from other countries to Thailand.  

In an email interview, Zuniga said he envisions Peel the Limelight to be "a sustainable and respected arts organisation that attracts professional stage, film and TV artists to its cast and crew as well as a loyal community to its programme".

"I expect to be well on the way to a Peel the Limelight that belongs to the Bangkok community and takes an active part in shaping the ethos of its people," he added.

Groom for success

While Pico and Peel the Limelight work with existing English-language plays and practice colour-blind casting, Loni Berry is introducing Culture Collective Studio to Bangkok audiences with an original play set in Asia and about Asian women. The Death Of Miss America opens tomorrow at the company's black-box studio.

Berry, an American, arrived Thailand in 2006 after accepting a teaching position at Mahidol University International College's Television, Film and Animation Production programme. He left the university in 2013 and began building up his theatre company and black box studio. 

"I always knew I was going to stop teaching at university. But I don't ever plan to stop doing my art. I plan to have a theatre or work some place in the theatre for the rest of my life," Berry said.  

The long-time artist and educator studied theatre at Brown University and the Yale School of Drama. He went on to teach at prestigious universities such as Williams College and the University of California, San Diego. In 2000, he became the founding director of the Oakland School for the Arts in California. 

Culture Collective Studio started off not with a production but by offering classes, ranging from basic acting, movement and musical theatre to acting for models, theatre for children and public speaking. Berry hoped these classes could support his theatre productions. "Few theatres can survive off ticket sales," he said. 

But it proved to be a challenge to get people to come to their classes in the first few months of the studio's opening. Berry eventually had to raise money for The Death of Miss America through crowdfunding.  

Luckily, the company had a breakthrough over the Songkran holiday with their musical theatre camp for children. According to Kelly Jones, Culture Collective's director of development and one of the cast members, the company plans to do similar summer camps with international schools in Bangkok and work with Thai schools, teaching English through theatre. 

Berry aims for Culture Collective Studio to also be an acting company that gives serious theatre training to its members on a regular basis, readying his currently 12-actor-strong company for the regional and Western markets.  

The Death Of Miss America, a comedic whodunit written and directed by Berry, brings together skilled performers whose faces may not be familiar to the theatre-going crowd that frequent Thai-language productions.  

Suwida Boonyatistarn, one of the play's cast members, works for a television production company by day and rehearses at Culture Collective Studio by night.

"[Culture Collective] gives opportunity to everyone," she said. "A lot of other productions in Thailand focus on your looks, background and name." 

For Thai actress Panida Kraiwitchaicharoen, who has a degree in musical theatre from Singapore, training and working with a group of performers who do not all come from theatre schools, has given her fresh perspective.

"People from different backgrounds bring different parts of themselves [to the table]. I got more out of watching them [than drama students]."  Bangkok is a place where many cultures intersect, and Berry believes the theatre scene reflects that.

"Bangkok is one of the few cities that has this kind of population — multicultural, multiracial, highly intelligent people. The theatre scene has not reflected the population at all. It's in the process of reflecting the population." 

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"The Death Of Miss America" opens tomorrow. It will be staged every Thursday to Sunday, until June 7, at 8pm, at Culture Collective Studio, 3rd floor, Chatrium Residence Riverside. Tickets cost 800 baht.  Visit www.culture-collective.com, email info@culture-collective.com or call 09-9447-4670.