Rehearsel: Sept 25^{th, 1999}

Thursday, September 30, 1999

It was a 'workshop performance', to see if Brecht can be adapted to and performed as a Liqai. The presentation was performance-like, included sets, lights, sound, costumes, seats, tents and tickets. We wanted to test our thoughts on a mixed audience. It was an expensive 'workshop'. It went well and was successful. Nobody sad, angry, or disappointed, nobody overly enthusiatic. Now we have to evaluate, listen to our audience and their critic, suggestions. So far on 'village level' we win, -- they like the story, like the performance.

It was interesting to observe how our 'neighbors' here in Nongha and 'friends' from Chiangmai reacted to our producing of this event. What was so unusual?

We had asked our 'neighbors' 20 Bhat for a ticket, children and old people for free and we had asked our 'friends' to donate by buying a ticket for 1000 bhat and bring two friends. We wanted to keep the audience small and balanced.We did not want to approach companies or hotels to be a sponsor. We wanted a group of friends, concerned with culture, art, heritage to contribute in this way. We thought our project interesting and unusual enough that friends would come to see this performance and discuss with us. We all understand that the actors who perform for us can be paid with the income from tickets.

It turned out that most friends prefered to donate then to buy a ticket and others objected to ask the villagers to pay, they felt it should be free for them. The farmers were confused that we expected them to pay 20 bhat a person, but they appreciated that we asked children and old people for free.

So our thinking failed? Would it be better to ask friends before we start for a donation and let the event be for free? Anyway, most of the thinking was done how to deal with tickets. Now we think we spent too much on poster and printing, simpler would have been enough and cheaper.

Another issue became that the performance day was in the middle of the week and many friends have children or have to work the next day, students have examination. Add to this, - the weather, the rainy season is not over and the week before we nearly drowned in rain. We know that we should have considered this more.

We just heard tonight from our source in the village, that

1. … the villager were not sure if they should spent the money, since they think this is not the best group and they don’t know about this new 'german' story.

We had invited a group from outside this circle of villages. Normally if there is a liqai it is performed by Pa Song, whom all respect as the best in this area. We had chosen a young group on purpose. We needed collaboration. The other groups insisted to do the performance without a rehearsel, which we found too dangerous.

2. … we should have started earlier with our PR, by informing the headman and children.
3. … the poeple who came, specially the children, loved the performance and appreciated the new story. If it would not have rained they would have liked to stay to the end. (most of them could hear the story anyway, while falling asleep, - the speakers were very loud)
4. … some said they liked to be able to sit, watch and concentrate, not stand in the heat at a tempel fair with so much distraction and noise. We also heard that villagers came from further away villages and looked for a while.

The final adaptation was done by Egachai the leader of the liqai group who sat for a month and wrote and rewrote what he knew from our adaptations. We typed it for him and he travelled from one member to the next to tell them their part in the story, - no meeting of all together, only at the rehearsel and the performance. That makes it complicated and expensive - old style.

We afforded a rehearsel, because we were not sure if we all understand eachother, we wanted to see were we go astray from Brecht's story. The leading actress missed her examination for that rehearsel, since she saw a chance to be a lead after years of 'joker'. She has quit school.

After this rehearsel we sat with them and discussed and explained more, then we saw them again for the performance. We were all nervous.

It is amazing to see how fast the actor adapted the story and improvised the text for four hours. Sure we could feel were it works and it doesn't, we can feel sloppy acting and good moments where beauty appears, but they went through this play very well. After three hours it started to rain, then thunder and lightning, then blackouts, the audience left us alone, but they performed undisturbed until the end, even when they got the details mixed up. Our audiences seemingly enjoyed and participated, but the late hour and the rain drove them home.

We had a great experience seeing some of the workshop participants join again, seeing young directors working at different stage with the performers in harmony, a producing team which was intelligent, kind and honest and did not shy away of travelling a few times to come here (BKK - CHM 12 hours by train or car and 1 1/2 hrs flight.)

All performers and audience, 'friends' and 'neigbors' liked this performance. For the friends it was enjoyable to see Brecht's play performed in a local media and it still served Brecht's way of theater. Sure they saw some poor performers and heavy misinterpretation, but generally they saw a way how to continue this experiment. That the villagers liked it is quiet amazing. Normally liqai has a cast of royals or gods in beautiful costumes and gorgeous looking actors. This story talks about them and here in our case the set and costumes were old and the actors not pretty.

All performers expresssed that they want to do this script again at a tempel fair next season, they think the audience will appreciate. I would be very happy if this would be the case. Normally liqai group have more or less the same repertoire and the audience knows the stories, - this one is new and they can follow how the drama develops. If this would happen - great.

What else happened? 

We had a documentary film team here who filmed our experiment to create a program about liqai - a dying art form worthwhile to be kept alive?

We made mistakes, we told the villagers to late, bad PR, the wrong day, the wrong month, for them here the wrong troupe.

For a common theater performance we think that this liqai as it is, even polished is not fit. It is too long and to talkative. At a tempel fair there are so many other events happening simultaneaously that it is normal to talk a lot about one subject to make sure even with all the events happening around the audience, they get the story. In a theater we are focused only on to the stage, no other disturbances, so it needs less text and repetitions, but more essence.

A dangerous step would be to meet the leader Egachai again, show him the video and suggest to polish the peformance sharpen and shorten it for an audience sitting in a theater. But this is impossible, - all the actors want to earn money. It can only be done if Egachai could find performers who want to go deeper into theater work. Then you have a fine work to be shown anywhere. But even when you do like this you have to test it in other villages. But here I am steppping on dangerous ground, concerning corrupting cultural heritage, so I better stop.

Maybe it would be better to let professional actors evaluate the video and create an adapted liqai version based on our liqai script. If we could invite individual liqai actors to join, that would even be better.

It was successful enough I think, - we aided a dying art by sponsoring a show, introduced a new story which was generally liked and gave this group a new piece. We animated people, intellectuals and villagers alike to think about performing arts as an entertainment to pay for, to respect the works and join keeping it alive…

Comment friends, a fine artist, liked how we use a form, long forgotten in his life, to communicate a story of important content. He thinks this is art, it communicates at a direct level. Other theater friends see a chance to invite actors to join with the liqai performers to go deeper into this work and create a version to be send around villages and schools or even to the cities.

We hope we have a chance to see this production again someday in one of the villages, we hope the participants from here and from Bangkok alike enjoyed the process and the work, we hope that 'professional' actors read this last adaptation and find a way to use this liqai form in another environment. We thank all participants for good collaboration, input, shared expenses.

We hope to continue...

A review written by the NATION reads:

Strong breezes rush down from distant Doi Inthanon across a vast plain of lush lime green paddy fields and sweep through powerful columns of teak which hold on their shoulders a beautiful wooden house. This airy home with balconies and walkways linking bedrooms and verandas has a 180-degree outlook on one of the last remaining unspoilt village scenes left in Chiang Mai. Not an electric wire or a road in sight.

Manuel Lutgenhorst, his wife Noi and cherubic son Leon (Singh), live in Baan Nong Ha, Sanpatong, over 35 kilometres drive from Chiang Mai. Born in Germany, Manuel has made a career in more countries than most people have been to. He began in New York as the re-designer of Studio54 and worked in various Broadway productions as a designer, director and writer. He has since worked his way across Asia and after ten years in Bali where he built a popular art centre for local and foreign artists, he now calls Chiang Mai home. An easy going, charming and intelligent man, dressed in sabai fisherman trousers and a billowing open shirt, Manuel opened up his home and his vision to me in a recent interview.

Having worked with the likes of ‘Bird’ Tongchai McIntyre on the set of Ku Gam, set the stage for the 1996 Royal Performance for Their Majesties of England and Thailand in Ayuddhaya as well as being the winner of the 13th Asian Games Opening and Closing Ceremony Concept, he is winding down the pace and settling into life in Chiang Mai. In this rambling house perched over a green of paddy fields he has founded the ESC, the Escape Space Chiang Mai, home of all arts.

"When I fist moved here I noticed a loud absence of music in the village. Traditional art in most of its forms had appeared to die. Living in Bali for ten years, music and art were never further than around the next corner, but here, I found that although nearly everybody in the village could play an instrument, they just weren’t doing it." Said Manuel pondering upon the subject. " I therefore bought some old traditional instruments and installed them in one of our open areas beneath the house. Now a farmer may come wandering up from the rice fields for a break and start playing on the saw-u or a worker may stop by after work and play music for an hour on his own before going home. Sometimes we get quite a group here."

Often, before Buddhist lent, children from the village would come along to the ESC on a Saturday and Manuel and Noi would provide paints and paper and just let the children spend the afternoon drawing and creating. Artists arrive from Chiang Mai and set up their easel for the afternoon applying with skilful hands what they absorb from sight, both inner and outwardly from the spectacular view. Writer friends of his fly up from Bangkok and from abroad to create in this shanti empty space.

"I want this to be a home of arts, any kind of art. It is not an exhibition venue of any kind; it’s the application that counts. We are process orientated rather than product orientated." Muses Manuel.

On the 29th September, Manuel set a stage for a performance which he has been processing for a year. After having been involved as a production designer for a workshop on Brechtian theatre in October last year by Tadu Contemporary Art in Bangkok, Manuel began to develop the idea of translating Bertolt Brecht’s play The Good Person of Szechwan into a likay folk theatre form. He began to do research into the art and the history of likay and discovered that it was an expressive and important art form which is losing its popularity at a dangerous rate.

Likay is a traditional art form of folk theatre. A group of around twenty men, women and children will sing, dance, create poetry and act a local folk tale, a religious story or a Royal myth. The show can often last the better part of the night as actors paint their faces in garish mimics of giants, kitsch renditions of women and clownish masks of jokers. The costumes are shiny, bright, and completely over the top. Although the play is often familiar to both the viewers and the actors, much of likay is spontaneous. Like stand up comedians, the jokers will grasp the latest village news or the most topical subject and transform it into a hilarious insider’s joke. Issues of interest will be discussed, dissected and even solutions found as this circus-like art form encompasses aspects of life that villagers can all relate to.

Likay was introduced to Chiang Mai in 1927 when Khru Sa-Ing Supit brought the play Sri Prasert for a tour of the north. It reached the height of its popularity in 1957 when in the Sanpatong/Hang Dong district alone there were over 20 groups performing up to 250 times per season (the season being between June and November when there are many, both religious and secular, holidays). Nowadays there are only six troupes left to perform between 30-40 times a year. Television, cinema and music groups have become so popular with their accessibility, and adaptation to the modern times that likay is considered by many to be passe. Traditionally, a temple will hire a likay group to perform for a temple fair. The money donated from people would pay for the performance allowing audiences to watch for free. Nowadays however, with fewer temple fairs, less interest for likay and less money going around, likay troupes find that they need to charge viewers entrance fees in order to watch their performances which people are much more reluctant to do. So, raising funds from friends and organisations, Manuel sought out a local likay troupe and began the process of converting Brecht’s play, The Good Person of Szechwan into a likay called ‘kon dee muang nuea’ or the good person of the north. There is not much practising in likay, as improvisation is what brings the same audience back to familiar stories time and again.

There were around 200 people in the audience for Saw. Aikachai Likay Troup’s first Brechtian performance, most of whom were from the local villages but many from Chiang Mai and even Bangkok. The Good Person of the North is a story of a quest to find one true good person, the weight on the shoulders of a good person when confronted with greed and societal pressure and the final reckoning where the God judges whether a good person who does bad things is still a good person or not. The play asks questions about morality in a rustic and rural setting. This appealed to the audience who could relate to the story as well as to the dilemmas. Slap stick humour had the children in stitches of laughter and jokes about the recent bombing in Sanpatong which would have appeared tasteless performed by those unaffected, received wry giggles and chuckles from people who must have know some of those victims. Soliloquies by ‘Gods’ blended philosophy with country innocence. Bantering by men and women on prostitution and bartering got the crowd cheering and jeering for more. The crowd joined in, the actors lost themselves and sometimes got lost in the characters and even though Bertold Brecht would have had a tough time envisioning this version of his play, he may well have been very proud indeed. It was a most enjoyable evening with Chiang Mai visitors handing out chunks of Pizza Hut pizzas they had brought along to the children, actors occasionally forgetting their cues and being prompted back to action much to the amusement of the crowd, and many outsiders who had never seen a likay performed before becoming absorbed by this spontaneous art.

Likay, a dying art form, may have found its champion as well as its future. Should likay be able to appeal to a wider audience, if it could possibly modernise itself as have television, movies and pop culture, then a revival is a very real possibility.

Manuel has pledged that he will keep looking for ideas to develop for audiences in ESC. The likay troupe themselves say that they have been very challenged by this project and may very well use this story again in the future. Who knows, Brecht’s The Good Person of Szechwan may become a popular folk tale in Thailand one day. Manuel’s next project, which he is interested in doing, is equally ambitious. He would like to form a group of expatriates living in Chiang Mai and get them to use the ESC regularly to write, direct and act the story of Phalkon, Prime Minister of Siam in 1688. "The most challenging part will probably be to get twenty expatriates who will be interested in the project!" Laughs Manuel. He will continue to encourage actors to come and stay in his wonderful house and use it to its best advantage.

"The standard of actors in Thailand is generally not very professional yet. Acting is done either for fun or for fashion. Perseverance and dedication is something the acting profession needs to work at." Says Manuel. "It is still a matter of artisans versus artists, symbolic versus creative. In Chiang Mai, I would like to see people be daring and just become artists for the love of it. In the US, theatre is commercial, therefore the quality and standards are very high, in Germany, theatre is part of education and propaganda, and it is therefore embedded into the way of life. In Thailand it is still either farcical in which case it is not taken seriously by either audience or performers or it is mainly religious or royal symbolism which somewhat restricts the artistic creativity. Thai art is very daring though since it is seen as so much fun. So when artists enjoy themselves they are not contrived, they allow their imagination to come forth and produce some very exciting work. The likay for instance, although may would like to call it a profession, it barely pays a living to the performers therefore they see it as fun and it is alive and exciting. This happens a lot in Thai art, many people see it more as a hobby, a fashion rather than a profession. This is both good and bad – a lot of great work is produced, but often there is no perseverance or maintenance."

Manuel will continue to encourage artists and help them to realise their talents in his windswept house on the edge of a paddy field.