Jarunan Phantachat Director of the Contemporary Dance Theatre Performance “Lear & His 3 Daughters”
Q : Lately there have been a lot of reinterpretations of Shakespeare as a means of political reflection in Thailand, like ‘Shakespeare Must Die’ by Ingke and Manit Srivanichamphum. Why is that?
Jarunan : I think because Shakespeare’s works are classic and open for various interpretations. But it could also be a coincidence. I heard that Shakespeare Must Die began shooting a few years ago, even before Chulalongkorn University’s staging of Macbeth. And because Chula’s Macbeth was really successful, people still remember it and feel that Shakespeare remakes are quite popular.
As for the political implications, I think this is inherent in every performance if you want to look at it that way. Personally, I believe that how we choose to live is a part of politics. Politics is not just about going to vote or politicians. Political implications don’t only live in political satire performances. I think every stage play has the director’s political attitude embedded within it, whether they are conscious of it or not.
Q : And why did you choose this story?
Jarunan : It’s been a dream of mine for a long time to create a physical theater performance from a classic play. That way, people who are afraid that they won’t understand physical theater can at least have something to hold on to when trying to make sense of it. At least if you’ve read or heard of Shakespeare’s “King Lear”, you’ll know the rough story, and this is what you can start from. As for the subject matter that I want to talk about, I’m currently interested in the issue of love and familial relationships.
Q : “Lear & His 3 Daughters” is the first performance on B-Floor’s “Fright in Sight” project. Can you tell us what this means?
Jarunan: This year B-Floor is turning thirteen. We see that number 13 is closely associated to fear, misfortune...beliefs in bad luck and things like that. This is from the Western point of view though. We see that in fact right now our country also lives in fear. We fear that the Pla Boo boy’s predictions will come true. We fear that the floods might come again. We fear that 2012 will be the end of the world. We fear people from other countries will bring danger and chaos to our country. We fear someone could steal our phone to send out an SMS. We fear our country will be in crisis. We fear our friends might belong to a different color from ours. We fear someone might think we belong to a particular color. I think this feeling is becoming the whole nation’s atmosphere. And this is what originated our project “Fright In Sight”. In “Lear & His 3 Daughters” there’s also an issue of fear causing love and vice versa. So we want to ask the audience to put their fright in sight and look at fear in the eyes with us.
Q : Any other highlights in “Lear & His 3 Daughters”?
Jarunan: The first is how we will reinterpret a classic work and turn it into a dance theater. We have also picked a semi-outdoor venue for this show, which is the courtyard at the Pridi Banomyong Institute. We’ve performed there before but they were smaller scale shows. This time it’s going to be a full scale production. I think it’s exciting!
Our team and creation process is also very interesting. We invited our dancer friends to join the cast as well as assist us as choreographer. Usually we choreograph ourselves but this time we have a professional choreographer to take care of this part. As for the cast itself, we’re doing a double cast for all three of Lear’s daughters. Duangjai “Phiao” Hirunsri, a veteran actress, is one of our cast members. I have also invited some participants of B-FEST, our biennual intensive workshop, to join the cast. We want to work with new and young people so that our team and audience can witness something they’ve never seen in previous B-Floor productions.
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