Category: Theatre

Showtime

Existentialism & the Big Jop

A man with erratically frizzy hair tosses three bowling pins high into the air, watched over by a precariously balanced trapeze artist and a third man sporting an even wilder mane than that of the first. But these are not merely bowling pins, nor is this a straightforward trapeze. These tumbling pins are human emotions, juggled by a young artist; the trapeze, a mid-air attempt to discover one’s own identity.

Billed as a ‘modern circus show’, Me, Myself And Us is an acrobatic spectacular which tells the story of three young men, reunited randomly in a rather uncertain location, who attempt the impossible: living together. The resulting friction between personalities gives the show more than a taste of reality. There’s the ‘Little Prince’ character, who has yet to answer his own questions and live life to the fullest. Then there’s the ‘Pierrot’ type, with his head firmly in the clouds; clinging to his trapeze the same way others hold onto their dreams. Finally, Mr Smooth explores new ways of dressing in order to forge for himself a new, truer-to-self identity.

Leaping balletically from circus to contemporary dance to music, the show even features Creedence Clearwater Revival, energetically mixed on the spot by the performers. This 20-something trio – Naël Jammal, Guillaume Biron and Florent Lestage – have known each other since their student days at circus schools in France and Montreal and collectively call themselves the Tête d’Enfant (‘head of a child’) circus company, inspired by a line in the Marcel Carné film Les Enfants Du Paradis. “We don’t want to grow up, we don’t want to give up on our emotions and intuitions,” they quip.

WHO: Tête d’Enfant circus company
WHAT: Me, Myself & Us modern circus show
WHERE: The National Circus (opposite The National Assembly)
WHEN: 6:30pm October 3
WHY: “Keep the circus going inside you, keep it going. Don’t take anything too seriously; it’ll all work out in the end.” – David Niven

Lost in translating

Quietly minding my own business, people-watching out the window, when the Ed. drops a surprise assignment on my desk. By ‘desk’, I of course mean ‘hammock’, and by ‘assignment’, I should really say ‘multiple-choice questionnaire’: a) do you fancy writing a story on an international rock band touring Cambodia? b) unless, that is, you’d prefer to do the piece we’re running on an interpretive dance troupe?

A quick Google-squiz later and it was clear I’d been had. The band, as it turns out, was French. This isn’t necessarily in and of itself a bad thing, but I’m a monolingual Aussie (some would say ‘sublingual’) and I don’t speak a word of French; precisely the language that the decidedly scant web-based information pertaining to the band is posted in. Wikipedia, that last bastion of professional journalism, remained curiously silent. Mystique.

First things first. Rarely do I associate the French with rock ‘n’ roll. Whisper the phrase ‘French music’ in my ear and you’ll synaptically conjure mental projections of a Gauloises-smoking Serge Gainsbourg sleazing it up in bed with a sultry supermodel or, on occasion, his daughter. Innocent incest, yes; tight leathers, no. Just the same as one mightn’t ordinarily think of Cambodia in conjunction with heavy metal.

Yet that’s exactly the deal with the conception-defying double bill on offer at the Chenla Theatre when the French Institute of Cambodia presents up-and-coming French garage outfit Dissonant Nation with support from local Khmer hard-rockers Cartoon eMo (tickets, $4, available at the French Institute and on the door). So that’s the easy part. Established facts. Right there, on the press release.

But how to decipher an odd foreign language in preview of a fledgling band from far away when my entire contingent of Franco-friends have abandoned me for my insistence that big Australian reds are far superior to the relative cordial served up in Bordeaux (I’m totally gluten tolerant, so throw all the baguettes you like)? Simple enough: who needs ‘em when I have the modern wonders of Google Translate on my side? Webzine les inRocks on Dissonant Nation:

‘Of course, the youthful character of the trio Aubagne could include with mallets in the improbable generation of rockers babies’

Biological English: DN are a young trio from southern France who maybe but probably not whack babies with mallets. As to their music:
‘But for two or three things that you feel (the innocence, the ability to truss a bit prolonged adolescents), is allowed to pack the frantic drive of these flyweight Underwear.’

Got it. The sum total of the information I could dig up. Hence resorting to this meta-neo-journalistic article about writing this article. Then a stroke of musical journalism genius: why not perhaps listen to some of their music?

Further scratching yielded the following: DN, comprised of lead singer Lucas Martinez, guitarist Loïc Sanchez and Simon Granier on skins, have recently released their debut album, We Are We Play, citing Sonic Youth and Bowie as influences. Although Bowie is initially elusive, there’s the ‘dissonant’ creative tuning and random off-key strums of Sonic Youth for sure. But while pitching toward the Youth and likely other mid-to-late nineties’ indies (is that the estranged ghost of early Garbage rising on single La Chandon?), the boys – with their driving guitars, tight, rolling drum lines and chanty vocal catches – arrive somewhere closer to a cross between a more obviously commercial QOTSA and the parade of affected, chart-topping indie Brit-rock revivalists of the past decade.

I suspect this is in part to do with the English. No doubting that Lucas could do with a Gauloises or two of his own – the barely post-pubescent vocalising lending an unfortunate pop quality incongruent with the rawer riffs – but it’s the derivative-sounding estimation of English-language expression that I imagine unintentionally tip Dissonant Nation toward the commercial end of the scale.

When Bowie does finally arrive on the bouncy, bullocking Birthday Party it’s mostly in vocal mimicry rather than musical influence, just as the rougher-rocking English-language tracks sound strangely reminiscent of Pete Douherty et al. Still, the track also features a five-second acid freak-out halfway through the breakdown, followed by a cacophonous finale and a strangely subdued, idiosyncratic piano outro. A sign of the more creative things to come with greater maturity and confidence and a growing freedom from commercial constraints?

Dissonant Nation might not (yet) boast the weighty grunt of an Aussie Cab-Sav, but vodka-laced raspberry cordial on a summer’s night can bring its own hyperactive delights, and live, I’d expect Dissonant Nation will – in cahoots with Cartoon eMo – deliver a raucous, energetic evening for all.

WHO: Dissonant Nation and Cartoon eMo
WHAT: French rockers vs Cambodian metalheads
WHERE: Chenla Theatre, corner of Monireth Blvd & Mao Tse Tung Blvd.
WHEN: 7pm June 12
WHY: Not as dissonant as the name might suggest

It’s all just a farce, isn’t it?

Farce is a word I most often associate with work meetings, past relationships and conversations with my mother.  Apparently, it is also a form of theatre (who knew?) and it is being brought to the capital again by the Phnom Penh Players on October 25 and 26 in More Diplomatic Affairs, an original farce making its global premiere, here in Phnom Penh.  Set in an unnamed embassy, the Players’ latest offering was written by Emma Triller, who promises that “More of the situations are real than you would believe.” It’s the follow-up to last year’s extremely successful Diplomatic Affairs, which became the topic of many water-cooler conversations in embassies around Phnom Penh.

Being an eager, young, want-to-be reporter I stuck a Post-It note that said ‘Press’ to an ill-fitting hat from a Caltex station and this is what I learned:

Farce is a freewheeling, fast-paced comedy involving ridiculous characters in ridiculous situations. The best example and most successful non-stage version in pop culture would be Fawlty Towers, but despite its laugh-a-second style the genre has set requirements and a proper recipe: take a handful of stock characters who portray typical human deficiencies (pride, greed, lust, deceit, jealousy, snobbery, etc). Add a protagonist who is flawed, but trying to do the right thing. Throw in a situation that involves telling a lie, that requires another lie, and let it simmer.

Farce has more set rules than any other form of theatre: it’s like a piece of music or a sonnet. At the same time it can be written about anything. Whatever the cover up, mistress in the cupboard, two dinner dates on the same night, it’s still a farce. The location and complications for a farce are completely open.  “As a setting, an emergency room – or in our play, an embassy – is a perfect location. They are both places no one wants to really visit and there are so many things that happen behind the scenes that you don’t see,” says Jeannette Robinson, who is acting in her fourth Phnom Penh Players’ production. “Any of the situations  in our performance would be really stressful in real life,” adds Emma Triller, “but people deal with so much stress that sometimes they just need to laugh – and laughing at someone else’s work problems is always fun.”

The action of a farce is propelled by panic, with characters lying to save face, which multiplies their problems as they now have to deal not only with the original situation but also the lies causing them to behave even more erratically. Writing a farce is no simple task: it’s like spinning a spider web. Each situation has a story of its own, but they are all connected. “Emma wrote an amazing script,” says Emily Marques, who is returning to the unnamed embassy with the accent that made her the lead in several audience members’ dreams last year. “The way that everything plays off what came before it… It requires a certain type of writer.”

Despite the common ground of laughter, the world of farce is very different to that of comedy. Comedy is about funny lines. In a farce no one tells jokes, they are too busy slamming doors and running around in circles. The humour comes more from entrances, exits, false bravado and obvious lies. Phrases like ’Yes, sir’ and ‘No problem’ are likely to get the biggest laughs.

Farce is in fact more akin to tragedy. It’s the same complications: people put in impossible situations, but with different results. Jumping in a grave is tragic in Hamlet, whereas tampering with a dead body was farcical in last year’s Diplomatic Affairs.

Farce needs the most generous actors: no one stands centre-stage giving a monologue or philosophising about their problems. “Every character has their moment,” says Jeanette. “You come on the stage, deliver your line and get out of the way.”

Despite the success of television programmes such as Fawlty Towers and ’Allo, ’Allo, farce remains a uniquely theatrical genre. After all, there’s nothing like sitting in a theatre full of people and watching someone’s day go to Hell.

WHO: The Phnom Penh Players
WHAT: Diplomatic Affairs II
WHERE: Russian Cultural Centre, corner of Norodom Blvd & Street 222
WHEN: 7:30pm October 25 & 26
WHY: Life’s just one big farce, isn’t it?

Tickets ($10) are on sale now at Baitong Restaurant, Street 360; Willow Boutique Hotel, Street 21; Bopha Titanic Restaurant, Riverside; Cha Nails, Sothearos Boulevard and Tips & Toes, Street 278.

Mak Therng: And justice for all

Stolen wives, Machiavellian princes and a lesson in morals for the ruling elite

…..

From the skin of the giant skor drum comes a thunderous tribal beat. Palms slap rhythmically against synthetic hide; now fast, now slow, now staccato. This Morse code of sorts, emanating from the impenetrable darkness of the theatre’s right wing, coaxes into life the crouched figures occupying centre stage. Each has been teased, squeezed and ultimately stitched right into the most elaborate of costumes, their heads bowed before an expectant, near-silent audience.

Prostrate on a midnight-blue carpet, six heavily rouged young women with raven tresses tumbling almost to their waists begin to snake their wrists in time with the pounding of the drums. A chorus of Cambodian voices floats up, over rapt heads and out into the starry night air among the leafy grounds of the National Museum. Tailored swathes of coloured silk rise and fall like a fabric wave, the women’s bodies twisting and turning in front of a crimson backdrop.

Here, on the gold-trimmed all-weather stage built quite accidentally by Cambodian Living Arts to house its Plae Plakaa (‘Fruitful’) performances, ancient history is repeating itself – only this time, with one very notable difference. While the kohl-rimmed eyes peering out from beneath gilded headdresses may belong to characters from a time-honoured operatic form, the central message of this otherwise traditional show has the socially conscious modern viewer very much in its crosshairs.

Mak Therng, one of 20 traditional Khmer operas known collectively as yike (pronounced ‘yee-kay’), sounds at first not unlike the basic plot of many a Western soap opera/Shakespearean play: girl loves boy; girl gets stolen by another boy; original boy attempts to reclaim girl; something goes horribly, horribly wrong. In fact, and particularly in CLA’s interpretation, it’s a brilliant piece of social critique examining a) how power corrupts, and b) Everyman’s oft-tricky pursuit of justice.

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The precise history of the yike genre depends entirely on who you ask. Some scholars say the opera, which involves singing, dancing, acting and drumming, originated in the eighth century. Others claim it dates back even further, to the fifth-century Cham Empire. The Cambridge Guide To Theatre, edited by Martin Banham, contains the following entry: ‘Yike developed in response to tours by Malay bangsawan troupes in the late 19th century. The art also parallels likay of Thailand in its mixture of classical and modern features. The introduction of wing-and-drop scenery, the rough approximation of classical dance used for entrances and exits, the humorous burlesques of classical legends and the introduction of new plots coupled with witty improvisation by performers helped yike gain wide popularity among the populace. Performances were even staged at court.’

Ask CLA’s Marion Gommard, perched on a stone bench 20 metres from the stage and struggling to make herself heard above the drums, and she answers thus: “We lost a lot of information about its creation; there are different stories about how yike was created. Some researchers believe it was created by the Cham during the Angkorian period and when they fought against the Khmer, the Khmer took that from them and made their own version. Another version of the story is that a Khmer king from that time made it and another says it comes from an Indonesian art form practiced by people on islands and in boats, speaking what is now a lost language.

“In every yike performance you have an introduction piece. In a lot of traditional Cambodian art forms you have to pay respect to the ancestors so that the spirits don’t cause any problems during the performance and everything goes smoothly. You have that in yike as well; it’s called [says something indecipherable] in that original language – they kept the word, but we’re not quite sure of the exact meaning! So we have these different theories that we can put together to find the history of yike, but it’s still quite unsure. It started in the 12th or 13th century and involves acting, theatre, singing, a lot of drumming. We could actually call it opera, a kind of musical theatre. It’s very traditional, very ancient.

“This one is called Mak Therng, which is the name of the hero. It’s an ancient folk tale. Originally it wasn’t part of the yike repertoire, but in the early 1970s it was adapted. In 2011 we had the idea to remake it again, so we invited American director Robert McQueen – a well known dramaturge – to work with our teacher, Uy Ladavan, and the troupe to make an improved theatre performance.

“It’s a social piece, really. Basically the story is that Mak Therng – the hero – is quite old, but has a younger wife. Very nice! [Laughs] They’re very much in love with each other, but then one day the prince comes in and he finds her very nice so he kidnaps her and brings her to the royal palace. The piece follows Mak Therng’s quest to take her back: it’s a social quest for justice. He goes in front of the king and asks for justice. It’s interesting because the original ending of the story is different than ours. The original end was the king saying ‘No’ and Mak Therng’s wife then kills herself because her reputation has been tarnished: the prince has already had his way with her.”

So why tamper with the end of such a time-honoured tale? At a workshop staged by CLA during the early stages of the artistic process, a conversation was had about what message the troupe – many of whom come from The White Building, the capital’s most famous artistic community – wanted to give people about women in society. Says Marion: “Uy Ladavan, the show’s director, told me she wanted to change the ending because she wanted to make people feel that justice is possible. The king can say ‘Yes.’”

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The story as told by Ladavan, noted at the Anachak Dara awards (the Cambodian Oscars) for her script-writing and dramaturgy, is deliberately different than the version taught to her more than 40 years ago. In the original, the king takes no action against his wayward son, with tragic results. In Ladavan’s interpretation of Mak Therng, the ending has been changed: the king acknowledges his son’s crime and duly sentences him, a demonstration to modern audiences that fairness is not out of reach and justice can always be brought, whether in family, at work, or in civil society.

“When I was young, I saw yike performances directed by a very well known yike teacher, Grandfather Khy,” says Ladavan, who began studying the art form in 1972. “The first time I saw the performance, I fell in love! I registered to learn yike opera with the Royal University of Fine Arts under Grandfather Khy. I’m in love with yike because it’s one of the oldest among the 20 kinds of Cambodian opera. In yike, the music sounds very nice and also the way the actors dance is very soft and interesting. The music makes the characters seem not so cruel.”

Ladavan acknowledges theatrical traditions by keeping the set as simple as possible – a throwback to the past, when operas were performed on bare ground. In a video clip on CLA’s website, celebrated yike master Khy Mom, born of a famous pre-war opera family, describes a typical scenario: “My father and my grandfather were yike performers. In the past they performed on the ground. They just put mats down and there was no electricity so they burned wooden torches or lamps to play. I saw them and I loved it. My father was teaching them, so I asked him to teach me too. I love it because it is inherited from our ancestors and I am afraid of losing it. That’s why I am trying to persuade the young generation to try hard to keep it going so that it won’t be lost.”

And what of today’s young cast? “Some of our dancers come to us because their parents want them to and think it would be a good idea for them to be trained in a classical art form,” says Frances, also of CLA. “Some people come because they’ve seen it on TV or they know friends who are doing it and they’re keen to learn too. One of my favourite students grew up in the provinces and while he was tending his water buffalo he would hear people singing yike songs and he learned to love it. There are some terribly romantic stories like that.

“The subtext of this play is really, really accessible to audiences. The first time we went to watch the troupe practice at a school in front of regular classes, they were just blown away. At that point we didn’t have any subtitles and one of our questions had been would foreign audiences who didn’t speak Khmer actually get the performance? It’s so easy, even without subtitles, to follow the plot. A lot of Cambodians cry at it. We had one staff member who I caught running out and I thought what’s happened? She was in floods of tears and just couldn’t watch any more. It’s very powerful.”

Her words are echoed immediately by Ladavan, now occupying Marion’s space on the stone bench. “The story of Mak Therng plays a very important role in Cambodian society because the purpose is to educate people to love justice, to have high morals in society, to be good and to stand up for their rights. A lot of the artists in Cambodia have to be very careful about following political trends because of the pressure applied by high-ranking officials when actors represent the people in society. In traditional stories, the king is wrong, but he punishes innocent people. We changed the ending to show society that, in the story, the prince has to take responsibility for his actions. The king and the prince both represent people in power, the ruling elite. There are two main messages: one is that innocent people should stand strong and fight for justice. The other is that people in positions of power should take responsibility for their actions.”

CLA’s new season, which marks the organisation’s 15th year, is now open 7pm Monday to Saturday at The National Museum. Mak Therng is staged on Tuesdays and Fridays; Children of Bassac dance shows are held on Mondays and Thursdays; Passage Of Life, a journey from birth to death, is staged on Wednesdays and Saturdays (details at cambodianlivingarts.com).

WHO: Cambodian Living Arts
WHAT: Plae Plakaa performances
WHERE: The National Museum, Street 178
WHEN: 7pm Monday to Saturday
WHY: Ancient wisdom for a modern world

Beauty of the night

Two silhouettes behind a white curtain. Music swirls. Heads poke out, caricatures waddle, forms tell stories. Two women wrapped in white dance in symbols. One sings in Khmer, one recites in French. The music fizzles and bubbles and burns.

Blending traditional and contemporary, theatre and dance, shadows and music, Belle De Nuit (Srey Kouch in Khmer) is a performance creation that arose from a collaboration and exchange between the Cambodian arts collective Kok Thlok and French contemporary theatre group Chantier Art.

The work is an examination of the world of prostitution from a range of thematic and artistic approaches. The first part is stylistically based on commedia dell’arte, or burlesque; the second more realistic and narrative; the final symbolic. The oldest profession is not judged, nor glorified; stories are told and stereotypes challenged.

Actor/dancer Aurélie Ianutolo explains that while the European theatrical tradition is text based, Khmer theatre is focused on dance, and the richness of the production is its ability to draw on the strengths of many disciplines. The text itself is based on selections from Le Cambodge En Voix Off, by Nantarayao Samputho, written in Smot, the Khmer sung poetry, translated into French prose.
The piece has been constantly evolving, says Aurélie. “We began in 2010 with an arts exchange workshop, without using language. Everything passes through the body, the music, the melodies.”

Cultural considerations played a part in the work’s development: Khmer women found it difficult to accept playing the role of a srey kouch. “The feeling was, if I act a bad girl, I become a bad girl,” explains Aurélie. Playing and singing the Khmer role on stage is the graceful and elegant Malis Long. Rounding out the performing troupe are musicians (and composers) Kanika Peang and Adrien Gayraud; technical support is provided by An Heng and Sovann Sok.

Belle De Nuit was first performed at the Institut français du Cambodge in Phnom Penh in January 2011, followed by a six-week tour of France in October/November 2011. You can catch the final three performances of this remarkable and moving work at Show Box this weekend.

WHO:Kok Thlok and Chantier Art
WHAT: Belle De Nuit performance
WHERE: Show Box, #11 St. 330 (between Streets 105 and 113)
WHEN: 7:30pm September 13, 14 & 15
WHY: Forms tell stories

Ancient wisdom, modern world

“The natural world is our home. It is not necessarily sacred or holy. It is simply where we live. It is therefore in our interest to look after it. This is common sense. But only recently have the size of our population and the power of science and technology grown to the point that they have a direct impact on nature. To put it another way, until now, Mother Earth has been able to tolerate our sloppy house habits. However, the stage has now been reached where she can no longer accept our behaviour in silence. The problems caused by environmental disasters can be seen as her response to our irresponsible behaviour. She is warning us that there are limits even to her tolerance.” – His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet, Ancient Wisdom, Modern World: Ethics For The New Millennium

…..

At precisely 14:46 Japan Standard Time on March 11 2011, roughly 70km east of the Oshika Peninsula of Tohoku, Mother Earth finally ran out of patience with us, her human inhabitants. Furiously shaking the floor of the Pacific Ocean in a fit of vexation, she let loose the fifth-largest earthquake in modern history. Towering tsunamis more than 40 metres high tore through the 6,852 islands of the Japanese archipelago, leaving in their sodden wake level 7 meltdowns at three nuclear reactors and nearly 16,000 people dead or dying.

So powerful was the seismic shift triggered by her rage that it bumped the planet an estimated 10cm to 25cm on its axis, moving Honshu – Japan’s main island – a full 2.4 metres east. But that seismic shift extended beyond the purely physical. Aghast at the horrors unfolding before his eyes, one of Japan’s most distinguished choreographers felt his very understanding of humanity begin to topple. Having produced 55 performances in 35 countries over a period of 30 years, Hiroshi Koike – a quiet, thoughtful man who pauses to consider each response before articulating it – promptly dissolved his Pappa Tarahuma dance company. The time had come to contemplate higher things: namely, the pursuit of a better world.

Sitting cross-legged in the lotus position, perched atop a red plastic chair, Hiroshi moves barely a muscle for a full 75 minutes: a hardly noticeable nod here; a fleeting hand gesture there. Before him, on a floor coated in black rubber dance mats, seven performing artists duck, weave, tumble and spin with balletic grace as a large speaker blares out everything from white noise to punk rock and back. Slightly behind him and to the left, a young Khmer musician sits amid a tangle of traditional Cambodian instruments, his haunting melodies occasionally interrupting the recorded cacophony.

Here, in the shadow of a huge circus tent opposite the National Assembly, an Indian epic is being played out. Only this performance is no relic, rather an attempt to build a bridge between ancient Asian wisdom and the idiosyncrasies of the modern world in which we live. The keystone in this existential viaduct almost defies comprehension: an ancient Sanskrit poem made up of almost 100,000 couplets, the Mahabharata (‘Great epic of the Bharata dynasty’) is roughly seven times the length of ancient Greek poet Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey combined and is considered as significant as the complete works of Shakespeare and/or the Bible.

For generations, this particular epic – chiselled onto the walls of Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom, and companion to the Ramayana – served as the foundation for religion, philosophy, politics and law in Asian cultures. Decipher the meaning of this monumental text and you can break free from all evil, legend has it. It’s with such promise in mind that Hiroshi, a former TV director, is repurposing the story for a 21st century audience to pose one rather pivotal question: What does it mean to be human and alive?

“I was so shocked by the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear plant problems,” says the choreographer during a rare quiet moment post-rehearsal. “We have to change our ideas, the structure of our societies, our philosophy. I dissolved my company and tried to make a new bridge project – there are many kinds of bridge I want to build up, for example between ancient times and modern times. We need these bridges between the ancient world, this world and future times. We need to go beyond what has come before, to open our minds. After March 2011, I reconsidered the relationship between humans and nature; traditional culture and modern culture; this world and other worlds. We have to think about what it means to be human. We need to change our philosophy, so we have to talk with ourselves: what is our philosophy? What are humans? What are animals? What is this world? How do all these things work together?”

On the surface, the Mahabharata might seem an unusual vessel for such rigorous self-examination: its mass of mythological and didactic material swirls around a central heroic narrative detailing the battle for sovereignty between warring factions of cousins, the Kauravas (the ‘bad’ side) and the Pandavas (the ‘good’ side). Set sometime before 500BC, this long-winded tale of Hindu war is believed to have been primarily authored by the sage Vyasa (with a little help from his friends, of course).

The story begins when the blindness of Dhritarashtra, the elder of two princes, causes him to be passed over in favour of his brother Pandu as king on their father’s death. But a curse prevents Pandu from fathering children and his wife asks the gods – Dharma, the wind, Indra and the Ashvins – to father children in Pandu’s name.

The bitterness that develops between the cousins as a result forces the Pandavas to leave the kingdom when their father dies. During their exile the five jointly marry Draupadi – born out of a sacrificial fire, who Arjuna wins by shooting an arrow through a row of targets – and meet their cousin Krishna, friend and companion. The Pandavas return to the kingdom but are again exiled to the forest, this time for 12 years, when Yudhishthira loses everything in a game of dice with the eldest of the Kauravas.

The feud culminates in a series of great battles on the field of Kurukshetra (north of Delhi, in Haryana state). The Kauravas are annihilated and, on the victorious side, only the five Pandava brothers and Krishna survive. Krishna dies when a hunter, who mistakes him for a deer, shoots him in his one vulnerable spot – his foot – and the brothers set out for Indra’s heaven. One by one they fall along the way, Yudhishthira alone reaching the gates of heaven. After further tests of his faith, he is finally reunited with his brothers and Draupadi, as well as his enemies, the Kauravas, to bask in perpetual bliss.

But this text is about more than myths and legends: equally, it’s an examination of dharma, or Hindu moral law. These much revered codes of conduct – including the proper conduct of a king, of a warrior, of an individual living in times of calamity and of a person seeking to obtain freedom from rebirth – are exposed as so subtly conflicting that at times the hero cannot help but violate them, no matter what choice he makes.

And therein lies its relevance to all of humanity, a relevance director Peter Brook emphasised by using an international cast in his nine-hour-long 1985 stage play – an overtly ambitious endeavour that raised more than a few thespian eyebrows at the time. Hiroshi’s cast, by contrast, is proudly pan-Asian: four Cambodians, two Japanese, one Malaysian. Between them, the seven performing artists play a plethora of roles – up to five per dancer – an effect achieved on stage through the rather cunning use of lightning-quick costume changes; the ingenious deployment of masks and subtle alterations in movement and mood.

Glistening with sweat in the humid afternoon air, the female lead squats at the edge of one of the mats and offers up a cheery ‘Hello!’ Chumvan Sodhachivy, better known as Belle, plays the parts of Draupadi, Bakasura following, Ganga and Kuru. “We play many roles, so we have to change very quickly: the feeling and also the action,” says this graceful Cambodian dancer. “It’s quite a challenge – and we’ve only been rehearsing for one month and one week. This performance has many layers: many different kinds of things are mixed together. The challenge for me personally is in the last scene, when I have to scream. Koyano Tetsuro taught me the technique because I’m really bad with screaming, but he wanted it. Normally the girl is always sweet and when something happens to her she is quiet and crestfallen, but for this performance he wanted to completely change that: you have to open your heart and scream.”

Koyano, a rubber-faced, Japanese-born specialist in Balinese masked dancing who plays four separate roles in the performance, beams at her side – apparently enjoying having his facial expressions clearly visible for once (“His eyes are so big!” exclaims Hiroshi). “We Asians have wisdom from the old ways about how we can best live with nature,” he says. “In Japan, we value this. Now we have to redefine it and recreate it for this modern world. It’s not only about performing arts. I studied a lot of philosophy as well in Balinese culture. We chose the Mahabharata because it is the greatest story in Asia. The story is a source of art, a source of philosophy, a source of society – everything. For example, in Bali they use this Mahabharata story in the famous shadow puppet shows. Before, they didn’t have any schools in which to educate their children so people would go to shadow puppet shows. In the Mahabharata story, it talks about many important philosophies, wisdom and how people can live together in society and co-exist with nature. This is a form of education as well.”

WHO: Amrita Performing Arts
WHAT: Mahabharata dance performance
WHERE: National Theatre, #173 Sangkat Toul Svay Prey I (behind Spark Club, off Mao Tse Tung Blvd.)
WHEN: 6:30pm July 12 & 13
WHY: We are all custodians of an increasingly beleaguered Mother Earth

A very curious cabaret

The figure emerges from a side door with a preternatural silence that borders on unsettling. Bare legs, hands and face are smeared with thick green matter; a few dark still-wet patches of unidentifiable sludge glisten under electric light. His hair has been coiffed into a fauxhawk that’s starting to wilt in the humidity; his camouflage jacket smeared with the same primordial ooze. From beneath it peeks a pair of blue underpants. And then there’s the humming – a low, monotonous warble. A few feet away, another figure spins slowly on the balls of his feet as he circles a small, green velvet ottoman.

Again.
And again.
And again.

No, this is not a scene from a lunatic asylum – although the Cambodian gentleman watching from outside, who laughs then lifts his arms and spins in mimicry of the dancer’s very purposeful pirouetting, could almost be forgiven for thinking so. The fact of the matter is far from it. For this, darlings, is ART.

But we’re not talking your run-of-the-mill, common or garden, ho-hum sort of art. This, ladies and gentlemen, is art for YOU: art that wants to muscle its way right past your intellectual defences and square onto your dinner plate. Quite literally. And it’s this splicing of performance art with food that’s at the core of a very curious one-night-only show by arts collective Common Sole at Java Café & Gallery.

Perched at a small dining table here in the downstairs gallery, a long-limbed dance and theatre artist from Kuala Lumpur cradles in his enormous hands a white ceramic bowl. His lips strain slowly, painfully towards it before his face snaps away in disgust. Repeat. Seconds become minutes. Minutes become… even more minutes.

“We were playing around with the idea of doing a variety show, some sort of cabaret concept, which is something I’ve wanted to do here for years now – to bring this idea of food and the experience of art together,” says Java founder Dana Langlois. “It’s basically what I’ve built Java on entirely and it’s something that I love: food and art.”

Here’s how this most uncommon of cabarets works: from the moment you walk through the door, you’re part of the action. Five performing artists from around the world present five acts, during which a five-course meal inspired by those acts is served. A Curious Cabaret has been crafted specifically to stimulate all five senses – ‘and perhaps a sixth’ – by fusing the classical elements of a dinner-cabaret and curiosities show with a very contemporary take on performance art.

“As we developed the concept, each person was clearly working on their own, which is really interesting because they [Common Sole] define themselves as a collaborative. The idea was that they would each retreat into this very personal space of their own, where they could develop their own idea, but that would then be presented as a larger show. It’s a very different approach than sticking five people into one piece.”

The number five is a much-repeated motif. During a rare break in the coincidentally five-hour rehearsal, Céline Bacqué, a contemporary dance graduate from the National Superior Conservatory of Paris, rests her shoulders against Java’s front porch and stretches under the damp night sky. “All of the ideas were developed around the number five. We have five fingers; we have five senses; there are five points on a star, five elements. For the audience to be able to feel the five senses at the same time: to look; to hear; to smell; to taste, to touch, but very organic.”

Each of the five courses, from Moroccan gingered chickpea soup to cinnamon-chili chocolate fondant and passionfruit syrup, use ‘taste, colour, texture and action’ to complement each of the solo performances in turn. The acts draw on influences as diverse as Khmer shadow puppetry and South Korean namsadang samul nori, folk music with its roots in ancient shamanism. Combined, they’re designed to ‘take the audience on a path through spirituality, memories, conflict, internal tension and the freedom of purity’.

“This is something that works very well in Java: always bringing the audience into the art,” says Dana. “I try to do this a lot with exhibitions and working with artists who are very connected to the audience. I truly believe the audience is part of the art; I’m not really a big believer in art for art’s sake, in that it exists in a bubble. Everybody’s different and I know there is a space for that pure artistic vision, but in my mind and my experience it doesn’t become art until it exists with an audience.

“A Curious Cabaret is something I’m very excited about because of where it takes the experience of art. It’s very connected to what I like to do with the gallery, being based in a cafe and putting art in public spaces. The cafe is the perfect catalyst for bringing art into people’s daily lives and even making eating an art. I strongly believe in the institutional spaces for art, but I think art should be for the public. I’m a big fan of making art part of our daily lives.”

A wild-haired American spectator tries to interject when someone in an oversized plum-coloured kimono starts jabbering at him in a foreign language. “Dude, seriously, I don’t speak French…” Then it dawns. The ‘art’ is upon him. Bruno Schell, comedian, playwright and stage director, has plucked from his elaborate hat a small origami swan and is pressing it gently into the American’s palm, all the while muttering softly and smiling. His piece, entitled Souvenir (‘Memory’), channels the spirit of his Cambodian grandmother and is paired with a dish Celine says “you have to open to discover; there’s an element of surprise to what you eat”.

In the finale, Black Butterfly, Céline and Un Rattana explore “nature in the night” via an exquisite pas de deux between shadow and light. Secreted behind a Cambodian shadow-puppetry screen, Rattana – the Moon – sweeps a light back and forth in an exotic dance with the silhouette of her counterpart on the other side, the balletic Black Butterfly. “Life’s cycle is mysterious, unknown… maybe because it is as ephemeral as it is infinite, empty,” says Céline. “The moves of the shadows, as the beauty of the night, make us feel a bit scared… as the black butterfly in harmony with the cosmos makes us feel free.”

Striding through the pregnant pauses between each of act is peripatetic poet-cum-philosopher Ann Kimlong. Musing on mysticism and metaphysics he meanders between tables, pausing dramatically now and then to look extra pensive.

But the sensory stimulation positively risks overload when Franco-Cambodian theatre performer/‘body percussionist’ Eric Ellul – he of the blue underpants – bares his almost all. His mud-smeared ritual ‘will explore the tensions between accidental body positions, words and sounds: how these bonds create emotional states and energy that trigger a personal transformation, defining new territories of expression and feelings’.

At one point, you might want to avert your eyes. Says Dana: “I realised by the end of it that half of the performers are in their underwear! It might get more people to come…”

WHO: Common Sole
WHAT: A Curious Cabaret (tickets are $25 and on sale at Java)
WHERE: Java Gallery, #56 Sihanouk Blvd.
WHEN: 7pm March 22
WHY: Half the performers are in their underwear!

 

Secret spaces and magical hours

They call it ‘ruin-lust’ and photographer Chea Phal has it bad. The symptoms? A romantic fascination with forgotten and decaying buildings coupled with a determination to capture their image before it is too late. The result? Forgotten, Sometimes Hidden, an exhibition of hauntingly beautiful photographs of Phnom Penh’s overlooked, unloved and at-risk architectural treasures.

This romantic fascination with decaying buildings and their sociological significance is far from a new phenomenon. It subtends the artworks of the 18th and 19th centuries, from Casper David Friedrich’s landscape paintings to Eugene Atget’s fin de siècle photographs of Paris in the throes of modernisation. In the latter half of the 20th century. Detroit, a city in seemingly perpetual decline, provided the perfect backdrop for photographers in the grip of ruin-lust, such as Romain Meffre and Yves Marchand.

It was Marchand’s photographs of Detroit in dissolution which inspired Chea, whose first solo exhibition is being unveiled at The Plantation Hotel during this year’s Our City Festival. “Marchand’s photos were mind-blowing,” he enthuses. “That’s what made me jump-start to photographing these buildings.”

Forgotten, Sometimes Hidden follows the trajectory of Chea’s countless days spent exploring Phnom Penh, during which he seeks out the city’s architectural secrets. The photographs capture the historical and aesthetic value of 12 buildings: some are well known, such as Vann Molyvann’s White Building; others are anonymous, rendered only through close-range shots of crumbling brick or exposed internal structures. “I guess when people see my pictures they might see the building first,” Chea explains. “But then they notice the emptiness inside.” This emptiness conveys a certain vulnerability as if, stripped of intended form and functionality, these buildings lie helpless in the face of eventual destruction.

Chea’s anxiety about the fate of Phnom Penh’s architectural landmarks is symbolised through his use of natural light in Forgotten, Sometimes Hidden. Part of the exhibition is dedicated to photographs taken in the so-called ‘magic hour,’ that suspended moment between day and darkness standing as a metaphor for the moribund buildings’ twilit existence. “I sometimes revisit the same places again and again to seek better lights. For me, the rather dark atmosphere can give us some sort of feeling that those buildings are fallen in an unfortunate situation,” he says regretfully. “Somehow, these structures are the least permanent of things. People feel differently about the city’s development, but for me Phnom Penh is losing its identity. I try to photograph it before it’s gone.”

For Chea himself, his work conjures mixed emotions. “There’s the excitement of seeing and capturing what most people haven’t seen or failed to see. It’s both thrilling and challenging to get into those neglected buildings and photograph them. Then I imagine what the building looked like in its prime. Some buildings deserve better care and love, and it saddens me to see their withered condition.”

The exhibition constitutes not only an image of a city in flux, but also a portrayal of an aspect of Cambodian history and identity in danger of disappearing. Chea hopes his work can connect people to this shared history, capturing the present while linking it to the past and future. “Nothing would make me happier than if I can provoke the audience to rethink this wonderful architecture. I think in about a decade it will be very hard to imagine what Phnom Penh looks like now. I hope the frozen moment in still pictures could help the next generation to understand and learn about our past.”

WHO: Chea Phal
WHAT: Forgotten, Sometimes Hidden photography exhibition
WHERE: The Plantation, #28 St. 184
WHEN: Until October 7
WHY: See your city before it’s gone

 

Ghoulies & ghosties

Things that go ‘bump’ in the night, to which the Western tradition of Halloween is today largely dedicated, have long been part of Southeast Asian folklore. Notable among the region’s most frightful spectres is the Arp, a disembodied female head who floats around at night scaring the bejesus out of nocturnal types with her glistening fangs and glowing, bloody entrails.

Legend has it she’s the ghost of a Khmer princess defeated in battle and later burnt at the stake after the Siamese aristocrat to whom she’d been promised caught her in the arms of her lover (a lower-ranking lover, at that). In desperation, a Khmer sorceress cast a powerful spell to protect the princess, but by the time the magic took effect only her head and intestines had escaped the flames. Today, this grisly apparition – all that remains of her royal highness – is believed to roam the Southeast Asian countryside under cover of darkness, sating its infernal appetite for flesh by preying on everything from pigs to pregnant women.

Twentieth-century ethnographer Phraya Anuman Rajadhon was the first scholar in Thailand to study regional beliefs in the paranormal. He notes that the Arp’s taste for the blood of the unborn is believed by many folk in rural areas to be the cause of diseases affecting women during pregnancy. To protect mothers-to-be, relatives place thorny branches around the home until after the child is delivered to snag the Arp’s dangling viscera. Once the newborn has been safely ushered into this world, they then bury the placenta as far away as possible in as deep a hole as possible in order to thwart attacks by the bloodthirsty spirit.

Such grisliness was made famous in the first Cambodian film produced following the fall of the Khmer Rouge: Konm Eak Madia Arp (‘My Mother is Arp’) became a cult hit almost overnight when it was released in 1980 following years of cultural suppression by the doomed Marxist regime. But the arb is not alone in Cambodia’s annals of horror. In the Buddhist Institute of Cambodia’s Collection of Old Khmer Tales, which hark back to the dark days of animism, stories serve to instruct not on the virtues of being good, but as a warning against the perils of evil.

“Like the Germanic tales originally collected by the Grimm brothers, these Khmer folktales are not sweet, gentle stories designed to whisk children away into a land of dreams and wonder, but rather stark warnings as to the very real perils and pitfalls of the world in which they live,” notes khmerbuddhistrelief.org, on which several such tales have been translated into English. “Concocted at a time when wild animals still posed a mortal threat in daily life, the stories can be violent, cruel and unmerciful. Intellect almost always triumphs over brute strength, but not always in the interest of justice. Clever schemes may be devised for the sake of self-preservation or revenge, or simply used to manipulate and exploit the ignorant and naive for no other end than amusement. Such are the harsh realities of the world for which these tales give the listener fair warning.”

As you don ghoulish garb to celebrate the pagan rituals of October 31, consider yourself duly warned. But as Spike Milligan famously said: “Things that go ‘bump’ in the night should not really give one a fright. It’s the hole in each ear that lets in the fear; that, and the absence of light!”

HALLOWEEN HIGHLIGHTS:

SAT 27

Drawn of the dead

Spooky face painting, remote control car races and live art demos by Global Art. 3pm at the Garden Terrace, Himawari Hotel, #313 Sisowath Quay.

Occult viewing

Italian director/musician Antonio Nardone’s film Blood Red Karma tells the story of Marc, a young man who disappeared in Cambodia while researching mysterious ghost stories. The madness which slowly possesses Marc leads the audience into the dark side of Cambodian beliefs amid the horrors of the country’s recent past. 4pm at Meta House, #37 Sothearos Blvd.

Spooked

DJ Westly spins while you battle it out for costume prizes. 7pm at Okun Ja, St. 336.

Trick or treat?

Cuba’s most famous musical sons Warapo provide the soundtrack to a special Halloween dinner ‘with surprises’. 8pm at Latin Quarter, cnr St. 178 and 19.

Kinky witch

Don your scariest costume and rub shoulders with Kinky Witches with tunes by DJs Audi, N.me and Lefty. 9pm at Nova, #19 St. 214.

SUN 28

Sunday Bloody Sunday

Fancy dress, drinking games, live music and Halloween mayhem. 3pm at Sundance Saloon, #61 St. 178.

WED 31: High spirits

DJ Gang, a resident at Pontoon, takes the turntables for the FCC’s hip-hop-electro/dirty dutch Halloween night. 8:30pm at The FCC, Sisowath Quay.

NOV 2: Get your freak on     

Free shots for the most imaginative Halloween costumes at What’s Up Phnom Penh’s Halloween shindig, with tunes by Bassbender and BBoy Peanut. 8pm at The Eighty8, #96 St. 88.

 

Coming home

“Of course I’m nervous!” laughs Jean-Baptiste Phou. “I never imagined that a thought I had sitting on my own in front of my computer would one day become all this!” He gestures round him in amazement.

The ‘all this’ to which he is referring is the frantic preparation for opening night of Phou’s first play, Cambodia, Here I Am, which will show at Chenla Theatre and has the backing of the French Institute. Little wonder the first-time writer and director is having a minor case of pre-premiere jitters.

The play, which toured France last year, centres around four Khmer women stuck in the waiting room of the Cambodian Consulate in Paris. Three are returning to Cambodia for disparate reasons; one is on the cusp of a new life in France with a French husband. Four characters spanning four generations, each holding very different perspectives on the country they putatively call home. As they discuss Cambodia and their increasingly tenuous connections to it, their struggles and hopes surrounding identity and self-hood are subtly revealed. “They all have their own idea of Cambodia,” explains Phou. “They all strongly defend their vision, but that vision is subjective and they are all wrong and right in the same way. They tease each other all the time; there’s tension there.”

A group of characters stuck in a room tormenting each other? Sounds suspiciously Sartrean. But Phou denies such direct referentiality, although he admits that being born in Paris it’s “pretty hard to get away from Sartre”. In an attempt to purify his creative process, the playwright closeted himself away from external influences during the genesis of the work, attempting to find his own authentic way of telling the stories of the four Cambodian women populating his mind and his page.

The result is innovative and intriguing. While making use of accepted Western dramaturgy, such as character motivation and causal narrative structure, Cambodia, Here I Am determinedly includes elements typical of Khmer classical theatre: shadow puppetry, traditional instrumentalists onstage with the actresses, Apsara dance. However, Phou didn’t feel the mere inclusion of these traditional motifs would be “interesting enough”, so he added his own authorial-directorial twist. The shadow ‘puppets’ are flesh and blood actors, silhouetted in magic-lantern motion; the instrumentalists sporadically interact with the actresses; even the Apsara dance, venerated in Cambodia, is done with a tongue-in-cheekiness, becoming a vehicle for examination of cultural stereotypes and Western perceptions of what it is to be ‘Asian’.

It’s this nod to the prismatic nature of perception that for Phou holds the key to Cambodia, Here I Am. “For me it’s about representation, false representations, stereotypes and fantasies.” Even for Cambodians – be they emigrants, immigrants, returnees or lost sons and daughters – Cambodia is a many-splendoured thing, irreducible to a glib slogan no matter how catchy the Ministry of Tourism’s ‘Kingdom of Wonder’ tagline may be. Phou’s play provides a glimpse into the complexity of comprehending Cambodia, and the subjectivity of any theory that claims to do so.

Unsurprisingly, the play refuses to present its audience with a neat and tidy ending. When do cross-generational, cross-continental identity crises have neat and tidy endpoints? “Is there any resolution? No, that’s something tricky…” muses Phou. “I don’t want the play to be didactic. But despite all the tensions and different experiences and different representations, I wanted at the end to really connect the four characters, connect the four generations. It’s not a happy ending, but they are all moving towards Cambodia in some way. And they’re all asking the country, ‘Please accept me as I am.’”

WHO: Jean-Baptiste Phou, playwright and director
WHAT: Cambodia, Here I Am
WHERE: Chenla Theatre, Phnom Penh Cultural Centre, Mao Tse Tung Blvd
WHEN: 7pm September 8, 3pm September 9
WHY: Who among us isn’t having an identity crisis?