Cosmic city

THURSDAY 17 | In Cambodia, the 12th century was a luminous era. The Khmer Empire, although often in conflict with its Champa neighbours, was most definitely in the ascendant. And what better way to legitimise national prowess, thought then King Suryavarman, than to build a massive f*ck-off city in the middle of the sweltering jungle? So the Cambodians raised one of the wonders of the world in Siem Reap: the city of Angkor. Using 3D image technology, Artist Bruno Levy shows how this now-ruined temple complex might have looked in all its gilded glory. After the exhibition opening, Norwegian composer/pianist Ingolv Haaland and famous Khmer vocalist Ouch Savy team up for an exclusive acoustic session.

WHO: Bruno Levy, Ingolv Haaland, Ouch Savy
WHAT: Angkorian exhibition opening & concert
WHERE: Meta House, #37 Sothearos Blvd.
WHEN: 6pm October 17
WHY: See how Angkor Wat might have looked in its gilded glory

 

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.

Unplugged

WEDNESDAY 23 |  Doubling as front woman for post-hardcore band No Forever, 22-year-old Sam Rocker tonight goes unplugged, along with her guitarist Tim, in acoustic act Khmera. And it’s all about love, apparently. “The name Khmera means we are Khmer youth and Khmer people,” she says of the 16-month-old pop, rock and, well, pop-rock duo. “We love making music. We want to show that Khmer young people have the ability to do so. We can do it. We love it and we do what we can and what we love. We love to bring people together with the music and joy.”

WHO: Khmera
WHAT: Acoustic pop, rock and, well, pop-rock
WHERE: Doors, Street 84 & 47
WHEN: 8pm October 22
WHY: They love to bring people together with the music and joy

 

In Gaia’s name

TUESDAY 22  | Artist Chath pierSath, by way of self exploration, stitches together magazine clippings and his own intimate writings in a series of unusual collages. Each serves as a personal message to his family, to Cambodia, to warmongers and their victims. Says Java founder Dana Langlois: “The words are written, re-written, painted over and layered with prose and imagery, creating complex pieces that exist at the intersection literature and painting.” You can even take part in the creation of a ‘collaborative poem’ by adding your own words and phrases to one of the gallery walls.

WHO: Chath pierSath
WHAT: Distant Geography exhibition opening
WHERE: Java Arts Cafe & Gallery, #56 Sihanouk Blvd.
WHEN: 6:30pm October 22
WHY: Complex pieces that exist at the intersection literature and painting

 

Alternative reality

SUNDAY 20  | Cosplay: n. The habitual act of dressing up like comic book or cartoon characters favoured by enthusiasts, nerds and batshit weirdos with a loose grip on reality. “There was an alarming rise in tentacle-rape incidents at this year’s anime cosplay convention.” – urbandictionary.com. Declared Urban Word of the Day on October 31 2006 by resident logophiles at urbandictionary.com, the term ‘cosplay’ – an abbreviation of ‘costume play’, kosupure in Japanese – has something of the geek about it. This Japan-centric movie and comic book world, one of giant-eyed heroes and junk worship, was sired by the sci-fi/fantasy universe once synonymous with Star Trek conventions, but seems to be overtaking it at warp speed. More than half a million fanatics dressed as their favourite anime and manga characters swarm Tokyo’s biannual Comiket fairs, the largest cosplay gathering in the world. In Tokyo’s Akihabara district, cosplay restaurants cater to the imaginatively attired with maids dressed as everything from Pokemon to the Mario brothers, and Yuichiro ‘Jienotsu’ Nagashima, one of Japan’s top-ranked kickboxers, makes all his appearances for K-1 dressed as female anime characters. But this renewed dalliance in dressing-up is by no means limited to Japan. On October 20, sporting face paint, liquid latex, neon wigs, contact lenses, body modification and outrageous cyber fashion, the truly committed will make their way to the Cambodia-Japan Cooperation Centre to worship at the altar of the weirdly dressed. Why? Yumi Anna Ono, CEO/Creative Director at Chiara Angkor Music Production, is a devotee of Studio Ghibli, her favourite character being Sophie Hatter from Howl’s Moving Castle, British author Diana Wynne Jones’ 1986 fantasy novel. “We can exaggerate an existing trait in ourselves and it is indeed empowering to assume the role of a character of our choosing, such as Sophie who is independent, brave, agile, responsible, confident yet vulnerable and most importantly kawaii (‘cute’) all at the same time!” she says. “I believe that one of the elements of cosplay that appeals to so many people – and it has turned into a global phenomenon – is that you can really become the character you’re dressed as. And who doesn’t like to dress up and transform into fantasy land?”

WHO: Cosplayers
WHAT: Comic Party
WHERE: Kizuna Hall, Cambodia-Japan Cooperation Centre, Royal University of Phnom Penh, Russian Federation Blvd.
WHEN: 12pm – 6pm October 20
WHY: Who doesn’t like to dress up and transform into fantasy land?

 

If it’s good enough for The Dead Kennedys…

Laura Jean McKayBY GUILLERMO WHEREMOUNT

“I didn’t really come to it with a plan, other than I felt like I really needed to write about Cambodia – not for some greater good, but just for myself, really.”Like many visitors, Melbourne-based writer Laura Jean McKay had an urge to respond to her Cambodian experience in a creative way. Some become photographers, others get excited about blogging. Laura made several trips over three years, first in 2007 as a volunteer aid worker “as Australian women seem to be!”. She was inspired to take to the keyboard and her efforts were rewarded this year when her book, Holiday In Cambodia, was published in Australia by Black Inc Publishing (available here from Monument Books, where she launches it this week, for $17:50).

It’s not a travel diary, it’s not a documentary, it’s not an expose of the tourist industry. Rather, it’s a series of short stories set in Cambodia. “It started out as a novel, on the ’60s Cambodian surf rock theme,” says Laura. “I moved to Phnom Penh in 2009, working with the Nouh Thak Writers’ Association and [began my] love-hate relationship with Phnom Penh. I find it quite scary and strange, but I’m fascinated by it and that makes it a really good place to write about. I never felt relaxed in Phnom Penh. I just really started going at this collection and I’d be writing five stories at once.”

What emerges is something like a mosaic: bright shiny diamonds of stories that observe and that observe the observing, and also the lack of observation. “The subjects that I’m writing about, they’re not original, they’re the sort of things that tourists and expats experience when they arrive in Cambodia. They see brothels, they see street kids, they see tuk tuks. If they stay for a bit longer they see factory workers, they see land grabs, things like that, but I wanted to explore these in a way that made Cambodia the dominant culture and these people coming in the foreigners.”

Much of Laura’s storytelling seeks to overcome the frequently narrow perspective of the foreign traveller, while still examining how such a perspective works. “A lot of the stories are a reflection of myself and some of the characters are re-walking the steps that I made. I think it’s really important, when you’re looking at stories that make a judgement on a certain culture… to also recognise that you really need to be judging yourself as well. It’s as much a self discovery as anything.

“There were certainly stories that I didn’t tell because I just felt as though perhaps it would be a bit too finger-pointy, and there wasn’t enough of me in there to be able to justify that.” She heard stories “that were just so astonishing that I couldn’t even write them, too over the top, they were too fictionalised, and a caricature. I felt that I would possibly paint a flatter picture than their characters deserved”.

Hence the name of the book: almost a caricature in itself. “Cambodia really confronted a lot of my values about myself, and myself as a traveller. When I arrived in Cambodia the very first time and I said to the person [from] the programme, oh, this is great, Cambodia, just like Vietnam – which went down really well – so, where do you go on holiday? And there was a silence and the guy said ‘I don’t go on holiday.’ And I was horrified and that sentence changed everything for me, my point of view changed with that.

“For a long time the book had a lot of different titles. Very much towards the end of the collection when I’d finished a lot of the stories, I was listening to the Dead Kennedys and I just went, Oh! I had always loved the lyrics to that song; it basically says everything that the collection is about. Today it would be Holiday in Syria. Also it is just that cliché: everybody makes the joke about having a holiday in Cambodia and I felt like that really it summed up. I knew that it was the right title when one of my friends said, ‘Oh, such a cliché’ and I went YES! I’ve got it!”

The title embodies the literal, the ironic and also the iconic reference, and news travelled far. “I got a letter from Jello Biafra’s record company saying Jello would love a couple of copies of the book, so I found myself shaking in my publisher’s office, trying to write a note to the man… Hi Jello, thanks for being the greatest punk rocker in the whole world, and hope you like my book. Catch up some time in Phnom Penh.”

Things have changed since she last visited and Laura is keen to see the scene. “I’ve been head down, finishing off this book for the last few years; I have no idea what is actually going on in Cambodia, I’ve really lost touch. Nou Hach is still running and producing their journal, which is great. The comics scene is going well, but again that’s visual. I would love to get some of my stories translated into Khmer.

“In 2009, there still wasn’t much of a critical art culture from Cambodian people; there was quite a lot of fear about criticising anything. And because the whole writing scene was so smashed, people were just in the role of supporting each other: great, you wrote a story, well done. It’ll be interesting to see if that critical culture is emerging or not. I would really love for a Cambodian woman to review my book. That would be really exciting for me.” Confronted by stories of the shift in the expat population to a more family oriented community, Laura laughs. “My mind is sparking: maybe I could make a volume two with new stories: parents and nappies!”

WHO: Author Laura Jean McKay
WHAT: Holiday In Cambodia book launch
WHERE: Monument Books, Norodom Blvd.
WHEN: 5:30pm October 19
WHY: Jello Biafra asked for copies!

Time warp

SATURDAY 19  | New wave, post-punk, ’80s cheese: all grist to the mill for the inimitable Jaworski 7, fronted by the larger-than-life Jerby Salas Santo. “The band loves post punk, indie, new wave and everything in between,” he says. “We’re like a Pacific/Oceania band. We now have two originals on our set and we’re planning to add more.” Think The Cure, The Smiths and brace yourself for a fist-pumping, high-jumping flashback to your formative years.

WHO: Jaworski 7
WHAT: New wave, post-punk and ’80s cheese
WHERE: Equinox, Street 278
WHEN: 9pm October 19
WHY: A fist-pumping, high-jumping flashback to your formative years

 

Wild, wild

FRIDAY 18 | British-born country singer/songwriter Joe Wrigley meets the Cambodian Space Project’s Scott Bywater (vocals) and Adrien (bass) in what was originally intended to be a Buddy Holly tribute band but has since evolved into a ‘vampire rockabilly’ trio. “We’re going for the Sun Records/Gene Vincent kind of sound,” says Joe. “It’s the awesome era of guitar sound in between jazz and rock music, so players like Cliff Gallup and Scotty Moore were playing big archtops and gretsches very loud with lots of echo and it sounds like they’re just making up rock ‘n’ roll on the spot. You have that energy combined with the wild exuberance of early Elvis and Gene Vincent and it’s just wild, wild!”

WHO: Joe Wrigley & The Jumping Jacks
WHAT: Rockabilly
WHERE: The Village, #1 Street 360
WHEN: 8:30pm October 18
WHY: It’s just wild, wild!

 

Let the dogs out!

FRIDAY 18 | The Underdogs all met at Music Arts School, a non-profit grassroots institution on Street 370.
“We started about a year ago, trying a mix of different styles: some Khmer songs, some English songs,” explains leader and singer Sammie. “Then we decided we should specialise in bringing back the old songs from the 1960s. Everyone knows Chnam Aun Dop Pram Moi (‘I’m 16’) and Svar Rom (‘Monkey Dance’), but there are many more songs that we play that are less well known. We want to introduce the young people to more obscure songs that are just as good… We search in YouTube, listen to old cassettes and we talk to the old people who remember the times.” The band members describe their mission as reconnecting their peers with the music of their heritage. “The new songs copy too much; they sound just like K-Pop. We want to make a real Cambodian sound.” The Underdogs have a more traditional wedding-band form with rotation singers: two girls and a boy. “This way we can give the singers a rest, each time they can come on fresh,” says Sammie. Also, it means a wider range of songs. The songs of Ros Sereysothea and Pen Ron are now widely known, but the band can also play tunes by the Elvis/Dylan/Sinatra of Cambodia, Sinn Sisamouth, as well as the wilder singers such as Yol Auralong, famous for Jih Cyclo and also responsible for the drunken raving blues of Syrah Syrah, and the funky soul of Voa Saroun. Long may the dogs run free!

WHO: The Underdogs
WHAT: Energetic Golden Era rock ‘n’ roll
WHERE: Equinox, Street 278 (Oct 18) and Slur, Street 172 (Oct 19)
WHEN: 9pm October 18 (Equinox) & 19 (Slur)
WHY: Look to the youth to drive the future

(Photo: Jeremie Montessuis)

Reinventing reggae

FRIDAY 18 | Dub Addiction Meets Kampuchea Rockers Uptown is an epic fusion of reggae and dub with Khmer saravan. Recently released by Hong Kong label Metal Postcards, it’s the most ambitious project yet by Dub Addiction, back in Da Penh after an epic tour of Europe. Dirty and raw are adjectives that sit well with their new material, the hallmark of which is a more “organic, authentic dub sound” than the band’s eponymous first release. Says German music producer Professor Kinski, known to friends as Jan Mueller: “The whole album sounds more epic, more massive, more dub than the first one.” Their main ragamuffin toasters are MC Curly and DJ Khla, the latter someone Kinski compares to Cutty Ranks, Sizla and Anthony B. From the moment the CD clicks into the disc drive and begins to spin, sights and sounds familiar to Phnom Penh long-termers ooze through the mixer to create a distinctly Cambodian soundscape. A high point – if you’ll pardon the pun – is The Mighty Plan, on which “the voice of LSD guru Terence McKenna is lecturing about mankind’s first contact with aliens over an ultra-massive slow shuffle dub groove of Lee Perry – one of the best instrumentals on the album”. And it can only be right and proper to follow such a track with a song entitled Ganja Dub, although it’s clearly far too fast for anyone genuinely out of their mind on marijuana. “We intend to conquer the universe,” a disembodied voice declares as the final track drives its mega-phat electro dub juggernaut into your sternum. Wobble bass slams you against a sonic wall as distorted e-guitar solos slash at your face, fishing your brains right out through your nose. You Have Been Warned.

WHO: Dub Addiction
WHAT: Reggae reinvented
WHERE: Doors, Street 84 & 47
WHEN: 9:30pm October 18
WHY: Somewhere, in that great dancehall in the sky, King Tubby should be smoking a fat one and smiling