CULTURE COLLECTIVE STUDIO.

A really, REALLY welcome addition to the Bangkok cultural scene has recently opened next to the riverside, by the Chatrium Hotel in the Sathon district, called Culture Collective Studio. It's a short motorbike ride from Saphan Taksin BTS station, or a ten minute taxi ride from Silom. Artistic director Loni Berry provides an intimate, professional, black-box performance space and furnishes it with an ambitious, eclectic program of international productions. Last night I went to see a performance of The Lisbon Traviata by Terence McNally. 

Image courtesy of Culture Collective Studio website.

I wasn't familiar with this play and, considering my devout dedication to reveling in the joys of a single life, it's not exactly a piece with which I would ordinarily feel any connection. However, I was more than pleasantly surprised. 

At times it is flippant and deliciously camp, though this masks a subtle critique of many of the bourgeois affectations of affluent middle-class life. Loni Berry chooses to locate the drama here in modern day Bangkok, which further challenges the conventions of transnational cultural stratification. Indeed, this wry parody of the ridiculousness of some of the cultural assumptions held by many of the moneyed 'ex-patriot' community works really well. This is the city where attitudes often flaunted by western tourists and immigrants can be sickeningly reminiscent of a not too distant colonial past. 

Cast of The Lisbon Traviata. Image courtesy of Culture Collective Studio website 

The cast work well together and there are particularly strong performances from Steven Fry and Pan Pan Narkprasert who contrive to weave a wickedly dry sense of humour into what gradually reveals itself to be an extremely intense meditation on intimacy and distance. All in all, this is a really interesting piece that elicits moments of tenderness from the intensity of an incredibly claustrophobic milieu.  

Next week is the final week of this show so if you are in Bangkok check it out; tickets are available for November 1st/ 5th/ 8th. For more information follow the link HERE.