Bringing Art to Life

T heir shows may range from age-old forms to present-day styles but, in one way or another, all cast and crew taking part in the French cultural center's Lakhaon Theater Festival are taking a gamble. The winner is the audience, which will be treated to a program of original productions. Some will be familiar, such as premiers of new or tried works of yike, or shadow-puppet theater. But as French director Catherine Mamas' play demonstrated on opening night on Friday, some will involve a very different pace and acting approach than Cambodian theater-goers are used to.

And in the case of the lakhaon ape performance, a great deal of research and imagination will have gone into bringing to life a form of the¬ater that, as director Chen Neak explained, has been staged only once over the past 70 years. The eight-day festival began on Friday night with French writer Eugene Labiche's "L'affaire de la rue de Lourcine," or The Lourcine Street Case. Performed in Khmer with French and Eng¬lish supertitles as all shows will be during the festival the play is a lively comedy with a few tense moments when one wonders if the characters will be saved from disaster.

SATURDAY - SEPT 11
•    "1/ affaire de la rue de Lourcine"
(The Lourcine Street Case), Parnas
Company; 7 pm, Chenla Theater
•    "The Young Widow," and
"The Ass and the Dog," Sovanna
Phum, small shadow-puppet theater;
Meta House, 7 pm
SUNDAY-SEPT 12
•    "1/affaire de la rue de Lourcine"
(The Lourcine Street Case), Parnas
Company; 7 pm, Chenla Theater
•    "The Young Widow," and "The
Ass and the Dog," Sovanna Phum,
small shadow-puppet theater;
8:30 pm, Happy Garden
MONDAY-SEPT 13
•    "Our Uncle," Takeo province's
department of culture and fine
arts, yike theater; 7 pm,
Chenla Theater
TUESDAY-SEPT 14
•    "Krain Thong," Mekala Arts
Company, ken theater; 7 pm,
Chenla Theater
•    "The Wolf Turned Shepherd," and
"The Gardener and His Lord," Pok
Sarann Company, small shadow-
puppet theater; 7 pm, French
cultural center's cafe
WEDNESDAY - SEPT 15
•    "Preah Chan Korob," Cambodian
Living Arts company, boeuk bot
theater; 7 pm, Chenla Theater
•    "The Wolf Turned Shepherd," and
"The Gardener and His Lord," Pok
Sarann Company, small shadow-
puppet theater; 7 pm, Reatrey/
Happy Garden Restaurant
THURSDAY - SEPT 16
•    "The Necklace," Kok Thlok
Company, promotey theater;
7 pm, Chenla Theater
•    "The Fox and the Stork" and "The
Lion and the Gnat," Banteay Srei
Company, small shadow-puppet
theater; 7 pm, Chinese House
FRIDAY-SEPT 17
•    "Don't Be as Stupid as Ghosts,"
Chen Neak Company, ape theater;
7 pm, Chenla Theater
•    "The Fox and the Stork" and
"The Lion and the Gnat," Banteay
Srei company, small shadow-puppet
theater; 8:30 pm, Bopha Phnom Penh
Titanic restaurant
Ms Mamas' theater company, Parnas, has staged the opening show at the festival for the past three years. This time around, she decided to "raise the stakes," she said, and select a play that calls not only for natural expression in act¬ing, but also for quick reactions and rapid movements. "French-siyle comedy means fast pace, which is the opposite of Khmer culture," most of whose classical dance and theater forms feature emotions and movements played in a mea¬sured, unhurried fashion, ac¬cording to Ms Mamas.

This 19th-century comedy is about a man who wakes up after a night of drinking and MARNAS h^ no memory of what he has done over the previous eight hours; he eventually begins to wonder whether he committed the murder reported in the morning paper. Translated into Khmer and adapted to fit a modem context, the demands of the show were a real challenge for both the actors and the direc¬tor, Ms Mamas said.
But she is a master of her trade and her gam¬ble paid oft resulting in a show that is genuinely funny without any gratuitous gags. Actors run on and off the stagewhose black-and-white design was conceived by stage design¬er Carlos Calvoin which transparent, black plastic sheets serve as doors and walls; the central element is a bed surrounded by white, floor-toceiling curtains. The scenes are punctuated by songs interpreted by popular singers Jessica Srin whose stage name is Iishand Nem Turn on recorded music mixing electro, Cambodian rock and rap writ-ten by Alain Aubin of the Parnas company and Phanna Nam, known on the hip-hop and break-dancing scene as Peanut This is Ms Mamas' first experiment with hip hop in a show. "I wanted to do it for a long time...and was telling myself that I had to find the right opportunity," she said.

Her chance came with this production in Khmer. "The Khmer language is wonderful
 
Rapped," she said. "Ifs full of hits and silences: Ifs ideal for rapping."The Kok Thlok Company also selected a 19th-century French play for its performance, but this one is a drama with some moments of comedy: Guy de Maupassanfs 'The Necklace." The company decided to perform it in a fairly new form of Cambodian theater that appeared in the late 1940s. Inspired by Western style musicals, lakhaon promotey combines a natural style of acting with songs and is performed with a musical background
Songs for this show are popular 1960s tunes, and the music is a blend of traditional mohori and modem melodies performed live on traditional instruments accompanied by electric guitar, bass and drums.
Set in the present in a Cambodian village, the story involves a young woman who resents the fact that her husband's modest salary as a low-level civil servant does not provide her with the luxuries she feels entitled to because of her beauty.

When her husband suggests that she get a job so they can improve their lot, she responds that she did not marry only to end up working. Invited to a banquet she has her husband give her all their emergency funds to buy a short dress in the latest style.. At the banquet a scene that rings so true one feels like joining the actors on stagethe wo¬man is finally admired as she has always felt was her due. With her dress she wears a diamond necklace borrowed from a wealthy girlfriend, a loan that soon leads to tragedy.For the company that has done spoken the¬ater but is best known for staging yike, a dance-and-opera form of theater, this lakhaon promotey play is a departure in acting style as well as in the use of space on stage, company director Deth Thach explained.

"In yike, everything is codified: steps, dances, gestures and feelings are expressed through those codes and gestures in a manner that are not that far from classical dance," he said. "But in modern theater, feelings must come from with¬in, as if naturally." The grand master of Cambodian theater, Pich Turn Kravel, advised the actors in this produc-tion, and the result is characters to whom people in the audience may truly relate. Staging lakhaon ken theater presented a different but nonetheless considerable challenge, said director Thong Kim Ann. Ken theater is named after a musical instru¬ment that hardly anyone can play today, said the 55-year-old dancer who trained at the Royal Palace as a child.

"Only a few older teachers at the Royal University of Fine Arts can play kea The young gen-eration of teachers have little or no knowledge of it" she said The ken is a wind instrument made of 14 to 16 small bamboo pipes lined up side by side. About 80 cm long, it has been used for traditional cere¬monies by a hill tribe minority in Stung Treng province near the Lao border. It is believed that a theater performance built around this instru ment and involving improvisation was first held in 1942. Lakhaon ken has been staged only once in the past two decades.

"I decided to revive lakhaon ken because I want people of this generation to see that form of theater," said Ms Kim Ann, who teaches at RUFA and is deputy director for classical dance training at the Ministry of Culture. Although original lakhaon ken theater music could be found, this took considerable research on her part and hard work from the 32 perform¬ers, who were unfamiliar with this type of the¬ater, she said Ms Km Ann will present "Krain Thong," a tale of abduction, love and loss involv¬ing people and crocodiles. The show will include songs, dance and live music played by traditional musicians and two ken players.

The.gamble for Chen Neak was in staging a form of theater whose origins no one really
 
knows, and which no performing arts teachers or actors recall seeing in their lifetimes, although a revival was attempted in 1991. Even the 68-year-old RUFA teacher, who was a leading actor in spoken theater in the mid-1960s, has no mem¬ory of the traditional type of folk opera known as lakhaon ape.
Lakhaon ape involves singing, at times incor¬porating classical dance gestures. A truly popular form of theater used for comedies and folktales  except when performed at the Royal Palace by the King's dancers it was usually staged on village grounds or in pagodas' corridors at Khmer New Year or during other celebrations.

Based on his research, Mr Neak believes that ape may have been the name of a person who gave his name to that type of theater. Since no lakhaon ape plays or music have sur¬vived, he said, 'It was difficult to write the text and compose songs and music. I had to use some lines from poems for the songs...and I wrote for traditional instruments that will be played live during the show."
The crew and cast of 23 struggled to build a show of a type unlike any other they had seen, and yet they managed to do it, he said.

Mr Neak, the former deputy director for per¬forming arts at the Ministry of Culture, has pro-duced a story very much for our time carrying a message against drug abuse, he said. Entitled "Kom La'ngong Douch Khmoch," or "Don't Be as Stupid as Ghosts," the story re-volves around a young farmer who plays a Cam¬bodian-style guitar called a "chapei" and sings so beautifully that the ghost of a young woman falls in love with him. During the course of the play, he also comes across gangsters and cannabis fermers, who are later punished after death.    

Sourced=Thecambodiadaily