The Wolf Bride made headline news in Thai and foreign media last year when two people were arrested and sent to jail for directing and starring in the student play. Neither the court nor the police explained which parts of the play constituted lèse majesté. Due to the climate of fear, the content of the play has never been discussed either.
Patiwat Saraiyam, aka Bank and Pornthip Munkong, aka Golf, arrested on 14 and 15 August 2014, were sentenced to five years in jail for breaking the lèse majesté law. The sentence was reduced to two and a half years after they pleaded guilty on 29 December 2014. Wolf Bride was written by the now-defunct Prakai Fai Karn Lakorn, a progressive theatre company. At least six other actors have fled the country, living in poverty in exile.
The king and his mirror image: "He's the fake one!" "No, he is!"
As the anniversary of the arrest nears, we take a look back at the Wolf Bride and its encrypted messages that people are being jailed and exiled for and ask why the Thai authorities have to be so afraid of a student play. Readers should be noted that this review is subjected to self-censorship due to Article 112.
The Wolf Bride can be viewed as a localized version of Animal Farm, told with elements of an Aesop fable. The play is interspersed with both sharp political references that release frustration at the absurdity of the Thai political situation, and confusing inside jokes. Only the latter and the low production costs point to Bride as being college student fare.
The play switches back-and-forth between an Aesopian fable of a king and his mirror image, and political interludes.
It begins with a voice over a dark stage: “This country belongs to the people, not the royal-blooded, like they fooled us,” quotes the People’s Party (Khana Ratsadon) first announcement after the Siamese Revolution in 1932.
The action starts in a fantasy kingdom, with the inhabitants talking about a prophecy that will be fulfilled: a king will marry a woman outside of his species, the Wolf Bride.
Then, first political interlude happens, with three caricatures of thought groups in Thai society debating Aum Neko’s use of university uniforms. Back in 2013 Aum Neko, a transgender student activist now in exile in France, provocatively challenged the mandatory uniform rule.
The royalist caricature holds his anti-Aum Neko stance by arguing about protecting the cultural integrity of Siam. The red shirt caricature, addresses others as “comrade” while using terms in English (“freedom,” “human rights,” etc.) to argue his pro-Aum stance. The Chinese businessman caricature demonstrates his political flip-flopness by saying that he has no opinions like the other two, but will rather focus on making money by buying votes and selling fried chicken.
Back in the fantasy storyline, the king and wolf bride marry. Although they stare lovingly into each other’s eyes up to the ceremony, he has his soldiers execute her immediately.
This early in the play, the eponymous Wolf Bride is already killed. The Wolf Bride can be seen as the peasants of the fantasy kingdom, who are plied with candy fluff promises of being treated with love in a utopian kingdom.
The Brahmin advisor and the Chinese millionaire advise the king about collecting taxes from the lowly peasants, and claiming an entire mountain from lo-sos to make a vacation area for hi-sos.
The Brahmin advises the king
The king gives his go-ahead to the advisors, who then drug him with a sleeping potion.
A citizen starts protesting about a dam’s environmental effects, but as soon as someone whispers a secret to her she shuts up guiltily, then starts crying and prostrating herself on the ground. The audience who are into Thai politics can surely guess what the secret is.
As the king sleeps, his mirror image steps out of the mirror. He is dressed exactly like the king, and the Brahmin starts teaching him how to do kingly duties. As with the king, the villagers cry and prostrate themselves at the feet of their new king.
“The real king represents the establishment, while the mirror king represents Thaksin [Shinawatra]. We felt that the red shirts were starting to treat him like an untouchable figure, not allowing criticism of him,” said “Pook,” one of the self-exiled cast members, who asked not to be named due to privacy concerns. Here, the Animal Farm parallel is just too delicious for Prachatai to abandon.
The mirror king, pleased at his barami (an all-encompassing term for popularity and influence stemming from admiration and fear), starts nodding at whatever the Brahmin suggests, just like the sleeping king did. The mirror king approves many public projects, drawing laughter from the audience. The mirror king realizes that he can just stamp his thumb print instead of forging a signature to look like the old king’s.
When the king and his mirror image collide, they accuse each other of being fake and they both exit, fighting. As the dust clears, the Brahmin cackles, “Finally, it’s my day!” The millionaire splits an agreed sum with him, since they have succeeded in taking de facto control of the kingdom.
The Brahmin and the Chinese millionaire split money upon gaining control of the fictional kingdom
The Brahmin summons military power by reciting several ridiculous acronyms. He says that citizens have to obey him and not have political gatherings, or else he will “beat them all down with the king’s barami.”
The fantasy plot ends, and the play concludes with another political interlude, the sincerest scene in the whole production.
Little boys run around, singing rhymes about a king. A woman with the demeanour of a Thai school teacher, becomes angrily strict and with a plastered smile and condescending tone, starts slapping each of them, forcing them to cover their mouths.
The schoolteacher forces the children to stop singing by shutting their mouths
The teacher gives the children capsules of different colours, red, yellow, blue, etc. Then, she makes them fight each other, saying “Beat them up! Kill them! They’re different colours from you!” This brings to mind the colour-coded politics of recent Thailand.
The children, divided among different "colours," fight
Abruptly, she forces the boys to stop playing, hold hands, and smile.
“Love and harmonize with each other, okay kids?” she says in a sickly sweet voice, like Professor Umbridge from Harry Potter. (http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/Dolores_Umbridge)
"Love and harmonize with each other, okay kids?"
At this point, something snaps in the memory of each member of the audience.
The forced forgiveness goes beyond just that actress, but to that schoolteacher or authority figure all of us have experienced—that authority figure who does not carry out a system of justice to resolve problems, but rather sweeps them under the rug while pushing fluffy resolutions of love and harmonization onto people.
Issues are not resolved, justice is not doled out, but shows of enforced happiness are pressed upon everyone.
The characters of the Brahmin and the Chinese millionaire in particular illuminate the workings of the network monarchy, a mechanism so defiant of political classification that it is often overlooked.
Duncan McCargo, political science professor at Leeds, coined the term “network monarchy” in 2005 to describe the Thai system as a “semi-monarchical rule...a modern form of monarchy as a para-political institution.”
McCargo explains that the network monarchy uses politics of “fudge and obfuscation” to champion national unity through compromise. He gives the example of the royal pardon given to all involved in the May 1992 demonstrations, preventing judicial reviews of murderers in the military.
Notice how in the play, the fictional king relies on the Brahmin and the millionaire to rule the kingdom for their mutual benefit.
Although the Wolf Bride could be seen as a university student production full of political venting, that would do it injustice. What Bride lacks in polish is made up for in gumption and bravery in criticizing not just the right, but also the centre, the left, and even the rarely-scrutinized de facto power-holders of this fictional country.
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