The director of the play Push Up (see +stage this page)—now playing as part of the Bangkok Theater Festival—is well respected and well rounded in Thailand’s theater circles.

Your kind of theater?

I cannot pick one genre; I like most of them. When I stage a performance, I just pick the story that I like, that touches me. My venue can be in a theater or on the street. I don’t belong to a theater group. When I want to make a play, I just gather my friends and my colleagues and set out to do it together. I feel like when you set up a group, suddenly you are bound with a logo, a style or a trademark.    

Being an independent theater director, do you have problems with finding a space to stage your play?

Actually, I do, but I see it as a challenge. It’s fun to try to fix the problems that come with a new venue. Like this play, Push Up, we staged it in three venues, at Wat Sangwej Auditorium, Dhurakij Bundit University’s black box space and Goethe Institut. We have a pyramid as our core set; it can be bigger or it can be hanging in the air. It’s fun to play and make changes.

Tell us about Push Up.

It’s about the competitive society of university teachers and this is a subject not many people have talked about. It’s about hypocrisy, stepping on each other to get to the top and that sort of thing. It’s a satiric comedy, and I can say it’s really fun. But it’s not slapstick and the audience will have to think along.

Any plays in the festival you want to go see yourself?

I want to see Crescent Moon Theater’s Slang. I saw it once but I really want to see it again. I also want to see Where Should I Lay My Soul of 8x8 Group. And I will surely go see plays by university students that are staged in small hidden bars and restaurants. Watching university students’ plays is like studying. You learn what the new generation is thinking and you can understand them better. The “grammar” of storytelling changes through time and if you just stick to what you have done or have studied, soon you will meet a dead end.