#5 A Life on Stage

Teaching is a kin to performing. One must captivate their audience and take risks. One must give the impression of spontaneity while everything goes according to plan. Sometimes improvisation is in order, usually not, and occasionally an accident occurs that is truly a blessing. For the performance to be exceptional the audience must be taken somewhere. Some are born to do this, others however must work very hard only to achieve mediocrity, and like most things in life, if it is not enjoyed then it is probably not done well. The closest approximation that theater gets to my quality of teaching at this point is one of those shitty middle school summer stock plays I was in at the JCC. There are loads of teachers who suck, and of those there are two categories, just like the actors in those plays, ones with potential and ones without. The ones with developed talent are few and far between.

I was teaching another teacher's students last week, they do that so that an experienced teacher can watch you and give you pointers. An eleven year old ended up kicking me in the stomach. To be fair I may have deserved it. If you were fighting with someone and a giant came over to you and scooped you up by your arm pits and carried you off I think you might kick him too. The wife of one of my trainers was there, a Thai girl who's absolutely amazing at her job, she took that kid to task. Another kid refused to speak in my class, and not because he didn't know how, he simply was better than my class. The first born sons of Chinese-Thai are apparently like that. The Chinese-Thai are generally very wealthy, they are either envied or hated by every Thai, there is no in between. I took the kid aside and asked him to behave, to sit nicely, speak when asked to and be quite when he was supposed to. Minutes later in front of the whole class I praised him for being well behaved. He became more involved in the class and the other students, an unruly lot to be sure, began acting just a little bit better. In one of my kindergarten classes there is a little monkey girl who literally hangs on every part of me. She jumps on my back if I'm kneeling, when I stick an arm out to guide a child to their seat she wraps her arms around it and lifts her legs off the ground, she's completely adorable.

Outside of the classroom the performances can be equally memorable. Thais love western music, but for some reason they like it sung by a Thai singer with a cheeky soft backing band that substitutes synthesizers for xylophones. The words are still all in English but the accent can make the songs, at times, unintelligible. Other times the singer over enunciates the words completely destroying the rhythm of the lyric. However I assure you that you've not lived until you see a thirty-five year old Thai mother of three who looks twenty-one on stage in a jean dress that hardly covers her ass belting out, “There's nothing you can't do, now you're in New York. These streets will make you feel brand new, big lights will inspire you. Let's hear it for New York.” She almost sounds better than Alicia Keys. Luckily my friend Ollie knows her quite well and we get to see her regularly.

Not every performance is about the acting, set design and costumes can make or break any performance and since nearly every employee in Bangkok has to wear a uniform there is always something to look at when you get tired of observing the lady boys. Thais love uniforms for some reason, some people think that it's a cultural thing, a complete rejection of the individual being unique and thinking divergently or critically. One of my bosses, not a teacher thankfully, said that we don't need to teach our students to think, Thais don't need to think in this culture, they just need to wake up every morning and do their jobs if they want to be an effective part of society. Whatever the case is about thought, the fact remains that a door man usually has as elaborate an outfit as a three star general, and the funny part about it is the police uniforms are actually zip up jumpsuits that look to be fancy button ups. Also, secretaries are lined up every morning to make sure their hair and make up are done properly and that they have shirts that show enough neck and chest but no cleavage. It's like Catholic school except sex is highly encouraged.

Annoyingly loud promoters for Snickers

Other notable performers are the blind people who walk around with stereo's slung about their necks and a microphone in their hand. When a part of the song comes along that they know they will sing out the words, or as it usually sounds, the moans. It doesn't look as if they were born blind either and the thought of what brought them to this point is none to pleasurable. There are also the revelers at the feet of monks. There are monks located at seemingly random places during the morning commute. Faithful little worker bees on their way to work stop and throw a few baht into their coffers and kneel at the monks feet while the monk blesses them for their...uh...kindness? That particular interaction always amuses me, I wonder if the prayers the kneeling faithful put forth are, “Please make sure that that fat sweaty fuck Sanam doesn't sit next to me in the canteen again at lunch today.” Or maybe they're more along the lines of, “Please let the all mighty strike down my horrid boss's son who sits around at his desk all day looking at porn and then asks me if I'll do his work for him.” This last prayer is probably the more common of the two options, nepotism is all the rage here.

A Singha beer girl

More recently in the performance world putting reality at center stage has become very lucrative. It started with talk shows, Jerry Springer inviting the most volatile individuals that the ghettos, small towns, back country dive bars, and high society inbreds had to offer onto his show, and then asking them to sort their life out in front of national TV audiences. It was a great idea for an amateur anthropologist but I'll refrain from passing judgment on it with my theatrical side. Then there was the real world, big brother, (thanks Dutchies) Survivor, and The Bachelor. Bangkok has it's own reality performances though, more exciting than any of these god forsakenly contrived “reality” TV shows. Just try bartering with a purveyor of electronics at MBK. You start off talking about the expensive stuff, Iphones, Blackberries, Androids, (that's for you Sam) then you move on to what you actually came for, a cheap piece of shit phone that will make voice calls, wont tell you when you've missed calls, and randomly freeze when you try and delete too many texts at once. Suddenly the shop owner's English has gotten very bad, they pretend not to understand your complicated Farang speech patterns, every time you ask what color it comes in they look at you like you just killed an infant. Eventually you leave feeling as frustrated as a sex addict in a straight jacket and having only talked the owner down two dollars from twenty-three to twenty-one.

The Farangs are good reality shows in and of themselves, the Thais need to do little to encourage stupidity. Ollie broke his arm six months ago. He got on the back of a motorbike taxi while seriously intoxicated and when the taxi hit a bump in the road he lost his balance and fell off the back. Our other friend said the taxi driver didn't even slow down once Ollie fell off. When the faithful friend got back to Ollie they discussed going to the hospital and by the time the conversation was over Ollie's arm looked like a snake that swallowed and ostrich egg. So how did Ollie get to the hospital? On the back of a motorbike. The story doesn't end there, the nurses set Ollie's arm for him, and when he went back to the doctor a few days later, without any instructions to do so but rather purely of his own volition, the doctor who saw him looked at new x-rays and shook his head with complete disappointment on his face. “What's the matter?” Ollie asked.

“Who did this to you?”

“Well, I fell off the back of a motorbike.”

“No. Who set your arm?”

“Oh. The nurses.”

“We're going to have to re-set it. Do you want the anesthetic.” Ollie considers for a moment.

“It's the end of the month and I'm a little short on cash, so just go for it.”

The nurses who attended to Ollie after the second setting of his broken arm looked at this extremely fit and attractive Jordie from New Castle who was covered in sweat in an air conditioned doctors office and asked, “Are you the one who had your arm set without the shot?” It was a rhetorical question.

Boys on the way to school

The schools could also be a reality TV show. At one of the Muslim schools there were a host of kids lined up out in the yard during one of the classes being disciplined. Apparently one of the kids was found with alcohol but it was unclear who's it was and who'd had some. None of the kids were fessing up about it so they were all lined up and one by one the principal and teacher were giving them this little shot glass full of something that induced nearly instant vomiting. Since they didn't know who'd drank the alcohol they were going to make sure that whoever it was wasn't going to digest any more of it. There is also the school where on random days the head master stands out in front with a pair of scissors and anyone found with a hair style that is too extreme gets it modified on the spot. A piece of hair that is left longer than the rest gets lopped off, or a streak of color is snipped away from a head and left at the entrance to the school. What amazing theater this would make if only someone could convince the schools to allow it to be filmed.

Among the performances that are intended to be that there is one that is rather famous in Thailand. The ping-pong show. I won't get into too many details but I'll just leave it at this. Women do things like shoot ping pong balls or darts or gold fish across the room, and they're not using their hands or their mouth.

Motor bike taxi drivers

There is also the male strip shows where they play drums with their penis's. Oddly enough I've only heard amazing things about this. After work the other day a few of us were having a drink and a Brit told one of the girls, “Ok, you went with me to the girly strip clubs, I'll go with you to the guys.” There is just a totally different mentality amongst the people in this country. Sin is widely condoned, and those that admonish it are mostly quite unhappy, quite unliked, or both. I've found that when something comes across that I disagree with, or perhaps am even offended by, (which is rare) then it's best to sit and listen or to quickly get over it and take it as another piece of knowledge to be had along the way. There's no use trying to change their minds and in this way westerners are similar to Thais. Thais are notorious for facing conflict with agreement and acquiescence then the second the conflicting argument is physically gone they return to exactly what they thought, were doing, or were about to do. The only difference here is that a westerner might fight you about it a bit more.

The next performance I hope to see is one of trust. I want to find a person that I can trust and rely on. Oddly enough Ollie the party animal I live with has proven the most reliable person I've met. He gets home at four in the morning and gets up for work at seven, sometimes I wake him up for it sometimes he gets up on his own. He takes weeks off from drinking and works out and eats extremely carefully. Various bar owners around Bangkok will come and meet us wherever we've gone out to and they wrap their arms around him like he's their little brother or even son. Everyone loves Ollie, his Jordie tendencies come out when he's pissed (drunk) and yet he still manages to be perfectly nice to everyone, to call you before he leaves the club to make sure you don't want to go with, and translate someone one's poor drunken English into his poor drunken Thai so that you can get home. Ollie is a hero.

Alright folks, kha pun krap, and think of me the next time you see someone giving an impromptu performance, because that's my everyday.

Don't let your friend choose the pose for a picture when he doesn't ever wear his doctor prescribed glasses or contacts.

I love this one, a BTS attendant.