Review of International Collaboration

Uchino: In the case of Amitha, I liked your review of Pratthana: A Portrait of Possession^*2, in the sense that you are very careful in how you tread the precarious minefield about the director coming from Japan to create something in Bangkok.

^*2 Pratthana: A Portrait of Possession is a theatre production based on the novel by acclaimed Thai writer Uthis Haemamool, adapted for stage by theater director OKADA Toshiki with TSUKAHARA Yuya as a scenographer. Premiered August 22, 2018 at Sodsai Pantoomkomol Center for Dramatic Arts, Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University, presented by the Japan Foundation Asia Center, precog, and chelfitsch.

Amitha: Well, I am not that careful, as I don't sense the danger of censorship when it comes to talking about the arts. I do get attacked sometimes but it's not enough to make me refrain from writing. I would say there is no censorship in general in Thailand in terms of publication. It's more like nobody is going to read it, and I think that says a lot about the mindset of the editors that we have. They either don't see the necessity of criticism or coverage of certain types of art, or don't want to deal with negative reactions to harsh criticism, but in Thailand there is a lot of people who publish online reviews. Audience members do it for their friends to support other artists and then just hashtag the show, so then the show uses it. And there are also pretty good reviews on Facebook, because Facebook is so prevalent in Thailand. We do a lot of things on Facebook and some people have become well known because of their Facebook reviews, including quite critical ones. Even if they don't necessarily call themselves art critics or anything like that, sometimes they have really interesting views and write lengthy reviews online. There are also websites where people are paid to disguise themselves as reviewers. You said I was careful and maybe that's just how I write. That's how I express myself.

I also don't see a foreign artist creating work in Bangkok as a minefield. Thai artists often welcome international collaboration themselves. I actually think it's a beautiful thing when people encounter something foreign and are moved to engage with it. I'm against the notion that you should only stick to telling stories of "your own people." How can we expect artists to break boundaries otherwise if we, as critics, subscribe to that way of thinking and apply it to the way we critique artwork and view artistic collaboration?

Uchino: And another thing that was quite interesting about your work in general: you use the word "I" as the subject.

Amitha: Yes, I do.

Uchino: I thought it was a very interesting.

Amitha: What would a Japanese writer use?

Uchino: We don't use the first-person singular pronoun that much. Using "I" too much looks Western.

Sharmilla: Even in Western criticism, it's a fine line.

Amitha: Sometimes they tell you to avoid using "I."

Sharmilla: Yes, because it then becomes very personal.

From Newspapers to Radio and Podcasts

Uchino: The issue of censorship came up there and we should also address how that is changing the radio media. Does that have anything to do with the fact that your writing is not being read? You said radio has the more potential to reach out. There are two quotes, Katrina, from your writing I liked very much. "The critic has no choice but to shift gears, not towards praise but towards bigger pictures, broad strokes: what informs, defines, creates arts and culture as we know it, who are its winners and its losers, who is in control, what is its crisis?" This means that you don't have to be concerned about a particular work and particular views but you should write about broader issues as a critic. I could see the issue of transformation that you mentioned at the beginning is very well articulated here. You are not changing the media but you are changing the place, the location of your identity as a culture critic, right? Sharmilla, can you something about radio and podcasts and how media is changing in relationship to what Katrina wrote?

Sharmilla: When I left my job with the newspaper, it wasn't because I knew I was going to go into radio. I left because there was a lot of frustration for me. It's a company I had worked at for a very long time. I still have a lot of attachment to them. They still do good work. Their arts editor is really very committed. However, I think the market has changed tremendously, as has management; so the reason I left was that, the combination of the struggles of the print media industry together with the lack of importance being given to the arts, was not creating an environment I was interested in working in anymore. Firstly, there wasn't any importance given to the kind of work I was doing within the company, other than at the immediate level. My immediate editors were very passionate and worked very hard, but the question higher up was always: Why are we wasting resources on this? Secondly, people were not reading print media. The work I did was not really reaching that many people. When I left, I did a lot of soul-searching and then when I got this opportunity to work with the radio station, I realized their reach is a lot smaller. But radio and podcast have an almost unique approach: the oral medium has the advantage of being very personal and niche. Rather than throwing it out and seeing who it hits, you already know who you are doing your work for. The art show already has an inbuilt audience, a niche one. The audience is much smaller, but it's an engaged audience. And I really felt that I would rather be doing my work for people who cared, than for one million readers, out of which only a handful may care about what I am trying to do. What this does is bring in the kind of intellectual return whereby you want to build your listeners. You want to build your audience, rather than just take from your audience, and that's the kind of company I like working for.

Uchino: I actually listened to your 2019 review of the performing arts scene yesterday and that was quite an interesting experience. After listening to you for about thirty-five minutes, I thought that I knew what was going on in Malaysia at the moment.

Sharmilla: Oh, fabulous.

Uchino: I mean everybody was dedicated and you asked good questions, and it was quite amazing that you do that kind of show for thirty-five minutes, because it doesn't happen in Japan. Radio is becoming a kind of very singular medium here because not so many people listen anymore. Interestingly, radio in Japan is becoming very politicized now. So I find it interesting that you do radio and in your case it's more individualized, similarly to your podcast.

Amitha: Yes, podcasts have become so popular. I don't know about Japan, but I started listening to them because they had become big in the United States. There are so many podcasts now in Thailand.

Sharmilla: Because you can listen while you are doing anything.

Amitha: Exactly and you can keep dropping back in.

Sharmilla: Whether cooking or at the gym, you can stop and start whenever you want. We get a lot of our listeners through podcasts. So, they might not listen as we air. They download and then play it whenever they want to.

Amitha: Right. I think like in the US, there was even a joke like if you are a millennial, you have at least three podcasts. In Thailand, it's still not at that level yet, but things are definitely getting close. It's a very popular format and something I wanted to try. I like to try out different media.

Uchino: And yours is bilingual, which must be hard work.

Amitha: Yes, it is. I didn't really listen to the radio growing up except when someone was listening to it or when I was in a taxi, but then I started listening to America's National Public Radio online or to podcasts and Monocle Radio. It is so intimate.

Uchino: Intimacy is important.

Amitha: I had so many ideas for podcasts not related to theatre at all but then I realized I should try something about theatre, as that's something I know and I don't have to fight over at least to get an audience. I know my audience because I have one from writing. And then I went to the Asian Arts Media Roundtable. Now I have all these people who are interested. That's why I started doing it bilingually.

Uchino: But what about the content?

Amitha: We do reviews, but mostly it's interviews. We've also had a roundtable about original plays in Thailand and the lack thereof.

Uchino: So you have your own staff for your podcast or do you do it on your own?

Amitha: It's two of us doing everything. For instance, I want to have a roundtable on melodrama, as melodrama is a big thing in Thailand, but it's dismissed like soap operas, even though they have such a cultural influence in Thailand.

Uchino: By chance, my first book is called Melodramatic Revenge!

Amitha: We are also a media partner with the Bangkok International Performing Arts Meeting (BIPAM), which is modeled after the Yokohama-based TPAM. I am part of the artistic board. I would like to interview participating artists and record or even moderate a panel, and then turn that into a podcast episode.

Criticism and Social Media in Manila

Uchino: Katrina, you are based in Manila and you write about socio-political issues as well that have to do with the national government. How is the censorship about all these issues in terms of both your art reviews and also your work as an activist?

Katrina: Censorship in the Philippines isn't in the law. But it is in the way we self-censor. Especially given the current government, many have decided not to speak up about national issues out of fear. But the audience for arts and culture is small, especially if you write in English, regardless of whether it's written or in podcasts. It's a very niche, fixed market. From broadsheets to online, whether on my website or online publications, my readers are a very fixed set of people who read and think in English, and who actually have the money to even access the theatre productions and films that I watch, or the books I read. Social inequality is very stark in Manila, and in the Philippines in general. There is a very clear sense that when you talk about arts and culture, you are talking to a very, very small group of people.

But when you start talking about politics, that's a bigger, national, kind of conversation. And I think the intersection is in talking about arts and culture policy, which involves a larger group of people because we are talking about public funding of the arts as well. The history of our cultural institutions is such that we never know where the funds go, and often these funds are controlled by a set of people who are unfamiliar even to the cultural sector itself. A primary concern here is that the people who decide who gets funding are not really artists themselves.

Of course there is the fact that whether you're talking about arts and culture, or about national socio-political issues, there is just the general perception that criticism is unhelpful, or that it is an attack. One of the things that I think we all agreed on when we did the Asian Arts Media Roundtable (with Arts Equator) in Singapore in 2019 is that criticism is necessary because it is an act that seeks to help productions and artists do better. It shouldn't be taken as an attack. It shouldn't be something to take offense at. And that's something that I think Manila could learn a lot from—the idea that criticism is okay. Too many, especially now, are quick to take offense when you analyze a theatre production. They question why you are critical to begin with, or why you are asking difficult questions about a work. What is ironic is that these are also exactly the same people who are very critical of government on social media, and are very confident talking about what's wrong with nation and the president. And yet when they are the ones on the receiving end of criticism, they will take offense to the point of publicly attacking the critic—something the President himself does as a form of silencing.

I think it's a very strange yet very interesting time for criticism in Manila because while it is clear to us that government is silencing us in many ways, including by attacking us when we are critical, when it is our works that are under scrutiny we also quickly turn against the critic, in the way government does. It's important to see here how we can quickly become the monster we want to slay. It's also important to see how an echo chamber of people agreeing with you might make you confident, but that doesn't make you right.

Amitha: Yes, totally.

Katrina: It's different when I have a bunch of people agreeing with me. But when mine is the lone voice saying a different thing, people ask: "What's wrong with this woman? Why is she saying something that none of us want to talk about?" For example, just yesterday, there was a big issue with Ballet Philippines, which is the largest and oldest ballet company in Manila. The Board decided to sack the Filipino director and hire a Russian dancer. And so there was this huge uproar and everyone was angry. Yet in the end, no one wanted to talk about who the members of the Board are, how they came to those positions of power, and why they are the ones making these decisions. Few people watch ballets in Manila, so it's an even smaller audience than theatre, but suddenly everyone is talking about ballet and how having a Russian artistic director is an offense to nation, and to the arts and culture sector and our independence. But there is no body of work to support the idea that even without a Russian artistic director, Ballet Philippines has been about nation all this time. This is a dance company that's still doing Swan Lake and The Nutcracker. So, why this huge uproar all of a sudden?

But no one wants this kind of analysis. And when you put up a status on Facebook about this, the first reaction you're going to get is: "Why are you so angry? Why are you an angry critic?" But I am not. I am simply asking questions about this online uproar that refuses to take on the more difficult discussions about a given issue.

And I think this is what critics are supposed to do and this is what makes a reviewer different from a critic. A reviewer will take a text, analyze it, read it, and share her views about it... A critic will contextualize even her own response, both in the systems that gave rise to the text, and to her own spectatorship of it. I would like to think there continues to be value in that kind of work, even when we might not have a lot of readers or a lot of listeners because the market is so niche.