After 6 มรดก 6 ตุลา (‘the legacy of 6th Oct.’), a new play by Natthapat Mardech, will be staged at T.Nam Charoen Playhouse in Bangkok later this month. Performances will take place on 11th, 12th, and 13th September.
The play is set in 1980, four years after the 6th October 1976 coup, a time when military rule had become the new normal. The drama’s six characters are lawyers who meet (at 6pm) to discuss how to eradicate the legacy of the coup.
After 6 is Natthapat’s second play about the events of 1976. Last year, he directed Rashomon 6 ตุลา (‘Rashomon 6th Oct.’), which was also set four years after the coup.
Tickets for After 6 cost ฿112, a reference to the lèse-majesté law, which is article 112 of the Thai criminal code. Last year, advance tickets for Prapassorn Konmuang’s play The Ordinary (คนธรรมดา) also cost ฿112, for the same symbolic reason.
The play is set in 1980, four years after the 6th October 1976 coup, a time when military rule had become the new normal. The drama’s six characters are lawyers who meet (at 6pm) to discuss how to eradicate the legacy of the coup.
After 6 is Natthapat’s second play about the events of 1976. Last year, he directed Rashomon 6 ตุลา (‘Rashomon 6th Oct.’), which was also set four years after the coup.
Tickets for After 6 cost ฿112, a reference to the lèse-majesté law, which is article 112 of the Thai criminal code. Last year, advance tickets for Prapassorn Konmuang’s play The Ordinary (คนธรรมดา) also cost ฿112, for the same symbolic reason.
Another play, The Deconstruct(ed) (รื้อ), also marking the 6th October anniversary, will be staged at the Thammasat Playhouse next month. In The Deconstruct(ed), directed by Sineenadh Keitprapai, a group of actors rehearsing a production of Ariel Dofman’s Death and the Maiden (La muerte y la doncella) on 6th October discuss the similarities between Dofman’s account of a violent coup in an unspecified Latin American country and the events at Thammasat in 1976. Performances of The Deconstruct(ed) will be held on 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 9th, 10th, and 11th October. It was first staged in 2016.
A third play about 6th October, The Trial (ห้องพิจารณาคดีที่ 4), will also open in the near future. This is a recreation, based on court transcripts, of the trial of eighteen Thammasat students arrested after the massacre. The play, directed by Teerawat Mulvilai, features actors portraying both the defendants and the officers who gave evidence against them; it will be staged in a mock courtroom at Thammasat’s Faculty of Law on 4th–6th October, with the audience sitting in the public gallery.
