Dramatis Personae
Deputy Rector for Student Affairs
Faculty Advisor to Student Drama Society
Student Director

Act One, Scene One
Office of the Deputy Rector for Student Affairs

[Enter Omnes]

Deputy Rector: Now have we all read this circular from the Office of the Higher Education Commission about student plays? Yes?

Omnes: Yes

Deputy Rector: Good, good. So I understand that you are rehearsing a play and I just want to check that it doesn’t go against the circular.

Student Director: So this is a form of censorship, is it?

Faculty Advisor: I think what the Deputy Rector is trying to say is that we all want to see harmony in the nation and we wouldn’t want to do anything that might, in a completely unintentional way, upset that.

Deputy Rector: Yes, you mustn’t do anything the government might not like. So what’s this play called then?

Student Director: Hamlet.

Deputy Rector: Farang play then, is it?

Student Director: By William Shakespeare.

Deputy Rector: I don’t know why you can’t put on a perfectly good Thai play.

Faculty Advisor: Well it is one of the most famous plays in the world. I think that’s why the students chose it. It’s a real challenge for them.

Deputy Rector: Hmm. So what’s it about then?

Student Director: Well, there have been many critical interpretations of Hamlet down the years. At its most basic it is a play about revenge, but there are dozens of psychoanalytical, philosophical and religious interpretations. Our performance approaches the text from a post-modernist anarcho-feminist deconstructivist perspective.

[Dramatic pause]

Deputy Rector: We haven’t been teaching this mumbo-jumbo in this university, I hope.

Faculty Advisor: I think what the director means is that one can interpret the play in many different ways.

Deputy Rector: But the question is how the government will interpret it. I mean, what is it about?

Student Director: As I explained, we first deconstruct the text on psycho-neurolinguistic lines, then …

Deputy Rector: Let’s not get into all that again. What’s the story?

Student Director: Do you mean the plot?

Deputy Rector: Listen sonny Jim, don’t think you can come into this university and pretend you know it all with your fancy words and ...

Faculty Advisor: Yes, I think the Deputy Rector means the plot. Well, the hero is Hamlet, of course, …

Student Director: I think he’s better described as protagonist because in many ways he’s the archetypical anti-hero, wracked with doubt and indecision …

Deputy Rector: I’ve warned you, sunshine.

Faculty Advisor: Perhaps you can tell the Deputy Rector what Hamlet does in the play.

Student Director: Well, he’s Prince of Denmark …

Deputy Rector: Prince? Oh-ho.

Student Director: …and he believes that his father, the King, has been killed by his uncle Claudius, …

Deputy Rector: What!?!

Student Director: … who has become King and married his mother, Gertrude.

Deputy Rector: Just stop right there. A play about a brother killing a – a – a supreme institution? Where do you come up with such filth?

Faculty Advisor: It’s only fiction, Deputy Rector.

Deputy Rector: And who was this Walter Shagaspear thinking about when he wrote it, eh?

Faculty Advisor: The play is over 400 years old, Deputy Rector.

Deputy Rector: 400 years? So how did he know … Just a minute. Something doesn’t add up here. If his dad is King and his dad dies, why isn’t he king? How does his uncle come into it?

Student Director: The Danish crown at the time was an elected position. When a King died …

Deputy Rector: Elected? But that’s exactly what the government’s trying to stop. If we had elected kings, you-know-who might get in. You can’t go round suggesting things like that. It’s, it’s, well, it’s un-Thai.

Faculty Advisor: So what do you suggest, Deputy Rector?

Deputy Rector: Well they’ll have to do something else. We can’t possibly allow this kind of goings-on.

Student Director: But we’ve been rehearsing for 3 months! We chose this play long before the Ministry wrote their stup-

Deputy Rector: That’s enough. Why can’t we be like Chula? They don’t have these problems with stroppy students. They’ve had a policy in place for months.

Faculty Advisor: Is there any other of Shakespeare’s plays that you might do instead?

Student Director: Well, there’s Richard II; that’s about a King who is deposed and then murdered. Or Richard III, who kills 3 relatives to get to the throne and is then killed himself. Or King Lear, whose children fight …

Deputy Rector: Enough! Is this all you can think about? Now I want you to go back to your English literature teacher and ask her to suggest a nice play about national unity or something.

Faculty Advisor: Well actually, Deputy Rector, she’s the one who suggested …

[Exeunt Student Director and Faculty Advisor pursued by a bear-like Deputy Rector]

 

About author: Bangkokians with long memories may remember his irreverent column in The Nation in the 1980's. During his period of enforced silence since then, he was variously reported as participating in a 999-day meditation retreat in a hill-top monastery in Mae Hong Son (he gave up after 998 days), as the Special Rapporteur for Satire of the UN High Commission for Human Rights, and as understudy for the male lead in the long-running ‘Pussies -not the Musical' at the Neasden International Palladium (formerly Park Lane Empire).