ABSTRACT
‘Theatre is about having a conversation that society is not having’. These words by Peter Sellars have some resonance with the founding philosophy of the Makhampom Theatre Group, a Thai theatre collective. The relevance of context to Makhampom’s theatre praxis became particularly evident in the 2010s. The development of a new method, coined as ‘dialogue theatre’ by the group, was both consistent with the group’s premise of addressing the notion of difficult conversations that society is not having and shaped by the transforming context, specifically in reference to national political conflict. Makhampom adopted several strategies to navigate the heightened political context of the 2013 October Event. The popular success of The Blood Throne performances, drawing live audiences of approximately 3,000 and digital audiences of over 30,000, was subsumed within a resurgence of political instability. Makhampom identified the importance of developing the actor’s craft in characterisation in order to achieve the ‘imagined reality’ of the dialogue.
