Anette Pollner is the current leader of the Bangkok Women’s Writer Group (BWWG) and the coordinator of the Bangkok Blondes, published in 2007 by Bangkok Book House. She also authored, under the pen name of Ann Cox, The Company of Frogs, a mystery novel that was shortlisted for a UK literary prize in 2007. In this 3-part interview, Anette talks about writing, her books, the publishing industry, the Bangkok Opera and the interpretation of dreams.
“All of us are unique combinations of personal
and cultural elements, and even within one
country there are so many different cultures.”
MVS: You’re also a member of the Bangkok Opera team. As a theater director, tell us some of your thoughts about working with Thai artists?
AP: I am actually no longer working at the Bangkok Opera (I was their programme director in 2008) but I directed Puccini’s Turandot in 2004 and, with Somtow Sucharitkul, Wagner’s Valkyrie in 2007.
Turandot had a large chorus with many Thai singers, a spectacularly good Thai set designer, some excellent Thai stage actors including Sonoko Prow who has developed a unique Thai / Japanese Bhuto style, and of course a large Thai team. There were also artist from other countries, including the US, Taiwan and Malaysia.
I love working with an international team, and I love the discoveries we made together. Of course, the language of the theatre, as one team member put it, is always the same, wherever you are, and that is the language we use to create the show.
There are many wonderful artists in Thailand but I think of artists less in terms of nationality than in terms of individuals. All of us are unique combinations of personal and cultural elements, and even within one country there are so many different cultures.
What counts for me is that people know their craft and are excited to expand their skills and knowledge in a new project.
We learnt a lot from each other and I continue to learn from artists in various projects like the staged concert with Catherine Hansono that I did last year. I love the theatre and particularly the music theatre – it is the ultimate emotion factory. The audience is guided to peak experiences, to an intense awareness of the wildest and deepest places within themselves.
“Jasmine Nights is a fantastic book.”
MVS: What’s your opinion of SP Somtow as a writer?
AP: SP Somtow or, as he was called in his earlier works, Somtow Sucharitkul, which is also his real name, is a great writer.
I particularly love his early science fiction novels which I read in the 1980s, long before I knew him and long before I ever thought of traveling to Thailand. I used to say that his science fiction novels are ‘science fiction for adults’ in the sense that they have sophisticated plots, many complex cultural allusions, and were extremely well written in a smooth, erudite British style that I find very enjoyable. If you can find copies of Somtow’s Inquestor novels, read them and lend them to your friends!
I used to look for new books by him for a long time, until I realized he had changed his name to SP Somtow and was now writing about vampires and werewolves – both subjects that I can’t really relate to very much. I’m just really bored by the whole vampire genre.
So, disappointed, I stopped reading his books until Jasmine Nights, which I read just before I came to Thailand in 2003. In fact I read it while I was staying with my friend the fantasy writer Jane Routley in Melbourne and we were joking about writing a fan letter to Somtow.
A few weeks after I got to Bangkok I started working at the Bangkok Opera.
Jasmine Nights is a fantastic book. It is an excellent introduction to Thailand, and it is a complete microcosm of most of Somtow’s main themes, so it is an excellent introduction to his writing, too.
Jasmine Nights, for all its magical realism and exoticism, both of which I find very enjoyable, is set in Sukhumvit Soi 24, now the neighbourhood of the Emporium shopping mall. But this is the Sukhumvit of 40 years ago. The book shows how much Thailand has changed – and how much it has stayed the same, underneath all the change.
Maybe this is Somtow’s best book, where all the elements come together. It is also, compared to some of his other works, a relatively, and elegantly, simple book, with a straightforward narrative and setup of characters.
I believe a new book is in the works, Somtow calls it a Thai Harry Potter. Look out for it!
“Every artist is a unique person and has the right
to create in any style and with any cultural references they want.”
MVS: How about Somtow the composer for the Bangkok Opera?
Somtow’s work as a composer also spans several decades. He says that after his initial more experimental works in the 1970s he became discouraged and turned away from classical music for a long time. When he started writing his operas and oratorios, his compositions had changed to a kind of neo-romantic style.
The operas that I have seen (and heard) are all based on Thai themes and stories but the music is Western neo-romantic opera. This creates an interesting contrast between the story and the music, although the librettos are also very Western in the way the dramatic scenes are set up and the plot is developed. They follow the traditional set pieces of opera in the 18th and 19th century, complete with arias, chorus pieces, smaller ensemble numbers and sometimes even ballet intermezzos. The language of the librettos is English.
Personally, I’m more into contemporary and experimental music, or, of course, the original classical and romantic period of European music. So I’m probably not the best person to ask about Somtow as a composer because the whole neo-romantic style doesn’t make much sense to me and doesn’t excite me as an artist. However, Somtow is the only composer / librettist who creates operas based on Thai myths and stories and he has developed his own unique musical language. Occasionally I have heard criticism that his compositions are not ‘Asian’ enough. I don’t get that at all. Every artist is a unique person and has the right to create in any style and with any cultural references they want. Artists don’t have to be ‘ethnic’. I refuse to be an ethnic European, and my writing and my work as a director are strongly influenced by American, South American and Asian culture.
Somtow has also, sometimes heroically, created and maintained the Bangkok Opera as an organization that regularly puts on operas and large scale classical music productions in Bangkok. This is a huge cultural contribution to Thailand.
(To be continued)