Your two last performances of Chui Chai, at Patravadi and then the Alliance Francaise, were very different. What should we expect this time around?
I’m going a bit further. There’s a new scene never produced in Thailand, a duet. It’s part of the story of Chui Chai but in our previous performances we skipped it. It’s the scene where Hanuman rapes Benyakay. When I am in Thailand, every couple of days, in the news, I hear of a rape. And yet, no one talks about this. No one complains. Nobody thinks this is very important—this is crazy. That’s why I created this piece, and premiered it in Singapore. It’s something that’s been moving me for a long time.

So this staging of Chui Chai will be more personal and less political?
It’s still political. Rape is political. Politicians are all men. Laws are made for men.

Are the recent developments on the Thai-Cambodian border influencing you?
I’m thinking of doing a scene on this. But it’s sensitive. I’m not sure what I can do on stage about this. What I did at Patravadi was about what’s going on in Thailand. Now this is outside of Thailand. And the situation is unclear. Is this a game or is this real?

So you self-censor?
I show everything because people in Thailand don’t think very much of theater. They consider it just a spectacle. Before, there was nothing being produced that was political, nothing that serious. So no one from the government, no one from the Thailand Cultural Center comes to see our shows. And if they do see it, they don’t understand. For example, Ganesh was a very political, very powerful performance where I was talking very directly. But nobody [from the authorities] saw it. They worry about visual arts, painting, even music, but not what about what goes on in theaters or dance.

Will we see more of you here in 2011?
I’m going to tour Ninjinsky Siam in London and Pichet Klunchun and Myself in Switzerland and Brazil. I have a new premiere in Singapore in October, called Black and White Khon. Here, there’s no space to perform. There’s no theater in the BACC. If I want to perform at the Thailand Cultural Center, I need to sell B100,000 worth of tickets and find another B100,000 for the deposit. I need a star or some funny guy in my show to get that kind of money. There’s just no art space here. So I’m building my own theater on the Thonburi side of the river. It should open in May and I’ll try to premiere Ninjinsky Siam. We need a space for real classical dance, not some restaurant.

Isn’t that the National Theater’s role?
They only produce when they get a commission from the government or the head of some cultural department, when they need to celebrate this or that. Their full time job is teaching, not training as dancers, not being on stage. When they present on stage, how many hours have they practiced? A couple of times? Even if you’ve done a certain show before, you need 2-3 months of rehearsal. You need to practice every day. These are not real performers. They complain that no one comes to see their show. But compare them to ballet. The muscle, the jump, the body is perfect in ballet, and when ballet comes to Thailand, the tickets are B1,000-5,000 and it’s a full house. People don’t understand the story of the Nutcracker or Sleeping Beauty any better than the Ramayana. People pay good money because they know what they will get, the high production, the dancers’ training.

Catching up with Pichet Klunchun at Chui Chai