Ceci n'est pas la politique // นี่ไม่ใช่การเมือง'

The only problem with allowing our friends to get us tickets to the interactive play 'Ceci n'est pas la politique // นี่ไม่ใช่การเมือง' ('This Is Not Politics') — they merrily signed us up as 'active audience' instead of 'observers'. Apparently the tickets were priced higher for 'observers'. Heh, that's one way of ensuring audience participation. Well, we didn't need to 'act' or get off our chairs. Simply needed to raise color-coded sticks to indicate our answers to questions.

Presented by B-floor Theatre, the play is created by Jaa Phantachat and written by Pattareeya Puapongsakorn. The play was staged in Thai on most dates, and English on some nights. For the man's benefit, we attended the play on a night when it was staged in English. The actresses weren't unfamiliar to me. Hurhurhur. Nice to see their work on stage again.

The questions to the audience were random, and it honestly didn't impact or affect the script or the lines as we had earlier thought or what it suggested. As the play went on, I was royally confused when the masked meancing dude grabbed the 'lighting guy' (literally the dude doing the lighting) and 'subtitles girl' (flashing the questions for us). Then when the 'hosts' invited us to shout the answers in the absence of light to ascertain our colored answers to the questions, or raise any random color as an answer, I got it. That was part of our audience experience in the play's comment about the state of affairs in the uhhh whodunit. Think of it on a macro scale if you prefer. It didn't really matter who killed Jitra and a puppy at the resort. It mattered that a most likely murderer was found and agreed on.

At the end of the play, we were like, "but it is political!" Who murdered Jitra? Does it matter? It's never really a whodunit afterall. Democracy is the vote of the majority, but is the vote just? B-floor Theatre has cleverly presented a political and social commentary that hits you towards the end of the play.