Action Theatre director is back in town

SINGAPORE – For theatre and film director Ekachai Uekrongtham, BreadTalk – specifically its pork floss bun – is a source of fond memories of his adopted home. The ubiquitous Singaporean bakery started opening outlets in Thailand a few years ago.

“I can tell you,” he laughs, “that BreadTalk in Singapore is still the best in the world. I appreciate the little things about Singapore, like eating the Flosss bun. I would eat it and tell myself, oh – this is happiness.”

The Thai-born founder and artistic director of Singapore theatre company Action Theatre was speaking to Life! over the telephone from Bangkok, which is his home base for now.

Ekachai, 50, laughs: “I think I’ve spent so much of my life in Singapore that when I’m in Thailand, people say, ‘Oh, you’re so Singaporean.’ And in Singapore they say, ‘Oh, you’re so Thai.’”

He did his bachelor’s degree in business administration at the National University of Singapore (NUS) and founded Action Theatre in 1987, turning it over the next two decades into one of the most active theatre companies here.

Now a film producer and director with a major Thai entertainment conglomerate, he will be in Singapore this weekend to give a talk at the NUS Arts Festival today. Three of his feature films will be screened in conjunction with his talk: the award-winning Beautiful Boxer (2004), Pleasure Factory (2007) and The Coffin (2008).

Ekachai admits that Action Theatre has been out of action for a while, mostly because he has his hands full as executive consultant of content development at Thailand’s GMM Grammy.

His last theatre work staged in Singapore was the wordless musical Boxing Boys at the Esplanade Theatre in 2011.

While he still visits Singapore about once a month for meetings and to catch up with old friends, his theatre projects here have taken a back seat. But he hints that there are plans to revive his hit musical, Chang Eng (1997) – as suggested by his mother, who is in her 70s.

The musical, which starred Robin Goh and the late RJ Rosales as the titular Siamese twins, was a runaway success here, which prompted numerous restagings.

He hopes that Action Theatre will still be able to contribute to Singapore – even with fewer productions.

“We probably won’t be as active as before, but there’s the restaging of our hits and, not only that, I think there are some ideas that I would like to develop out of Singapore, some stories. That’s on the cards.”

Action Theatre director is back in town