REALNESS: LUK KREUNG is an intimate work that explores family dynamics while addressing cultural forms, performing categories and societal issues. Phitthaya Phaefuang incorporates New York LGBTQIA+ underground ballroom culture with Buddhism, Thai political and cultural phenomena, and gender as a concept into the story of his mothers past as a sex worker. He views the work as a gift for her and also a performance about gaining deeper insights and examining suffering and compassion closely.
“Luk Kreung” is a term used to describe individuals who are of Thai and another heritage. Mainly used on people who were Thai and caucasian. Phaefuang’s mother, who is Thai, and his father, who is French, made him a Luk Kreung. There was a time when being a Luk Kreung was stigmatized because their mothers were often sex workers. Nowadays, the history of this group of people has faded, been forgotten, and is rarely talked about. As a Luk Kreung, Phaefuang openly expresses his mother’s past as a sex worker through various forms of gender performance, including catwalk, sex sirens, voguing, Thai female dance, dharma practices, and walking meditation.
With his experiences as a monk in Thai culture, ballroom father in the ballroom culture, academic dance trained from the western culture, he is looking deeply into his mums past as sex worker and going beyond the binary male and female gender.
