Juggle & Hide - Wichaya Artamat / Duck Unit - Vienna Festival 2026

If God is ‘the invisible hand that steers everything’, does that mean that in theatre the director is God? And is every play a dictatorship? Thai director Wichaya Artamat actually considers his artistic work an antithesis to authoritarian systems. In order to evade censorship in his own country, he turns to props as metaphors. With Juggle & Hide, Artamat now questions this process and his own role as the director-God. Did he force a meaning upon all these objects? This is the first European showing of the playful and radical performance Juggle & Hide, in which Artamat confronts the real political unfreedom in Thailand with the total freedom of the arts: pictures, songs, food and ventilators become a united front and challenge the theatre maker’s power; they simply take over the stage. Artamat thus asks one of the central questions in the Republic of Gods: Can art reach a point where it creates an utterly new world?

Recommended for ages 14+

Language: Thai with German and English surtitles
Duration: 75 min

program

Juggle & Hide

(Seven Whatchamacallits in Search of a Director)

Wichaya Artamat / Duck Unit