Smiling on Cue

When the performance becomes too perfect to feel alive.

Photo by author.

One of Bangkok’s longest-running ladyboy cabaret shows has just started at Calypso.

Why is the room almost empty?

I’m sitting in the first row. On my right is a middle-aged Chinese couple. The man applauds with the wide-eyed enthusiasm of a child at a puppet show. On my left, a young English pink flower stares at the performers as though they are freedom.

The performers lip-sync all the crowd-pleasers: the classic Liza Minnelli songs, and the modern hard rock and pop diva tunes. During each track, they fix their gaze on a point high above us, as though they’re having some godly vision into a universe only they can see.

I wish I were invited in.

The costumes sparkle. The movements are precise. The smiles arrive exactly when they should.

It feels like I’m watching a Thai cabaret tradition polished and packaged for Bangkok’s tourist market — something designed to get bottoms into theatre seats.

I know that feeling.

I did ballet from the age of three until I was eleven. One of the compulsory rules screamed by my old English teacher was always:

SMILE!

The whole time.

Like a wind-up toy.

My smile rarely lasted the whole ballet track. It was another position to hold, like a pointed foot or an extended arm. It didn’t matter whether I felt happy. Happiness was part of the choreography.

Perhaps people who create shows should rewrite the rule:

Smile with your heart, if you can. Otherwise, don’t smile at all.

People can see through a smile worn like a costume.

Or at least I can.

The man beside me keeps applauding. The pink flower keeps staring. They seem to be receiving something from the performance that I can’t reach.

I keep waiting for a crack.

An unusual look. A demonstration of their personality.

It never comes.

Maybe that’s what professionalism looks like in that industry: the person disappearing so completely into the show that the audience never has to wonder what they feel.

I want the opposite.

Next time I watch a cabaret, I hope the show leaves room for the less perfect world of the person performing it.

I don’t need the smile to be flawless.

I need to feel that it belongs to the performer.