Department of English

Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University


 

Cocktail

(2007)


Vince LiCata and Ping Chong

(n.d.; 1946 – )


Cocktail Notes
This play premiered at the Swine Palace theater in Louisiana on April 20, 2007.


Scene 4.  Patients and Doctors
14  Brahms lullaby:



  • Johannes Brahms - Lullaby (3:01 min.)



Scene 6.  Ajinomoto Commercial
22  Ajinomoto:

22  MSG: short for monosodium glutamate, a common flavor enhancer for food

22  Yankee Doodle:


Scene 9.  Dr. Likhit/Dr. Krisana Decides to Go It Alone
39  the building super: the building superintendent, the building manager

Scene 10.  Making the Pill
44  carrageenan: pronounced /ˌkærəˈgiːnən/); a sticky substance extracted from red algae (seaweeds) sometimes called Irish moss

Scene 12.  High Noon
48  High Noon: a showdown; a make or break moment; a test (usually) between two parties; also the title of a 1952 film directed by Fred Zinnemann, starring Gary Cooper and a young Grace Kelly.



 

 


 

There are at least 700,000 Thai People with HIV/AIDS. Only 5,000 get ARV Treatment presently. 100,000 to 250,000 would benefit from ARV Treatment NOW. Currently, only 5% of Public Health Spending is for HIV/AIDS.

Source: World AIDS Day, 2001, Thailand

 

 


 

Generic Competition Drives Down Drug Prices
Evidence presented yesterday (Mon.) at the 14th World AIDS Conference in Barcelona by a number of economists and Medicins sans Frontieres (MSF) showed that it was only when Brazil and Thailand started to manufacture their own generic versions of anti-retroviral drugs that drug companies responded by offering substantial discounts.

Kerry Cullinan, "Generic Competition Drives Down Drug Prices," The South African Health News Service (2002)

 


 

 

 

Study Questions

  • Names and Naming
    • What effect is achieved with some characters named and others not? For example, what difference does it make that the Brighton Miles representatives are not identified by name while many other characters are? Who else are not named?
    • Why do some characters have allegorical names and others do not?
    • How does the BMP representatives repeatedly mispronouncing Dr. Krisana's name affect their character?
    • The character Selena Scott is "played by a distinctly different actress in each appearance" (4). What do you think this achieves?
  • Crime and Punishment: Achara calls the BMP's actions "criminal" but Tido points out that "if we go ahead with manufacture of pills with ddl in them, we'll be the criminals" (57). If the law is to provide justice, why do legal and moral crimes seem to be in opposition?
  • Why is the shadow play appropriate for the three scenes in which it is used?
  • Both MP Patiset and Dr. Krisana seem to agree that "It is a terrible thing. This AIDS thing" (27). What is the problem? Where do they disagree?
  • At the end of scene 9, entitled "Dr. Krisana decides to go it alone," our heroine asks Achara "Are you coming or not?" to which the response is "Yes, Dr. Krisana," with the secretary running after her offstage. Dr. Krisana is not doing this alone after all, or is she?
  • Time in scene 10 "Making the pill" is indicated by actors rather than with projected text like in other scenes. Also, why might LiCata and Chong use two "Date Persons"  to give time instead of only one?
  • Dr. Krisana, who does not believe in miracles ("It's just pharmacology" 42), in scene 11 calls Tido "an angel!" (47). Does this change of heart make Dr. Krisana less of a scientist? How does her pronouncement foreshadow future events?
  • The persistent ticking that continues throughout most of the previous scenes abruptly disappears for scene 12. Why is this appropriate or significant?
  • How does the title "High Noon" of scene 12 color the action that goes on in it? What meaning does the metaphor give to this confrontation between Dr. Krisana and the BMP representatives?
  • What effect is created by the six BMP representatives onstage in scene 12?

            




 


Review Sheet

 

Characters

Dr. Krisana Kraisintu

Dr. Taharn Bhunbhu
Dr./Director Likhit
Dr. Tido von Schoen-Angerer
MP Patiset
Achara Eksaengsri – Dr. Krisana's personal administrative assistant as Director of Research and Development at the GPO (Government Pharmaceutical Organization) (19)
Horst Gebbers
Dirk Gebbers
Grandmother, Buddhist Nun
Decha
Desiree
Selena Scott
Ajipanda
Elke von Schoen-Angerer
BMP 1, Robert
BMP 2, Jack(ie)
BMP 3
BMP 4
BMP 5
BMP 6

Setting
Samui Island, 1957
New Orleans, 1981
Bangkok, 1991
Democratic Republic of Congo, October 2002
    Bukavu –
        Pharmakina – "established in 1942. My father [Horst Gebbers] bought it in 1999 (70); "nearly four thousand acres. Pharmakina produces over 75 percent of the world's quinine" (71)

 

 


 

Sample Student Reading Responses to Vince LiCata and Ping Chong's Cocktail


Prompt
: Discuss a turning point in Cocktail. Explain how that shift, change, twist, or transition is portrayed theatrically through literary and dramatic devices and how the turn is significant in the play as a whole. What issues are at stake at that point? Who are involved? What are the implications of the turn? How is the turn staged?

 

Response 1:

 

 

 

 

 

From Many to One

 

Throughout LiCata and Chong’s Cocktail, multiple characters accumulate onstage combined by increasingly frantic action and noise until one key turning point where all leaves except one: Dr. Krisana Kraisintu. On one hand, the cleared stage except for a sole working scientist and the silence save the date people announcing passage of time, is a shocking contrast to the complete flood of sights and sounds earlier and reflects the stark aloneness of Dr. Krisana in her quest to make HIV drugs as well as the virtually universal fear or unwillingness of everyone else to take on the cause of AIDS. The visual of one woman standing while others have fled not only highlights her moral and mental fortitude, but also aligns her somewhat with the likewise deserted AIDS patients she is trying to save. This sudden shift from multiplication to singular acts almost like a filter, revealing the true colors and mettle of a person, differentiating the truly exceptional from the merely hardworking and conscientious who are ready to contribute when success was assured like in the Staff Buzz scene or the strong only as a pack as in the High Noon scene. Dr. Krisana remains resolved even when the job is stigmatized, unpopular, uncertain, dangerous, and even if she has to “go it alone.”

On the other hand, the turning point when a “cocktail” of cast members becomes one person mirrors the making of the drug itself and perhaps foretells its success. From many chemicals, one pill. The ticking stops as if for Krisana time stands still, and the date persons’ calls are for the benefit of the audience rather than hers. Without the continuous ticking, the connotations of a timer or a time bomb stops, and the pressure built from the beginning of the play shifts into only the marking of time as if the play induces its audience to collectively hold its breath for the duration. The repetitive motif remains, however, but transformed into the repetitiveness and persistence of lab work where the experimenter must perform the same tasks again and again until surrender or breakthrough. Once the turn is complete, there is a new reality. The exponentially multiplying dots, now echoed in the circular pill, have disappeared as if to say that this tablet will help to reduce the numbers of AIDS patients.

The turning point scene marks the difference between a failure whom people are ready to ridicule (which foretaste we see in the mockery of Meechai) and a hero whom people are ready to attach themselves to and ride the laurel, and in this sense it is extremely critical. Personally, Dr. Krisana has put her reputation, career, and livelihood on the line. But that is nothing to the public stakes: hundreds of thousands of lives, attitudes, national policies, millions of baht. Where all this goes changes with the arrival of the cocktail. The HIV sun can be halted in its rise as a different dawn breaks. While Cocktail celebrates multiple efforts coming together, it also pays tribute to the power of an individual, and this extraordinary moment where we see from many turned into one, though spare and rather quiet, is that applause.

 

 

 

 

 

           

 

Response 2:

 

 

 

 

 

Medicine without Borders

 

Beginning with and remaining in Thailand, about a Thai pharmacist, Thai politicians, Thai AIDS patients, Thai society, food and culture, Vince LiCata and Ping Chong’s Cocktail suddenly moves to Africa toward the end of the play. This shift threatens to break the unity of the piece if not for its bold grasp of the central theme. Prior to this turning point, we are treated to a cognitive jolt already when Dr. Krisana as an adult is able to visit her Grandmother and speak to her as in the opening scene where the nun promises the six-year-old girl that “you can be with me whenever you want.” The echo of this and of her teaching about helping those less advantaged, is felt throughout Dr. Krisana’s scenes and most significantly in this continental move to show that the granddaughter has fully absorbed those lessons, making them the play’s most constant theme. This shift to Pharmakina paradoxically emblematizes commitment rather than shiftiness. It is the most telling test of Krisana’s character, demonstrating as it does that by moving to Africa she is more steadfast to her principles and promise than Director Likhit who stays put. The contradictory imagery versus meaning marks the biggest intellectual provocation in the play, asking the audience as it does Dr. Krisana, what science is for and who “the disadvantaged” really are.

The geographical change expands the story from a biography to a human history and study. It emphasizes that the nature of science or law or humanity is international or global. Despite the shift in time (three years), place (Bukavu, DRC), sound (jungle and machine guns), the play’s heart never changes. With this brilliant turning point, Cocktail reveals itself to be truly universal, not about one woman or one country, but humanity wherever that may be.

 

 

 

 

 

           

 

 





 


Reference

LiCata, Vince, and Ping Chong. Cocktail. Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books, 2009. Print.


Links

 



Media

  • "Cocktail," Louisiana Public Broadcasting (2007; 6:44 min.)

  • Scene 6 Ajinomoto Commercial, Nangfahnirnam (2009; 2:20 min.)

  • Scene 7 Vegetarian Restaurant, Nangfahnirnam (2009; 4:47 min.)

  • Scene 12 High Noon, Nangfahnirnam (2009; 5:09 min.)



  • Dr. Krisana Kraisintu, World Class Smart Thai (2012; 46:39 min.)

  • แสงปลายฟ้า part 1, Inspired by Idol, Thai PBS (2015 TV docudrama; 53:42 min.)

  • แสงปลายฟ้า part 2, Inspired by Idol, Thai PBS (2015 TV docudrama; 51:57 min.)




Vince LiCata
Ping Chong

 



 


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Last updated September 27, 2015