Reported by Manit Maneephantakun

A rented house may seem like a temporary place in someone’s life. A space passed through, lived in for a while, then eventually left behind. But for some people, a house can hold much more than furniture, forgotten objects, or dust gathered quietly in the corners. It can hold the sound of laughter from ordinary nights, conversations that were never finished, silences that were never explained, and the invisible cracks of relationships that no one quite knows whether to repair or leave behind as part of the past.

This is the emotional core of “ONCE AGAIN”, a spoken theatre production that invites audiences to return to the memories of three couples from different periods of time, all connected by the same rented house. Once, this house was a beginning. A place where dreams, love, hope, and imagined futures first took shape. At the same time, it also became the place where certain relationships slowly began to fall apart.

For Boy Pakorn Chatborirak, stepping into this house is not simply another role in his long career as an actor. It marks his first time performing in a spoken stage play, after almost two decades in the entertainment industry.

“It’s my first one,” Boy tells #legend immediately when asked whether this is his first theatre production. He then continues with the voice of someone who has not just discovered the magic of theatre, but has admired it from afar for many years.

“I’ve actually loved watching stage plays for a long time,” he says. “I think I started watching them even before I entered the industry. In my family, it was almost like a family activity. My mother loved watching them, and we would go together as a family.”

Boy recalls his memories as an audience member, from productions such as Nuea Koo 11 Chak, Khang Lang Phap, and Si Phaendin. Every time he sat inside the theatre, he was not merely watching as a spectator. The more he worked in entertainment, the more he understood how difficult and impressive the craft truly was.

“Once I started working in this industry, I felt that actors on stage were really incredible,” he says. “I admired them. I wanted to be that good too.”

That desire had been with him for years. Still, Boy understood clearly that most major stage productions required singing, which he openly admits was one of his limitations. So he once told “P’Boy” that if there was ever a spoken play, and if there was ever a character close to who he was, he would love to be called in to audition.

“I told P’Boy a long time ago,” he recalls. “If there’s ever a spoken play, and if there’s a character that feels close to me, please call me in to cast. I want to do it.”

Years later, “ONCE AGAIN” became the project that met that long-held wish. It had the right format, a script he found deeply interesting, and a stage partner he respected enormously: Noon Siraphun, whose acting craft Boy speaks of with genuine admiration.

“The script they approached me with was very interesting,” Boy says. “And the person I would be playing opposite was P’Noon Siraphun, who is incredibly talented. I felt that this was a project I definitely had to accept.”

In “ONCE AGAIN”, Boy plays Thana, a young architect who once lived in the rented house with his wife, Napa. Among the three relationships in the story, theirs is the most mature. They are a married couple who once began their life together in this house, carrying a simple yet profound dream: to build a complete family, a happy marriage, and a shared future they both believed was possible.

But many relationships do not collapse because of one single event. More often, they slowly erode through misunderstanding, mismatched expectations, and wounds neither person quite knows how to heal. For Boy, Thana is a character with a very clear dream. It may not be complicated, but emotionally it carries immense weight. It is the dream of a man who wants a home, a wife, a child, and the kind of family life he believes will make him truly happy.

“Thana is a young architect who sees having a complete family as his dream,” Boy explains. “He wants to have a wife. He wants to have a child with Napa. That’s really his dream.”

In Boy’s eyes, Napa is not written as a conventionally soft or delicate female character. She is firm, tense, decisive, and somewhat commanding in her own way. But from Thana’s perspective, even a smile from Napa is enough to make the family he dreams of feel meaningful.

“Napa is someone who seems quite strong and tense,” he says. “But when she smiles, it makes Thana very happy.”

Alongside Napa and Thana, “ONCE AGAIN” also places two other relationships inside the same house. Meena and Ta are close friends who have shared countless moments of life together, until the thin line between friendship and love begins to tremble. Payu and Aran, meanwhile, are drawn together by a powerful attraction, meeting at a point where the mind tells them to stop, while the heart still asks them to stay.

These three couples do not know one another. They exist in different periods of time. Yet the play places them on the same stage, as if the memories of the house are speaking to one another across time.

“That is one of the interesting things about this stage play,” Boy says. “There are three couples from different periods of time who do not know one another, but they end up being on stage at the same time. Some of their lines almost feel like they are responding to one another.”

The complexity of theatre, then, does not lie only in the lines or the length of the performance. It lies in making memories from different periods of time coexist with rhythm, emotional weight, and a sense of living presence on stage.

Before rehearsals began, Boy admits that he also wondered, like many people, how stage acting would differ from acting in front of a camera. In particular, he was curious about the phrase often associated with theatre: “playing big.” But once he began learning the craft, he realized that “playing big” does not mean exaggerating. It means making sure that emotion, movement, and physical language can reach every seat in the theatre.

“You have to begin with the same inner feeling,” he explains. “The inner emotion has to be the same as any other acting work. But playing bigger means the audience includes people sitting close to you and people sitting far away. So the gestures, the movement, or the way you speak may have to be clearer, sharper, and able to communicate to people sitting far away what the character is feeling at that moment.”

For Boy, this became an entirely new discipline. It was not only about memorizing lines, but about keeping the performance alive again and again, so that every show could feel fresh.

“The thing I was afraid of at first was: how am I going to do this?” he says. “If the play has 15 rounds, you have to perform with a fresh feeling every time. But in reality, it’s not just 15 rounds, because during rehearsals we had already run through the whole play more than 15 times. Then there were scene-by-scene rehearsals too. So how do you keep it fresh every time? That is really difficult.”

For Boy, the challenge of theatre does not end when he exits a scene. Backstage is full of details the audience never sees: quick costume changes, checking props, making sure he returns at the right cue, and holding on to the emotional state of the character even while his body is doing something else in the darkness behind the stage.

“From the front, people may just see that you go backstage, change, and come back out,” he says. “But in reality, there are so many more details. You go backstage and have to change quickly, check whether everything is complete, and come out at the right timing. At the same time, you still have to hold the emotion. Your concentration has to be divided into many things.”

Perhaps this is exactly what gives theatre its particular charm. For an actor, no night is ever truly the same. Even with the same script, the same set, and the same scene partner, the energy of the audience, the rhythm of the cast, and the small discoveries made during each performance allow the character to reveal something new.

“When you actually perform, things keep adjusting,” Boy says. “You adjust to the situation, to the stage, and it gives the character, meaning yourself, the chance to keep discovering new things.”

One of Boy’s most important sources of support in this project is working with Noon Siraphun, whom he describes as an excellent and generous partner. In a play where their characters carry the emotional weight of a fractured marriage, trust between actors becomes essential.

“Working with P’Noon is not complicated,” he says. “She understands acting so well. She is very talented. If there is anything, we can always talk and consult each other. P’Noon is a very good partner.”

At the same time, Boy also speaks warmly of the full cast of six actors. Although the three couples in the story exist in different time periods and do not really know one another, the rehearsal process requires all of them to be together, move together, and pass energy between one another throughout the show.

“I feel that the cast of this play is a very complete team,” Boy says. “Everyone is committed. If there is anything, we share and talk. When it is time to relax, we chat and have fun. But when it is time to work, everyone becomes one unit. We go through it together.”

After many years in the entertainment industry, Boy is now at a point in life where he chooses his work more intentionally. Becoming a freelance actor has given him more space to decide what truly interests him, and which roles can allow audiences to see another side of his ability.

“Being freelance allows me to choose more,” he says. “If there is something I like, or something I truly find interesting, then I do it.”

He admits honestly that throughout nearly 20 years in the industry, he has given a great deal of time, energy, and physical strength to work. Days off were rare. Today, success for Boy is no longer about accepting as much work as possible. It is about choosing work that allows him to grow, while still leaving space for himself, his family, and the people he loves.

“I feel that I have worked a lot,” he says. “I have used so much energy and so much of my body for work. At this point, I want to do things I am genuinely interested in, while also having more time for myself, my family, and the person I love.”

Beyond acting, Boy is also active in business, particularly in food and hospitality. His latest project is Tycoon, a modern Thai restaurant in Silom, which he describes as taking familiar Thai dishes and reinterpreting them with new details and flavors.

“The menu uses names that everyone has heard before,” he explains. “For example, green curry. But ours might be dry green curry with braised beef. Or khanom krok, but reinterpreted as khanom krok with crab lon. It is creative, but still based on dishes Thai people are familiar with.”

Yet Boy does not define himself as a full-time investor. He approaches business from his love of service, the enjoyment of taking care of people, and the idea of learning for the future.

“I have never really seen myself as a serious investor,” he says. “Most of the restaurants I do are places that everyone can access, and they are things I personally like too. I like service work. I like taking care of customers.”

He speaks about business with honesty, without romanticizing success or hiding the risks. For him, opening a restaurant requires careful thinking, research, and a realistic understanding that not every project will last.

“Everything has risks,” he says. “You have to make decisions carefully and think carefully. You have to study many things: the location, the target group, the pricing. In the past, I have opened things that later closed too. So you really have to study it well.”

In this sense, Boy’s own outlook is not entirely unlike Thana’s in “ONCE AGAIN”. Both are men who look at life through responsibility, dreams, and the effort to build something stable, even though in reality, stability is never fully within anyone’s control.

Toward the end of the conversation, when #legend asks Boy what “once again” means to him personally, a moment in life he might want to revisit one more time, his answer does not lead us to success, fame, or the bright lights of the entertainment industry. Instead, it returns to one of the gentlest memories in his life: the time he had with his mother.

“If I’m being honest, I don’t really want to go back,” he says. “But if we are talking about a good period of life, it would probably be the time when my mother was still here. I had someone to consult, someone to talk to about things, someone to hold my hand and walk with me. My mother was everything to me.”

He pauses in that memory with the quiet understanding of someone who knows that certain forms of happiness do not need much explanation. They are already clear in the heart.

“Every moment, every time I had with her, was happiness,” he says. “It was the kind of happiness where you don’t even have to say that you are happy. It just stays in your heart.”

Another period he thinks of is high school: a time when responsibility was not yet as heavy as it is today, when going to school, spending time with friends, having fun, and feeling stressed about exams all belonged to a lighter and freer version of life.

“It would probably be high school,” he says. “It was fun. Being with friends, going to school, walking around after class. Life did not have to think too much yet. There was not that much responsibility.”

Boy’s answer makes “ONCE AGAIN” feel like more than the title of a stage play. It becomes a question many of us may have asked ourselves at some point in life. If we had the chance to return once more, would we repair the relationship that broke? Would we say the words we once swallowed? Would we choose the same pain in order to preserve the same memory, or would we begin again as someone who has grown?

For Boy Pakorn, stepping onto the stage for the first time may also be another kind of “once again.” Not a return to fix the past, but a chance to learn a new discipline of acting, to face a new fear, and to become once more an actor who is still excited, still curious, and still wants to grow, just like the person who once sat in the theatre as an audience member, looking up at the stage with admiration.

Perhaps that is why theatre remains so powerful. It does not only allow characters to return to their memories. It also gives actors and audiences the chance to quietly ask themselves: if life offered us one more chance, would we repair what had broken, or would we finally accept the cracks as part of how we grew?

“ONCE AGAIN” stars Boy Pakorn, Noon Siraphun, Euro Yotsawat, Tonkhao Chayut, Aim Phumipat, and Perth Veerinsara. The spoken stage play invites audiences back into one rented house to look at love, pain, and memory through eyes that may no longer see them in the same way.

“ONCE AGAIN” runs from 15 June 2026 to 5 July 2026 at Muangthai Rachadalai Theatre.