Dujdao Vadhanapakorn

At the first Wonderfruit Festival in 2014, I stumbled into a curious performance where performers invited the audience to share their secrets. I didn’t realise at the time that I was participating in “Secret Keepers”, a performance by Dujdao Vadhanapakorn. A core member of B-Floor Theatre, my favourite theatre group in Thailand, Dujdao is also trained in dance movement psychotherapy. Over the years, she has moved between roles as a performance artist, actress and therapist.

In 2020, she founded Empathy Sauce, a mental wellness and communication initiative under SoulSmith, offering workshops and therapy sessions. By the time I photographed her in June 2025, she had moved both her office and apartment to a townhouse by the river, next to IconSiam. The ground floor housed her café, the middle floor her therapy and workshop space, and her apartment sat at the top. The view was unexpectedly calming. Her windows overlooked an empty lot overtaken by nature that I found myself quietly admiring over a cup of coffee.

After a moment in the blue room where she held therapy sessions, Dujdao took me upstairs to her apartment, where I was warmly welcomed by her two roommates, Stout and Pale Ale, who happily joined the shoot. As we wrapped, I asked if it was possible to access the jungle to photograph the house from the other side. She had never explored it herself, but we went together. That overgrown lot became the setting for our final shots of the day. Then we both put on our helmets and waited for our GrabBikes, mine to head home, hers to catch a performance.