Bangkok isn’t short of nightclubs, but very few manage to blur memory with fantasy the way Sing Sing Theater does. Walk through its entrance and suddenly you’re somewhere between Shanghai in the 1930s and a dream stitched together after one too many late nights. Lanterns burn red above, balconies curl with wrought iron detail, and shadows deepen in corners where secrets tend to stay. For 10 years, it has refused to be ordinary, choosing instead to play host to theatre as much as parties, turning every night into a performance with no guarantee of an encore.
When the velvet curtains first parted in 2015, Sing Sing Theater announced itself with a Halloween party so ambitious it became instant folklore: King Kong looming over the dancefloor, costumes as wild as the city outside, a delirium that made Bangkok stop and look. Since then, the space has doubled as playground, experiment and cultural stage. Music has always been its heartbeat. Gilles Peterson christened the booth in the club’s opening months, his set signalling that this was no provincial playhouse but a stop with global intent. From there, Dixon, Âme, DJ Tennis and Henrik Schwarz would all leave their mark, weaving their names into the club’s identity while sharing the booth with Bangkok’s own restless selectors.
But music is only half the story. Sing Sing Theater has always thrived on theatre, and theatre has a way of slipping into memory more stubbornly than beats per minute. 2016’s ‘Face The Gong’ cabaret, a bizarre open-mic spectacle, remains the kind of anecdote old-timers grin about, proof that risk often pays in laughter. A year later, a performer emerged from a giant egg to mark the Year of the Rooster, the sort of impossible stunt that cemented Sing Sing Theater’s reputation for marrying surrealism with style. That same year, papier-mâché piñatas of Trump and Kim Jong Un swung from the rafters, only to be gleefully smashed apart, scattering free drink tokens across the crowd. Few clubs could pull off satire and still keep the dancefloor moving.
The club’s history is peppered with experiments that feel like one-night-only theatre productions. Some fizzled quickly, others lit the sky. The short-lived LGBT Sundays, under the knowingly biblical title ‘No Adam For Eve’, didn’t survive the season, but its spirit lingered, an early attempt to carve out a more visible queer nightlife before it became part of Bangkok’s mainstream. By 2020, the theatre was reimagined again – this time not by costumed dancers but by musicians from Pro Musica and WTF Gallery. The performance, COUNTERPOINT – The Sound of Despair, transformed the room into an avant-garde chamber, trading basslines for bowed strings and soundscapes that unsettled as much as they enchanted.
If the first half of Sing Sing Theater’s story is about building myth in Bangkok, the second has been about exporting it. In 2023, DJ Tennis and Dixon brought international prestige back to its stage, proof that Sing Sing Theater could still surprise in a city overflowing with options. And then, in 2024, came a cameo in The White Lotus. The series didn’t show the club’s truest self, but the exposure meant its interiors – lanterns, cages, lacquered details – suddenly travelled beyond Sukhumvit, immortalised in a cultural product that thrives on opulence and spectacle. It was a fitting match.
So what does a decade look like for a club that has always treated nightlife like performance art? On October 11, the curtain rises again. The evening begins with an invite-only, 9pm-11pm gathering before opening to the public at 11pm, a nod to both community and spectacle. A ‘Decade of Decadence’, as the anniversary has been branded, feels less like marketing and more like a summation of what’s come before: the impossible moments, the global names, the experiments that dared to fail, and the ones that changed how the city thinks about a night out.
Ten years on, Sing Sing Theater isn’t just a nightclub. It’s a set piece that has survived fads and fatigue, a reminder that nightlife at its best is meant to feel improbable. You leave with glitter still clinging to your skin, your ears ringing, and a story that doesn’t quite sound believable in the daylight. Which, of course, is exactly the point.