The production We Are, directed by Vietnamese Nguyen Thi Minh Ngoc, opened off-off-Broadway at New York's West End Theatre on March 18-26. (An off-off-Broadway theatre is defined as theatre with fewer than 100 seats.) Ngoc spoke with reporter Van Bay about her work.
How did We Are come to off-off-Broadway?
It's a long story. My other play, Missing Woman, was performed at the Asia-Pacific Festival Conference of Women in Arts in Manila in 2003. The play was chosen for the Pan Asian Repertory shows in New York City by artistic director Tisa Chang. Five years later, the project was implemented.
On the closing night of Missing Woman, many audiences and colleagues said that they expected a second play. We Are was chosen to be read at the International Women Playwrights Conference in Mumbai in 2009. The script received an award from the National Endowment for the Arts in New York to be produced, and it took two years to complete the project.
In March and April, We Are and another production by overseas Vietnamese director Derek Nguyen will debut as part of the Viet Nam Project II – Past and Present at the Pan Asian Repertory.
I will leave my home for three weeks to live with my characters. Sometimes, I think this will be my last play because there are so many difficulties which I don't think I can overcome. I want to say thank you to my friends who supported me strongly with a view to introducing Vietnamese theatre to American audiences.
We Are introduces five female characters in five acts. Why did you choose Thuy Kieu, a main character in the well-known Vietnamese epic poem Kieu's Tale for the opening act?
In the beginning, I focused on women's lives, including Vietnamese artists who live far from their homeland. After the reading at the International Women Playwrights Conference, when I chose songs by the late song writer Trinh Cong Son for the play, I decided to adjust the script. The rewritten script focuses on loneliness, mistakes, and the condition of people who have to live abroad due to their circumstances.
The opening scene depicts Thuy Kieu before she commits suicide. I want audiences to witness the pain of a beautiful and talented woman. However, I want them to have fun with the later scenes before they go home.
The characters in We Are include a wife, a nurse, a grandmother, the ancient character Thi Mau and, finally, Diem Quyen, a modern girl. What's your message for women?
It is sharing. A true story is told that when the wife dies, her letters are found. Many people believe that if the husband had seen the letters and he could have understood the Vietnamese language, the tragedy would not have taken place. At present, I'm in the same situation with expatriate women. I used to live with misunderstanding. I want these women to believe that they can be alone but not lonely. Even when there is nobody around us, we don't have to be desperate.
At the beginning, the cast of We Are was to have included a veteran Vietnamese actress, but she couldn't come to the US. How did you resolve that?
I wanted actress Le Khanh to act two characters, Thuy Kieu and the wife. Khanh is a modern dramatic actress, so I had to adjust the first act into cai luong (reformed theatre), and Thuy Kieu will be performed by cai luong artist Ngoc Dang.
What's next for We Are after the ten performances in New York?
If I have my wish, I would like to make a tour to perform for free for college students in Viet Nam, especially in the central and Cuu Long (Mekong) Delta regions. — VNS