"Vietgone" Opens to Laughter, Tears and Praise

At South Coast Repertory on Friday, Oct. 9, murmurs of surprise were followed by stunned silence, followed by peals of laughter, a few tears and then more laughter—and at the end, a standing ovation. All the emotions a playwright hopes to elicit from an audience were just what Qui Nguyen achieved with Vietgone, his new play that officially opened the season on SCR’s Julianne Argyros Stage.

As theatregoers gathered at the Cast Party, co-hosted by AnQi, there were words of praise for the director, actors and artisans. All were well deserved, it was agreed. But the playwright's new work was what everyone talked about.

And the superlatives flew, led by Honorary Producers Marci Maietta Weinberg and William Weinberg, who have been associated with Vietgone since they first saw it in a staged reading at SCR's Pacific Playwrights Festival.

(Emeritus Trustee and First Nighter Olivia Johnson guessed right when she said, "I bet they feel like proud parents.")

"When Marci and I saw the play at PPF, the minute the lights went down, it was like an electric shock," William said. "We knew it was going to be a hit—and tonight it is."

Guests lingered into the night, sampling Asian fusion delicacies in the restaurant’s captivating red setting.



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Early Interest in Drawing Led to Costume Design Work

Maureen Sebastian and Raymond Lee in Vietgone.

It started simply for Anthony Tran: as a kid, he loved to draw and started copying designs that he saw in Disney films. Then, he started creating his own versions of the film characters. On a middle school visit to see a costume exhibit in Los Angeles from The Lord of the Rings, things finally clicked for him: “I discovered that costume design could be an occupation!”

His current costume design work at South Coast Repertory is for the world premiere of Qui Nguyen’s Vietgone.

We asked him about his early influences as a designer and how he approached the concepts for Vietgone.

Raymond Lee and Jon Hoche in Vietgone.

Who are your mentors? 
Donna Fritsche, resident costume designer of the Long Beach Playhouse, was a huge mentor to me and is a great friend today. She really took me under her wing and taught me to sew, gave me a show to design there and allowed me to pillage from their costume stock whenever I needed it. Film costume designer, historian and author-extraordinaire Deborah Landis also was amazing to me. I learned a lot about the business side of the industry from her.

How did you get introduced to SCR?
After college, I sent my resume to SCR’s Costume Shop and I worked there in a few different times in various capacities, in-between designing films and other theater projects.

Tell us about the role that costumes play in theatre?
Costumes have so many roles in theatre!  They can set the tone or mood, show a time period and can help the actors "feel the character" physically. In those ways, they definitely support the story by helping to visually communicate what's in the script.

How do you describe your work?
I'd like to think my work is both bold and unexpected.  I'm a big fan of the unusual and unique.

Let’s talk about the costumes you’ve developed for Vietgone. How did go about researching and developing the concepts?
For Vietgone, I started by the looking at photos of actual Vietnamese refugees in camps like Camp Pendleton and Fort Chaffee, where much of the story takes place. Combing through all that research, I found various people in those photos seemed to be kindred spirits to our characters and that became the springboard for each one's individual style. Of course, there also was my research into general clothing of the '70s, but I always prefer photography versus fashion research since there's a higher degree of authenticity and naturalism. There are roughly two parts to the design of this show: trying to be authentic, as much as possible, to the clothing worn by the Vietnamese characters, whose lives are the focus of the story; and getting the chance to have some fun and create much broader characters with the Americans that they encounter, like a Hippie couple and a military captain inspired by Top Gun.  With five actors portraying 20-some characters, it then became about plotting the various quick change components and the practical aspects of the clothing.

Samantha Quan and Raymond Lee in Vietgone.

What have you come to love most about ‘70s clothing?
I love the sheer variety of styles of clothing in the '70s!

Is there any personal or family connection that you feel toward Vietgone’s story?
My family members were refugees from Vietnam, so I do see a lot of parallels in Vietgone to their own lives starting out in America—the pain of leaving family behind—and wondering what would become of them—the inability to communicate and the struggle of starting over.
 
Tell me about some of your other design work.
I designed a superhero TV series, "Mighty Med," and a '60s beach party homage movie, Teen Beach 2, for Disney, which were a blast. I like going between film, television and theatre work because I enjoy the variety and because I feel that each works different parts of my brain. Though the initial design process is pretty similar for both, there's a practical aspect of theatre costume that you always have to keep in mind: how they get in and out of the clothing and how much time they have to do that. Visually, in film and television, the camera gets so much closer to everything so the little details are especially important. Most of the time, you'll only see things from the waist up in medium shots so you have to pay special attention to that to help communicate character to the audience. In theatre, you see it all and in real time.

What’s the most surprising thing about you that people might not know?
 I'm a big fan of the Turner Classic Movies channel and a huge film history buff!

What three words describe you—and why did you choose them?
Creative: I like to think outside the box.
Easy-going: I think this is one of the keys to collaboration.
Ambitious: I'm motivated and driven, all things I learned from my parents.

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The Metamorphosis of "Vietgone": From Vietnam to Arkansas to New York to Orange County

By Thuy Vo Dang, Linda Trinh Vo and Tram Le*

Maureen Sebastian and Raymond Lee in Vietgone.

From left: Thuy Vo Dang, Christina Woo, Steve MacLeod, Tram Le, Kelly Miller and Qui Nguyen during the playwright's first exploratory visit to the UCI libraries.

South Coast Repertory’s world premiere of Vietgone by playwright Qui Nguyen is a highly anticipated event for us, as we’ve had the unique experience of watching this play’s metamorphosis since its inception. Qui, who hails from Brooklyn, NY, originally had tossed around the idea of writing a script about Vietnamese gangsters in Little Saigon. However, during his residency in the summer of 2013, SCR staff invited the three of us to meet with Qui and share the work we were doing in the local Vietnamese community.

He later visited the UC Irvine Libraries Southeast Asian Archive and was captivated by the photograph collection of Vietnamese refugees at Fort Chaffee, Ark., one of four military bases that served as a temporary processing center in 1975. These photographs made him reflect on the stories his parents told him growing up. Qui’s parents, along with thousands of other refugees, were both processed through Fort Chaffee after the fall of Saigon. He was inspired to write about how they met and fell in love—might we say lust—at first sight in this camp. Thus, Vietgone was born, a wickedly funny and poignant play that captures the personal journeys of a first generation Vietnamese American couple with nuance and a reimagining of the tale of refugee journeys, complete with hip hop notes woven throughout. Its tone is fresh and surprising.

The cast, playwright and director of Vietgone at the post-reading "talk back" with the audience at the Vietnamese American Arts & Letters Association.

In November 2014, Vietgone’s director May Adrales and the actors presented a staged reading of the full script at the Vietnamese American Arts and Letters Association (VAALA) Center in Santa Ana to an enraptured community audience.

At the end of the reading, one first-generation Vietnamese American man stood up and exclaimed, “That’s my story!” because he also met his wife in a refugee processing center. In February 2015, Qui and two cast members performed an excerpted reading from the play, followed by a lively Q&A, in Linda’s Asian American Community class with 240 students. In a follow-up survey of the event, one student wrote, “I enjoyed the Vietgone reading because it gave me a new perspective on the Vietnam War. I have only heard the American side, but I have never heard what Vietnamese people actually thought about the war.” The event, funded by the new Illuminations: A Chancellor’s Arts & Culture Initiative, encouraged students to see the connections between the historical materials in the class and artistic storytelling and gave students, many who had never attended a play, a better appreciation for the arts. The common response from students was that they wished they could see a full stage production of the play.

At the front of the class, left-to-right: Raymond Lee, Qui Nguyen and Maureen Sebastian performing an excerpt reading of Vietgone in Prof. Linda Vo's Asian American Communities class.

Students shared their stories about their family’s refugee and immigrant journeys and were inspired to learn more. What’s powerful about plays like this is that it will stir conversations between generations where there is often silence, particularly about the past.

Qui, with his director, actors and production team, have re-visited the archive several times to continue their research journey.

Qui, the cast, and SCR staff members also visited the VIETNAMESE FOCUS: GENERATIONS OF STORIES exhibition, a partnership between OC Parks and UC Irvine, at the Old Orange County Courthouse in Santa Ana to immerse themselves in the refugees’ life stories and their journey of resettlement. This interactive art and history exhibition presents snapshots of a dynamic and vibrant community, including photographs, documents, artifacts, original artwork and oral histories from the Vietnamese American Oral History Project (VAOHP), Orange County & Southeast Asian Archive Center and private collections.

Vietgone actors and creative team looking through the Fort Chaffee photographs in the UCI Libraries Special Collections reading room.

Included are a diverse range of stories of how ordinary people were thrown into extraordinary circumstances because of war and its aftermath and how they were forced to make incredibly difficult choices, stories that echo Qui’s parents’ journey. The premiere of Vietgone at a major playhouse marks a historic moment for the Vietnamese community. This is highlighted by the fact that the Vietgone script, signed by Qui, May and the cast, along with a flyer of the VAALA reading, is featured in the arts and culture display case in the exhibition.

Vietgone flyer and original script signed by Qui and cast on display at the VIETNAMESE FOCUS exhibition.

Qui’s parents’ story is unique and yet very similar to many of the hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese refugees coming to the U.S. However, aside from oral history archives such as VAOHP, so few stories from those who witnessed these experiences first hand are recorded. Instead, what most people read in history books and see in the media tends to be a narrow point of view, oftentimes from the American perspective that excludes Vietnamese voices who had to endure a civil war in their country and were forced to flee and rebuild their lives in America. They are not just victims of the war or history; plays like Vietgone show the humanity of the Vietnamese people.

Vietgone’s journey from script to stage has been decades in the making and reflects a remarkable moment for cultural production in Orange County. We look forward to its full run at South Coast Repertory, Oct. 4-25.

*About the Authors: Thuy Vo Dang, is the Archivist for the UCI Libraries Orange County & Southeast Asian Archive Center, Linda Trinh Vo is a professor in the Department of Asian American Studies and director of the Vietnamese American Oral History Project at UC Irvine and Tram Le is the associate director of the Vietnamese American Oral History Project at UC Irvine. Vo and Le are co-curators and co-directors of the VIETNAMESE FOCUS: GENERATIONS OF STORIES exhibition.

“Vietnamese in Orange County” Book Event—Free

A collection of photos from UC Irvine’s Southeast Asian Archive Center inspired Vietgone playwright Qui Nguyen.

Photos from the center are featured in a new book, Images of America: Vietnamese in Orange County, and are included in the current exhibit, “Vietnamese Focus: Generations of Stories.” The book’s authors and exhibit creators will discuss both projects following the Saturday matinee of Vietgone, Oct. 10. They also will sign copies of the books immediately following the afternoon presentation and again between 6:45-7:45 p.m. These are free events.

Meet the Authors

Thuy Vo Dang is the archivist for the Southeast Asian Archive and Regional History, leading the UCI Libraries’ new Orange County and Southeast Asian Archive Center (OC & SEAA). She received her Ph.D. and M.A. in ethnic studies from the University of California, San Diego. Vo Dang was previously an Institute of American Cultures postdoctoral fellow for UCLA’s Asian American Studies Center. She has taught at UCI, UCLA, UCSD and Loyola Marymount University. She serves on the board of directors for the Vietnamese American Arts and Letters Association (VAALA). Her non-profit community work also includes serving on the Horizon Cross-Cultural Center board of directors and the policy committee for the Orange County Asian Pacific Islander Community Alliance (OCAPICA). In 2013 Dr. Vo Dang was featured in the OC Weekly’s Inaugural People Issue as the “Studs Terkel of Little Saigon” and honored with the “Community Heroes” Award by Senator Lou Correa and OCAPICA. In 2015, she received the “Public Image” Award from Asian Americans Advancing Justice, Los Angeles.

Linda Trinh Võ is an professor and former chair of the Department of Asian American Studies at the University of California, Irvine and is affiliated with the Department of Sociology; Department of Planning, Policy & Design; and Dept of Gender and Sexuality Studies. She received her Ph.D. from the University of California, San Diego, and received a Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellowship from the University of California, Berkeley. She is author of Mobilizing an Asian American Community and co-editor of four books: Keywords for Asian American Studies; Labor Versus Empire: Race, Gender, and Migration; Asian American Women: the “Frontiers” Reader; and Contemporary Asian American Communities: Intersection and Divergences. She is a series editor for the Asian American History & Culture series published by Temple University Press, which includes more than sixty-five books. Võ is director of the Vietnamese American Oral History Project at UC Irvine and is an ambassador for UCI Libraries Southeast Asian Archive. She is president of the national Association for Asian American Studies and served in advisory positions for the Vietnamese American Arts & Letters Association, Project MotiVATe; Orange County Asian Pacific Islander Community Alliance; Viet Film Fest; Diasporic Vietnamese Arts Network, and Vietnamese American Heritage Foundation.

Tram Le is the associate director for the Vietnamese American Oral History Project at UC Irvine. She previously served as the interim director of the Center for Asian Pacific American Students at Pitzer College and worked as the Community Bridges Program Manager for the Ford Theatres/Ford Theatre Foundation. She received her B.A. in business administration-marketing from California State University, Northridge and has an M.A. from the Department of Asian American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her master’s thesis, Finding Home, investigates the journey of first-generation Vietnamese in Orange County through oral history and performance art. She co-founded Club O’ Noodles, a pioneering Vietnamese American theatre troupe, and as a board member of the American Arts and Letters Association, she has curated multi-art exhibitions. In 2003, she was the founding Co-Director of the biennial Vietnamese International Film Festival, now the annual Viet Film Fest, which has been hosted at UC Irvine and UCLA and showcases films from around the world.

Not Just Another War Story: Romantic Comedy According to Qui Nguyen

by Andy Knight

Playwright Qui Nguyen. Photo by Jesse Ditmar/Coast Magazine

“This is a story about two people—
Both from Vietnam—
Both 30 years of age—
Both survivors of a conflict that’s been raging in some form or fashion their entire lives—
However though it will be a story that will often hop back and forth in time—in and around said conflict—this is not a story about war—it’s a story about falling in love.
And it all takes place in the year of 1975.”

—The Playwright, Vietgone

That's how Qui Nguyen sums up the story at the heart of Vietgone, his SCR commission premiering on the Julianne Argyros Stage in October, 2015. He says it himself—as a character in the play—during Vietgone’s prologue, and it seems completely appropriate that the playwright appears onstage to share this with his audience. After all, Vietgone tells a personal story for Nguyen—that of his parents’ courtship.

The play begins as Tong Thi Tran and Quang Nguyen, two Vietnamese refugees who have never met, arrive at the Fort Chaffee refugee camp in western Arkansas. Both escaped Saigon days before it fell, and both have left behind loved ones. Tong, who worked for the American Embassy in Saigon, arrives in the U.S. with her mother, Huong. Although Khue, Tong’s brother, and Giai, the man who hopes to marry her, remain in Saigon, Tong is ready to embrace America as her home now. Huong, however, is not.

Like Huong, Quang hopes to return to Vietnam. As a pilot in the South Vietnamese Air Force, Quang airlifted refugees out of Saigon by helicopter during the city’s evacuation and, in doing so, found himself on the way to the U.S. without his wife and his two young children. Quang is now in America with his best friend, Nhan, but he’s determined to return to his family.

Nguyen in front of SCR.

When Tong and Quang finally meet, the attraction between them is undeniable. And although neither is looking for a relationship, they begin sleeping together. But as their casual sex stirs up romantic feelings, life for Tong and Quang suddenly becomes even more complicated.

Vietgone is an atypical love story, not only because of the central characters’ situation, but also because of the way in which the playwright brings the story to life using his irreverent and thoroughly original aesthetic. When describing the play’s style, Nguyen says, “It’s as influenced by Quentin Tarantino as it is influenced by David Henry Hwang as it is influenced by Jay-Z.”

For those unfamiliar with Nguyen’s work, it might be difficult to imagine successfully blending those three influences. But the playwright has been mashing together his artistic interests—such as comic book stories, samurai stories, science fiction stories and hip hop—for much of his career and is now well-practiced at pulling from multiple genres and weaving them together in his plays. And with titles like Soul Samurai, Alice in Slasherland and She Kills Monsters, it’s no surprise that most of Nguyen’s productions come alive with the use of extended onstage combat, tongue-in-cheek humor, profanity-laden dialogue and outrageous plot twists. In fact, many theatre tastemakers credit Nguyen and his company, Vampire Cowboys, where a number of the playwright’s productions have premiered, as pioneering a new theatrical genre called “geek theatre.”

Qui Nguyen, far left, the cast and others at the first Vietgone rehearsal.

While Vietgone contains many of the trappings of Nguyen’s other plays (even ninjas make a cameo), it sets itself apart from much of the playwright’s other work with the very personal story at its center. Although Nguyen’s first play, Trial by Water, recounted his cousin’s tragic escape from Vietnam by boat in the late 1980s, the playwright was still searching to find his voice at the time of its premiere. After seeing a performance, Nguyen’s mother commented that the play “didn’t sound like [him],” which the playwright says was one of the most impactful notes that he has ever received. In 2011, finally armed with his well-established style, Nguyen returned to the topic of his cousin’s journey in The Inexplicable Redemption of Agent G. Now, with Vietgone, Nguyen adds another personal play to his canon, and it’s only the beginning: the playwright is currently working on a pentalogy of plays about his parents’ marriage.

“I don’t know how to write things that aren’t a little vulgar and funny,” says Nguyen. Perhaps that’s why Vietgone is more sex comedy than traditional love story, and the play’s anachronistic and foul-mouthed dialogue feels completely natural. But Vietgone’s irreverence gives its characters, who come from an underrepresented community on the American stage, agency to be more than victims of a war and therefore relatability to younger generations. As Nguyen points out: “I think it’s really important to see depictions of yourself, people that look like yourself…in a strong way, in a sexually powerful way.”

But underneath the sexuality, the anachronisms and the kung fu battles is a simple story about falling in love in a complicated situation; that, as the playwright points out in the prologue, is at the heart of Vietgone. However, it’s still a Qui Nguyen play, so there’s plenty of action along the way to test the strength of that love—and to show an audience how much it really counts.

Vietgone’s Journey to the Stage

One of the photos at the Fort Chaffee refugee camp in 1975 that inspired Vietgone (photo courtesy of UCI Libraries Southeast Asian Arhive).

SCR commissioned playwright Qui Nguyen as a part of its CrossRoads Initiative, a program funded by the Time Warner Foundation to bring playwrights into Orange County on immersive residencies as a means for inspiration. During his four-day exploration in the summer of 2013, Nguyen took a trip to the Southeast Asian Archives at the University of California, Irvine. There, by chance, he viewed a collection of photographs taken at the Fort Chaffee, Ark., refugee camp  in 1975—the very place his parents met in May of that year.

Although Nguyen had been thinking of writing a play about his parents’ courtship for 10 years—and had even conducted one-on-one interviews with them—the trip to UCI inspired him to finally put their story down on paper. The result was the first draft of Vietgone.

In the fall of 2014, SCR partnered with the Vietnamese American Arts & Letters Association (VAALA) to present a reading of Vietgone at VAALA’s space in Santa Ana. Then, after programming the play for its fall 2015 production, SCR gave its audiences a sneak peek of Vietgone with a reading in the 2015 Pacific Playwrights Festival.

Director May Adrales, who worked on all of Vietgone’s developmental workshops and readings, will make her SCR debut with the production this fall. Adrales, quickly becoming one of the country’s most sought-after directors, has helmed productions at theatres across the country, including New York’s Signature Theatre, Chicago’s Goodman Theatre and Actors Theatre of Louisville. In 2016, Adrales will direct a subsequent production of Vietgone at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival before restaging the SCR production at Manhattan Theatre Club.

Vietgone’s design team includes Timothy R. Mackabee (scenic design), Anthony Tran (costume design), Shane Rettig (sound design) and Jared Mezzocchi (projection design), all of whom will make their SCR design debuts with the production. Jaymi Lee Smith (lighting design) returns to SCR for Vietgone, where her credits include last season’s Peter and the Starcatcher, as well as The Stinky Cheese Man and Topdog/Underdog.

Cast members Jon Hoche, Maureen Sebastian and Paco Tolson are all longtime collaborators of Qui Nguyen and have appeared in a number of the playwright’s New York productions. Hoche and Sebastian will make their SCR debuts in Vietgone, while audiences might remember Tolson from last season’s production of Peter and the Starcatcher. The cast also includes Raymond Lee, who appeared in SCR’s Theatre for Young Audiences production of Robin Hood, and Samantha Quan, who makes her SCR debut in Vietgone.

Jon Hoche, Maureen Sebastian, Raymond Lee, director May Adrales, playwright Qui Nguyen, Samantha Quan and Paco Tolson.

Read more about Vietgone’s artists.

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Set Designer Timothy Mackabee Talks Art and "Vietgone"

Timothy Mackabee's set rendering for Vietgone.

Timothy Mackabee has been detail-oriented for as long as he can remember. When it came to design, hisIt started when he was a youngster and would design sets for puppet shows in the family’s basement and use McDonald’s Happy Meal toys as characters.

“From the get-go, it was all about design,” he told The Washington Post last year. “I would set up a camcorder, and I would watch the tapes, make notes and realize what I could do to make a better transition. Then I would play with my stage lights from Radio Shack. My mother says she still has those VHS cassettes somewhere, and she says to be nice or she’ll show them to people.”

Mackabee’s mother has much to take pride in: her son is one of the hottest designers in American theatre. His work has graced London’s West End; Broadway and off-Broadway shows; and productions at regional theatres, including productions of The Elephant Man; the musical, Heathers; and ‘night, Mother.

At South Coast Repertory, he’s the set designer for the world premiere of Qui Nguyen’s Vietgone (Julianne Argyros Stage, Oct. 4-25).

In this exchange, he talks about his influences, research and designing for Vietgone.

Who was as your mentor—and how does their influence show in your work?
My mother and grandparents are mentors. They encouraged me to do what I wanted to do, presumably why I did it, and kept doing it. I’m sure they thought I was nuts, and would never make any money at it.


What delights you most about your work?
I like when I’m surprised. You can look at drawings and models forever, but it never tells you 100% what something is going to look like in real life.


What do you find offers the most challenges?
Working with a theater company for the first time—you have to get to know the staff and figure out how far the money and resources can go. Always a tricky line—there’s always a learning curve when you go somewhere the first time.


For Vietgone, which is set in the mid-1970s, what kind of research did you do?
We looked tons of research at classic Americana—road trips, diners, billboard, different landscapes. The movie Easy Rider was a big visual reference. 


I was surprised at how much I missed in the first reading of the play. We did a workshop last month and, when we read the play, I was blown away.


You and May Adrales have worked before.
Yes—I believe this is our fourth or fifth show together. May is great because she has a lot of great ideas and isn’t precious about any of them. She’s always looking for new exciting ways to do things. I think she’s a great match for this play. And with Qui, I know of him and his work, but this is the first time I’ve worked with him.


What do you do in your ‘off-time,’ when not working on sets, projections or costumes?
Off-time?! I’m usually traveling to the next theatre project.

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Inside SCR: Relating Plot to Real Life

by Jonathan Castanien

Jonathan Castanien, SCR public relations assistant.

“So, what do you do for a living?”

“I work in public relations at a theatre in Costa Mesa called South Coast Repertory.”

“Oh…so what does that mean? Like a movie theater?”

This is how a conversation usually goes when people ask me about my job. After I tell them more about what I do, their eyes seem to glaze over.

One of the things I do at SCR is write blog stories. In fact, I’ve written this piece that you’re reading—and a good portion of the stories that have been posted in the last year. So, when I was asked to write a story about myself, it felt natural to make it a little less formal and to write it in first-person.

My name is Jonathan Castanien and I’m SCR's public relations assistant. I received a BA in theatre arts from California State University, Fullerton, with an emphasis in technical design and production. I focused on stage management during my four years and also worked part time on campus in the theatre and dance department’s marketing annex. I knew nothing about marketing, but caught on quickly and fortunately, it led me to SCR.

Typically, I assist in the day to day communications for the theatre. On any given day, I could be writing a blog story, clipping articles, brainstorming ideas for a photo shoot or scheduling interviews for reporters with an actor in one of our upcoming productions.

With my mom.

More importantly, I act as an extension of the storytelling happening on our stages by sharing the stories of the people involved in our productions and even finding audience stories that may reflect the story on stage.

That’s why, when last spring SCR announced Vietgone by Qui Nguyen as part of the Pacific Playwrights Festival, I immediately knew I had to take a particular person in my life: my mom, Sophia Castanien.  I knew that this play about a Vietnamese refugee experience had to be seen by an actual refugee who lived through it. And, Mom also kept asking to see a show where I worked.

My mom was born as Nga Cao in Saigon, Vietnam, to my grandparents, Van Cao and Diep Truong. She was the third girl among four brothers and three sisters. She was adopted by her aunt and uncle, Qui Cao and Dr. Ha Ta Ngoc, who were unable to have children. She would be raised by them alongside their first adopted daughter, Phung. Mom spent much of her childhood in Bạc Liêu, while also studying in Đà Lạt and in Saigon. Although she was adopted, she still saw her biological parents and siblings often.

(L to R) My Aunt Phung, grandfather, grandmother and mom

Since she lived in the city, the war was something faraway and removed to her. She would only see the effects of the war when soldiers returned to the city, injured and worn, or when family members would leave to serve in the military. It created a shrouded sense of peace that didn't last forever.

By the spring of 1975, panic grew quickly as the North Vietnamese troops advanced towards the south. It felt like more and more people, displaced by the war, were coming to the city. With their arrival, whispers filled with fear began to spread and the sense of safety around the city faded quickly.

Filled with uncertainty, some of my aunts, uncles and cousins had begun to leave by boat. Due to my grandfather’s age, and the chaos around them the day Saigon fell, my mom and her immediate family were unable to escape and had to face the aftermath of their government's fall. Her family lost its properties, money and status in a world that had dramatically changed around them. Mom lived for four long years under the new government, and waited patiently for her father to be released from the reeducation camps.

When her father was released in early 1979, she hoped that the whole family would be able to escape together. But her father was in poor health, making it impossible for him and my grandmother to leave, so the family faced a difficult decision. My grandparents urged them to go–to have a better life away from what was once considered home.

Posing as ethnic Chinese, also called nguoi hoa, my mom, her first husband, my aunt, Phung, Phung’s first husband and my two cousins escaped. At the time, the new government was making deals with nguoi hoa to allow people to leave the country if they paid a large sum of money. Once my family paid, things happened very quickly and my mom didn't even have the chance to properly say goodbye to her father. It was the last time she saw him—he would pass away a few years later while she was in the U.S. Her mother accompanied them to the dock and saw them off. With only a few steps away from her escape, my mom wasn't able to hold it in anymore and she cried in my grandmother's arms before boarding the boat.

It wasn't an easy journey. “I knew I wouldn’t eat for a week and just have a little bit of water to drink,” Mom recounts. “It’s easier when you’re younger. If I had to do it now, I wouldn't.” The group had no destination, just the hope that they would make it to a country that would take them in.

My mom (R) on her  first visit to Disneyland with my Aunt Oanh (L)

When they reached Singapore four days later, they weren’t permitted to land. The Coast Guard provided them with a few supplies and then the group had to head into the unknown once again. Two days later, they reached an island in Indonesia, where they were allowed to stay overnight, but were told to leave in the morning. It was a prospect no one wanted to face: pirates, rough waters and darkness lived out at sea. They knew they had to do something to stay.

That night, under the veil of darkness, they set their own boat on fire.

With no way to leave, they were allowed to set up a refugee camp—one of the first in the area. The U.S. government was quickly contacted, beginning the process of interviews and securing sponsorships from families in the U.S. to enable migration to America.

My mom was  fortunate to have reached the U.S. six months after setting up that refugee camp. Her sister, Oanh, who had reached the U.S. years earlier, sponsored my mom to come to California. My aunt, Phung, and her immediate family were sponsored to Chicago, Illinois. The two sisters had known from the beginning that they would be separated in the U.S.

In October 1979, my mom flew into LAX, where she was reunited with her family and settled into their home in Long Beach. They welcomed her with the best American meal they could think of: Pioneer fried chicken and pizza. Among her sisters, brothers and biological parents, she had found a new home after a long journey. Two weeks later, she was able to secure a job through a family friend and quickly began her new life in the U.S.

(L to R) My father Steven, Mom, me and my brother David.

As the years went on, she became a U.S. citizen, gave birth to my brother, David, ended her first marriage, married my father, had me and reunited with her adoptive mother, Qui, who years later was able to immigrate to California.

Mom dedicated herself to raising a family and making sure her two sons earned a college education and lived a better life than she had.

Which leads us back to 2015 and the reading of Vietgone at the Pacific Playwrights Festival. After the theatre emptied and we walked back to the car, I asked Mom what she thought of the play.

“It reminded me about a lot of things I almost forgot,” Mom told me. “I forgot people wanted to leave the refugee camp right away to be with their families. They didn’t want to stay because of the people they had to leave behind.”

She also found the characters and story familiar. She saw one of brothers in the main character, Quang, who had to leave behind his wife during the chaos of the fall. The details may have been different, but she knew this story in her family and friends. They all had lost something along the way and made sacrifices.

“There can be a misunderstanding about refugees,” she went on to explain. “We came here as refugees—not immigrants. We didn’t plan for any of it. This play is important because it reminds us that the war ended drastically and suddenly. We had to try to adopt a new country.”

She also made a point of declaring that my brother and all my cousins had to see Vietgone as well: “They should see it to understand. There’s a part of the experience that the first generation born here doesn’t understand, doesn’t know."

As I continue to work in theatre and help tell SCR's stories, it’s important for me to remember how plays can affect audiences. It’s especially great to see works being done that I can identify with, with stories or characters that I can see both myself and my family in.

It also makes my job a whole lot more fun.

Buy tickets to Vietgone

Quick Q&A with Jonathan Castanien

What do you do outside of SCR?
I freelance as a stage manager in the Orange County and L.A. areas.

What's currently playing on Netflix?
I'm trying to catch up with "House of Cards." I know...I'm kind of behind, but I'm in the middle of season 2!

What are you excited to see this season at SCR?
Vietgone, of course! I'm also looking forward to seeing Red. It's easily one of my favorite plays.

Unexpected Inspirations: Qui Nguyen

Playwright Qui Nguyen and director May Adrales in rehearsal for the 2015 Pacific Playwrights Festival reading of  Vietgone

Swordfights, giant dragon puppets and an inexplicable sense of humor are hallmarks of a Qui Nguyen play. The New York Times described his infectious style as “culturally savvy comedy.” While his play Vietgone, premiering at South Coast Repertory, doesn’t have a sword fight or a dragon puppet, it does retain that Nguyen charm as he delves into the more personal story of how his parents met in Arkansas at a Vietnamese refugee camp. Vietgone strikes a balance between what SCR audiences are familiar seeing on stage and an exciting new approach to a romantic comedy.

Often credited as one of the pioneers of “geek theatre,” Nguyen established himself and his Brooklyn-based theatre company, Vampire Cowboys, as a place of pure, unabashed fun and an entertainment haven for nerds, geeks and pop culture enthusiasts—and theatregoers. In short, Nguyen knows how to show audiences a good time. In an interview with The New York Observer, Nguyen said, “Watching people cry at my plays isn’t necessarily that fun. Watching people laugh and cheer, it gives me a high.”

Vampire Cowboys Theatre Company productions

His unconventional style can be traced back to his parents, as they raised Nguyen in rural Arkansas. In an effort to expose their son to stories with Asian heroes, he grew up regularly watching kung fu movies. His parents had hoped that it would help him see the world with more people similar to him and ease the sense of being different in a less than diverse area of the country.
Once he reached college, he became frustrated over his professors’ views about what should be performed on stage. His professors deemed his use of fight scenes as more of a cinematic style. Their views only made him more interested in presenting them on stage.

Luckily, he met fellow graduate student Robert Ross Parker and soon they began collaborating, which lead to the birth of their theatre company, Vampire Cowboys. By 2002, the duo had moved to New York City and later met Abby Marcus, who would soon become the theatre's managing director. Once Marcus joined up with Nguyen and Parker, she quickly became an integral factor in bolstering Vampire Cowboys’ fan base and success.

The Vampire Cowboys booth at the New York Comic Con 2010

Marcus spearheaded grassroots marketing initiatives and a partnership with New York’s Comic Con—which continues to this day—helping to catapult Vampire Cowboys’ to wide recognition. Audiences where hooked when they experienced  Vampire Cowboys' unconventional aesthetic which blends theatre, comic books, hip-hop, action-adventure and drama.

Nguyen’s success comes through an understanding of what audiences enjoy seeing. As both a playwright and fight choreographer, he finds a sense of wonder and excitement by presenting stories in creative ways. He’s been known to pull inspiration from multiple genres that are close to his heart. “My favorite things in the world are early ‘80s hip-hop, comic books and samurai stories,” Nguyen says in an interview with American Theatre magazine. And soon, he’ll show SCR audiences what happens when he also pulls inspiration from another area of his heart—his family.

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