A play, a play! Let's do a play!

I really wanted to start doing some theater with my students, and I thought the easiest way would be to have one class perform a short skit on the given theme at each monthly English Club meeting. This month’s English Club theme was Vietnamese Women’s Day.

Vietnam has some pretty hard core women in their history. I’m talking 17 year old girls who rode elephants and lead armies and supposedly had 3 breasts.

HARD. CORE.

I thought a good idea would be to write a short play that included 6 or 7 of the most famous women from Vietnam history. At first, I was going to have the play be about a dinner party where all of the famous women from history were the guests. I really thought this was inspired until I realized I had seen it before in TOP GIRLS, and maybe channeling Caryl Churchill for the first dramatic production was a bit ambitious.

I modified the idea slightly, and with the help of Nga and Son wrote a short script with 12 characters. The premise was still that all the most famous women were meeting for a small party, but we would only show the arrival of each woman and a brief interview with the MC. If I do say so myself, it turned out really well. The girls loved doing it, and I loved having the chance to share theater with them. Remember when theater was the biggest thing in my life and I worked on Broadway? Crazy...Can’t say I don’t miss those days, which makes it even more special to share any part of theater with my students.

There were the few usual snafus that come with show-biz. The night before we went on, the actress playing Vo Thi Sau--a Joan of Ark-type 14 year old soldier in the Revolution against the French--had a meltdown and tried to quit the play by telling me she would be “very busy with a headache” the next night and didn’t think she could perform. There were tears and a pep-talk from yours’ truly on how tough it can be to be an actor, but I’m happy to say she came through and gave a great performance. All the girls did, and I am so proud of them.

I also learned a lot doing this. When we were brainstorming what women to include in the play, I got pretty much the run-down of who’s who of awesome Vietnamese ladies. Nearly all of the women which my students deemed most important were involved in a war or led an army--not surprising when you look at the amount of time Vietnam was at war throughout history. The girls got a little quiet when the American/Vietnam War came up, but I told them we could talk about it as much as they wanted. I also said they could ask me any questions they had about America and the war, and I would try to answer.

The only question they asked was “What does America think of Vietnam today?”

It was pretty poignant to be talking about all of this history--a history which the students are fiercely proud of--and the only question they really had was about Vietnam and the world today. That really pretty much sums up the Vietnamese people that I’ve met: reverent about the past, but only looking forward.

I couldn't get many pictures, but I did try to get a few.

Nga as the Emcee and Son as Dang Thuy Tram--a famous female doctor killed in the war with America. She kept a diary about the war which was found by an American soldier. A few years ago he brought it back to her family in Vietnam and it was published.

Thuy as Vo Thi Sau, the teenage revolutionary, and Linh as Trieu, who rallied an army of men against the Chinese and rode an elephant into battle.

Me with Toan post-performance. She was one of the Trung Sisters, who together led the first rebellion against the Chinese and reigned as Kings. (Not Queens. KINGS.)