Singing for the Communist Youth

Last week I was sick. Really sick. About once a year I get a cold which so completely takes over my sinuses that it makes me feel like my face and brain are swimming in fermaldyhyde. Some people would pay good money for that feeling--I’m not one of them.

The good news? Drugs are easy to come by in Vietnam! And apparently Codeine really does work.

Scarcely had I recovered from my bout with DEATH when I was summoned to sing a traditional Vietnamese song for about 300 Communist Youth at their Union party. Although I studied theater in a reknowned BA acting program, I was pretty nervous. My previous roles at Fordham had left me feeling unprepared for this next performance:

There was that time I played a Russian named Anna Andreyevna, with dangerous curves and hair...

Or that other time I was the racist basketball coach named Leona in a Shakespeare adaptation/apocalyptic thriller

And the time I played Orestes' and Electra's slightly less deranged sister Chrysothemis in the classic Greek family drama...

Or finally, that time I was in a modern Greek adaptation and castrated my husband....

Not so much help, Fordham. But then again, what could have prepared me to dress up in a pink flowered “Ao Dai” and waltz around stage in front of a bust of Ho Chi Minh, singing a song about Bamboo trees in Vietnamese, as random soldiers in attendence came up onstage and gave me flowers mid-song...flowers, mind you, that looked suspiciously like the centerpieces of the tables at which the soldiers had been sitting?

The answer is nothing. Nothing could have prepared me. Despite my nerves, and the semi-bizarre situation, the whole thing went really well. I don’t think I’ll ever feel like such a rock star again. I’m not exaggerating or being arrogant when I say the room erupted into raucous applause when I took the stage and it continued the whole way through. It was surreal; I only wish I had it on video.