Culture

OU Alumnus’ ‘Vietgone’ Premieres at NYC’s Manhattan Theatre Club

Posted on: Friday, October 21, 2016

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The Division of Theater celebrates the east coast premiere of alumnus (M.F.A. 2002) playwright Qui Nguyen’s award winning play Vietgone, at the Manhattan Theatre Club, in New York City. Directed by May Adrales, with a cast featuring Jon Hoche, Jennifer Ikeda, Raymond Lee, Samantha Quan, and Paco Tolson, the play opens Oct. 25 and runs through Nov. 27.

Vietgone, won the 2015 Harold and Mimi Steinberg/American Theatre Critics Association New Play Award, was an LA Critics Pick in 2015, and was shortlisted for the Edward M. Kennedy Prize for Drama Inspired by American History in 2016.

Nguyen locates Vietgone, a loose interpretation of his Vietnamese immigrant parents falling-in-love story, in a refugee camp in Arkansas in 1975, just after the Vietnam War.

Charles McNulty of the LA Times describes the playwright as engaging “in a multifaceted act of freehand translation,” and Trista Baldwin, of The Brooklyn Rail called the play “a sex comedy. With hip-hop. And kung fu fighters. With a serious post-Saigon twist.”

Actor Jon Hoche, puppeteer for Audrey II in Tantrum Theater’s summer performance of Little Shop of Horrors, has worked with Nguyen for nearly a decade on various projects, watching him evolve as a playwright, from early productions with Vampire Cowboys Theater, to the South Coast Rep premiere of Vietgone in 2015.

“I’m so honored and proud to be performing a show that depicts Asians as brave, cool, sexy people. We’re not exoticized. The characters are fully fleshed-out people dealing with life and death situations, trying to make their way in a new world.”

“I will never forget when a mother came to the show and, with tears in her eyes, she thanked us for telling this story because now she has a bridge with which to talk to her son about what she went through. This show has given people a voice that otherwise might not have one” said Hoche, who plays Nhan at the Manhattan Theater Club presentation of Vietgone.

Qui Nguyen a co-artistic director of the OBIE Award-winning company, Vampire Cowboys, has expanded his reach in recent years to both television and film writing. He won a 2016 daytime Emmy award for Outstanding Writing in a Pre-School Animated Program for PEG+CAT on PBS, was a writer on “incorporated” premiering on the SYFY channel in November, and recently joined the Marvel Studios writing team.

For further information, check out this New York Times article about Vietgone, “How Mom and Dad Met, With Ninjas.”