On January 29, the Los Angeles Theatre Center presented a free reading of the play “Refugee Nation” by Leilani Chan and Ova Saopeng at their annual Playwright Festival followed by a Question and Answer session. “Refugee Nation” is an examination of what it is to be a refugee in America focusing on the Asian Community of Lao. It is a geographic, historical, and cultural exploration of Laotian refugees in the U.S. One walks away with an understanding of what it is like for both the older and the younger generation of Asian refugees from Lao, and the United States participation in the migration of refugees here to this country.
Leilani Chan, Founding Director of TeAda Productions, whose mission is serve the underserved communities by “the development and presentation of interdisciplinary theatrical performances by, for and about people of color,” assisted in creating “Refugee Nation” with her partner Ova Saopeng, Associate Producer TeAda Productions in collaboration with “Legacies of War.” They both wanted to explore their Asian roots and decided to focus on Lao in part because Saopeng was born there and escaped to Hawaii in 1979 and in part because there was a need of community among Americans from Lao. They began by collecting stories from the Lao community and used workshops and play readings in Alaska, Boston, Minneapolis, Portland and other locations across the US to weave into a cohesive experience. All in all the process took five to six years.
The playrights have taken the stories they collected and interwoven them using different characters played out by three actors, Leilani Chan, Ova Saopeng, and Lidet Viravong. Viravong plays several characters, including a young urban American and an Oklahoma Radio host. It turns out he is originally from Oklahoma. Among the characters Chan plays are a woman seeking answers from the older generation and a Hawaiian and a Texan refugee mother. Saopeng plays a father fighting in what the Lao call “the Secret war” (Legacies of War” is dedicated to raising awareness of the bombings and fighting that occurred in Lao during the Vietnam war) struggling to survive and to heal and an elder refugee trying to forget the past. The play ends with Saopeng giving a geographic and history lesson. He explains the connection between the US, Vietnam and the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The audience is also made aware of how many times someone from Lao is mistaken for another ethnicity in a very comic dialogue between the three readers.
Overall the objective of the work was to remove the language barrier and empower communities and create solidarity among the many different ethnicities in America, not just Asia and Latin America. Refugee Nation received positive responses not only from the Lao community, but other ethnicities as well. In Alaska, the Alaskan natives could relate because even though they are indigenous to the region, entering into the cities of Alaska the natives said they felt like a refugee.
This exploration of the US as a “Refugee Nation” will be coming back to Los Angeles to the LATC from Thursday, May 31st 2012 to Sunday, June 24th 2012.
Comments