Artistic Director, Urban Theatre Projects
Associate Director, Chay Vong Vong

My role in Chay Vong Vong was to support director/writer Tony Le Nguyen in realising the Chay Vong Vong project in Sydney. While the project was based on his Melbourne productions of the same name, it became a very different show. The whole scenario was reworked completely, and all that remained of the old show were a few pages of dialogue reassigned to the new characters. I was closely involved in this reworking, having regular sessions with him in the early weeks of the workshop process. Together we developed the performance concept of setting the action in a cabaret in 1998. Tony then wrote the scenes that the reworking entailed.

Within the rehearsals themselves, my role was to help with the warm-ups and to assist with the running of the two main weekly rehearsals (Tony also ran alone a number of rehearsals with smaller groups). I was also heavily involved in the bump in the process; Tony left most of the liaison with the lighting designer/operator to me.
I found the opportunity to work within the community and to learn a little about Vietnamese culture, history and people very rewarding. I was impressed by the commitment of the participants and their willingness to be involved in a style of theatre that for the most part was outside of their experience.

My relationship with Tony was productive and frank. He was generous in allowing my contribution, and I never felt that he was possessive of the work despite his obvious passionate attachment to its development. He was very willing to accept my suggestions and was equally uninhibited about drawing the line when I pushed too far. I felt that I was able to make a real contribution to the work without in any way undermining its ownership by Tony and the community participants.

The project also fulfilled Urban Theatre Projects’ objective of developing a public profile within the Vietnamese community. The production received good publicity both with the Vietnamese community media and in the media at large. Most of the Chay Vong Vong participants were eager to work with Urban Theatre Projects again, and some of them went on to be involved in our following project Speed Street.