East/West/East: Vietnamese Immigrants Out of War/Czech Republic - by Marcy Arlin
By Marcy Arlin
This past July, actor Susan Hyon and myself, as represented by Immigrants’ Theatre Project (and funded by a Theatre Communications Group/International Theatre Institute Travel grant and a Project Grant from CEC ArtsLink) began the first part of a two year theater project: East/West/East: Vietnamese Immigrants Out of War, by going to the Czech Republic to interview maybe about 20 of the 70,000 Vietnamese immigrants living in the Czech Republic. The resulting two plays, written by American Aurorae Khoo and Czech Radmila Adamova, will be based on the stories of our Vietnamese and Czech interviewees in the Czech Republic and the United States, in three languages (Czech, Vietnamese, English), and performed by my Immigrants’ Theatre Project and the Czech theater company, Divadlo Feste (Jester’s Theatre). Productions will be in New York, at the Firehouse Theatre in Richmond Virginia, and in Brno, Czech Republic. This will not be a docudrama; it will be two real, dramatic (or comedic) plays that will do what ITP does best: creating plays about universal issues—love, courage, freedom, power—based on individuals from immigrant communities.
The Vietnamese are the first very visible, very sizable immigrant group in the Czech Republic (arriving there in the 70s during the Vietnamese/American war as “communist brothers”). For us it was interesting to watch the familiar American immigrant story play out as a new phenomenon in a fairly ethnically homogeneous eastern European nation.
We visited homes, warehouse districts, workers’ dorms, theatre studios, karaoke bars, social service offices, restaurants, private homes, where we met Vietnamese from every walk of life imaginable: contract workers from Vietnam, whose agency fees were often paid for by an entire village; a schoolteacher from Hanoi; a physicist/entrepreneur, students at university studying business and banking, high school kids almost completely acculturated who spoke better Czech and English than Vietnamese. We learned of the talent the Vietnamese had for finding opportunities in even the tiniest Czech village. We introduced the idea of the hyphenated person, the Chinese-American, the Jewish-American, the Cuban-American, the African-American. We made the conjecture that our interviewees who are settled in the Czech Republic might think of themselves as Vietnamese-Czechs.
The Vietnamese are much more accepted than the Roma people, who have been in the country for centuries. Susan (who is Asian American) and I (white Jewish American) spoke with Czechs and Vietnamese of cultural idealizations and misconceptions coming from both sides of the Czech/Vietnamese cultures, ranging from discussions of work ethic, familial obligations and expectations, flat out bigotry, and a general feeling that life in the Czech Republic is better than in Vietnam. Most of the Czech immigrants come from the North or the Middle, regions of Vietnam experiencing deep economic problems, Still, they have a deep love and connection that these immigrants feel for their home country, and most travel back once every three or four years.
The second leg of this project involves Aurorae and myself interviewing Vietnamese Americans in Richmond, Virginia. Then, armed with photos and tapes from the interviews in nations, Aurorae and Radmila will write plays- Aurorae’s to go to ITP for development and Radmila’s to Divadlo Feste.
Special thanks for this project go to Susan Hyon, Jiri Kocourek, Barbora Dolezalova, Ervin Hodulik, Aurorae Khoo, Klub Hanoi, Masaryk University, and the Arts & Theatre Institute of Prague, Linh, Natasa, Viet, Lenka/Duc, Martin, David and our interviewees in letting us into their lives.
By Marcy Arlin
(The photo is of our translators Linh and Nataša who did the translating for us in the factory workers' dorm in Mlada Boleslav, Czech Republic).
Views: 47
Tags: Aurorae Khoo, Czech Republic, Divadlo Feste, Immigrants' Theatre Project, Marcy Arlin, Radmila Adamova, Vietnamese, immigrant, theatre
Comment
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Comment by John Rouse on October 10, 2010 at 3:25pm -
Marcy sent this comment to me directly. I'm posting here for others to read:
Most amazing interview: with Mr. Nguyen from Hanoi, 65, a teacher, we talked about the Americans and the Vietnamese and the war and where he was and what he saw and knew. And how the Vietnamese are, in spite of the trauma, to forgive. They understand the nature and evil of war.
Hardest to forget: interviews with contract workers who have given up their dreams to work for years to send money back home to family and village. Yet they are not totally despondent.
Sweetest: the students and young workers who are putting together a performance troupe with traditional dances and comedies about Vietnamese coming to the Czech Republic.
Most interesting: Meeting young Czech/Vietnamese growing up truly bicultural and bilingual.
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Comment by John Rouse on September 25, 2010 at 7:29pm
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Thanks for sharing this Marcy. Did you have a favorite interview or one that you found most interesting?
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