by Jeff Nygaard
June 13, 2010

The Nguyens

On June 11 2010 I attended the Alternate Visions Festival at Pangea World Theater.  The performance on that night was “The Nguyens,” written and performed by spoken-word artist Bao Phi.  The piece is a multi-layered, fictional look at a number of people in the United States of America whose only apparent connection is that they are all named Nguyen.  I saw this piece as a white guy who was raised in rural Minnesota in the 1950s and 1960s, a man who was raised with the standard mythology of the homogenous, lily-white Minnesota made famous by Garrison Keillor.  While I have spent considerable energy as an adult in challenging the colonial gaze that white privilege taught me was the “normal”—in fact, the only—way of seeing the world, in this work Bao Phi took me to a deeper place.  Bao, the performer, is sufficiently gifted as to be able to make his tightly-crafted characters seem casual and spontaneous, and this apparent informality is disarming, allowing me to lower my defenses to the point where I am able to hear and see things that I normally can’t, or won’t, take in.  Bao makes my world bigger.

Bao’s work is highly literary, but I don’t receive it with the distance that I sometimes retain when hearing “literature.”  Bao’s characters reveal amazing, often-painful, very vulnerable aspects of themselves, so much so that I felt almost embarrassed at times, like I was eavesdropping on some terribly personal conversations.  This eavesdropping can be brutal, and so visceral that it digs below my cerebral cortex.  White privilege loves the cortex, as it leads us to say, “Oh, that’s an interesting way to look at it!” and stop there.  But Bao makes it far more than an intellectual exercise.  This is the deeper place to which I referred.

Bao is fearless—yes, fearless!—enough to let me, and other audience members who are lucky enough to be in the room—see some of the painful, ironic, unresolved aspects of identity with which his characters struggle in this bizarre country that we call the United States of America.  I don’t think this artist offers a lot of answers in this piece.  (At least, not many answers that were obvious enough for me to get them!)  But he does offer lots of emotion, honesty, and a chance to view the world through the eyes of a thousand—no, a million—Nguyens, each with eyes inherited from the generations before and shaped by life in the 21st Century.  And all interpreted by a burning and restless consciousness, one that won’t be tamed or boxed, but will be heard.

Curiosities

On June 12th the Alternate Visions Festival at Pangea World Theater presented “Curiosities,” written by Heid Erdrich.  This is a work in progress, bringing together on the stage a group of young Native American artists and dancers trying to start a troupe to tour Europe.  In the performance they interact with the character of Maungwudaus, an Ojibwe man who visited Europe in the 1840’s and published an account of his travels   His actual words animate the performance.

As I watched this piece I was struck by how natural it seemed that there would be an interaction between contemporary characters and a man who lived in the 19th century.  I have been aware, in my own life, of how the passage of time has led me to increasingly see history below the surface of my daily environment.   When I look at buildings in my neighborhood, for example, I not only see the buildings; I also see the buildings that preceded them, the trees and bushes and homes that were sacrificed to make room for the current structures.  And I see people, too, the ghosts of the people who lived in those buildings, who watered and cared for those trees, who stood in the sun where now there is a parking garage.   The more important these people and things were in my life, the more vivid they appear in my vision.

I imagine that many other things—people and plants and structures that existed before I arrived—are still visible to the eyes of others while remaining invisible to me.  This is how I understand the world: Things that are visible to one person are often not visible to others.

Watching “Curiosities,” I was struck by the parallels with my personal experience of “seeing.”  “Curiosities” led me to consider that this phenomenon—where some see things that others cannot—may well operate on a social and cultural level as well as on a personal level.  Is there a “cultural memory” that is accessible to indigenous people, a memory that makes it possible, or easier, to see below the surface of our current society?  Can I, as a “white” person, ever “see” Maungwudaus?  Can I ever understand the meaning of his words?

Heid Erdrich is not afraid to explore these complex and perplexing (to me) questions.  How can the perception of one people be “translated” into the language of another people who cannot see for themselves?  The program says that Erdrich “uses dance, painting, Ojibwe Hymn singing, contemporary and traditional American Indian music and multi-media images to show how much the images of 200 years ago haunt us today.”  And “haunt” is the right word: Erdrich’s play gives voice to the ghosts—through the character of one specific ghost—whose spirit speaks to some people while apparently remaining unheard by others.

And it’s not just any “others.”  For hundreds of years, and continuing still, Europeans and their descendants have classified the original inhabitants of these lands as “other,” as exemplified by Maungwudaus visiting Europe as a “curiosity.”  Erdrich reminds us that, seen with a different gaze, it is the Europeans who are the curiosities.  What happens when we take people whom American power has relegated to the margins and place them at the center?  I hope all who see this work—especially all who share my European heritage—will do what I did, and ask themselves, “How different might the rest of my world look if I could, even for a moment, stop assuming that the ghosts that I can see are the only ghosts there are?”

Thanks to Pangea for presenting these two works, works which, each in its own way, invite me to consider visions that are true alternatives to the Eurocentric vision that dominates much of my daily life.

–

Jeff Nygaard
National Writers Union
Twin Cities Local #13 UAW
Nygaard Notes
http://www.nygaardnotes.org

by Marianne Combs
MPR
June 8, 2010

The majority of playwrights working today, while their creativity and styles may vary drastically, tend to represent a very common point of view: predominantly white, male, educated, middle-aged and middle-class.  And while there’s a lot of talk about the desire to diversify mainstream theater, it’s often difficult for a young playwright or a playwright of color to get their stories off the page and onto the stage.

That’s why Pangea World Theater put together its Alternate Visions Festival.  Unlike many play development programs, Pangea partners with playwrights from the germination of the idea, through draft after draft, until finally a work is ready for a full, professional staging.

Starting this weekend and running through July 25, Pangea is presenting five works in various stages of their development process, from staged readings all the way up to a fully realized theater piece.

Pangea co-founder Meena Natarajan, says some of these works have been in development for as long as two years.

It’s really about supporting playwrights, and particularly playwrights of color.  And we’re exploring different ways of making work.  It’s really important to give creators a space in which they can take risks and feel what that’s like, and see the results.  So much today is geared on the finished product – this festival is focused on the process.

For Katie Vang, that process has meant digging deeper into her own relationships, and looking at how belonging to a displaced culture has affected herself, her family and friends.

I’m working on a one woman show called Hmong Bollywood.  There’s this phenomenon of adopting other cultural media because we don’t have our own traditions. When I was a kid I was a huge Bollywood fan, and we commented on Bollywood film as a way of indirectly commenting on our own culture.

Vang says her work with Pangea has forced her to plunge even deeper in her exploration of love and relationships than she initially imagined.  It’s often been painful, but she says it’s worth it.

Art is really an exploration of living consciously – and I think if anything I’m exploring myself as a human being and the relationships around me.  And being able to speak about myself from an honest place – in the hopes that will contribute to a larger social movement.

For Katie Herron Robb working with Pangea on her piece “Solo Flight” has also meant confronting her fears.  Herron prefers to develop work instinctively and visually, using movement and improvisation.  For her, writing doesn’t come easily.  But her piece, based on female aviators in the 1930s, required both intense research and the courage to fill in the gaps in these women’s stories.

So many people know the feats of these women, but going back into their biographies and autobiographies, we’re finding out about who they were as people.  They were doing this in a man’s world; female pilots would get rotten planes, they weren’t treated well.  So they took on these male personas, and they had these strange relationships with men, using them to finance their planes or trips.  I’m exploring the consequences of fame for these women, and whether things have changed for women aviators today.

Herron Robb’s character is an amalgam of women like Jean Batten, Beryl Markham, Amy Johnson and Amelia Earhart.

The festival will also include performance pieces by poets Heid Erdrich and Bao Phi, as well as a world premiere of the play “Ady” by Rhiana Yazzie.

Meena Natarajan says the festival will help all of the artists determine where they want to go next with those works, informed in part by feedback sessions with the audience.  Herron Robb says she’s looking forward to the sessions, but she’s not counting on everyone liking her work.

I don’t need them to be nice, necessarily.  I want them to ask questions, to let me know what stood out for them, what spoke to them, and what they did or didn’t understand.  Liking or not liking isn’t necessary useful at this point.  You can’t please everybody.

The Alternate Visions Festival runs June 10 – July 25 at the Pangea World Theater’s studio in Minneapolis.

Read the full article here.

Thursday, June 3, 2010, Marya Morstad of KFAI: Radio Without Boundaries invited Pangea World Theater in to the studio to discuss the Alternate Visions Festival as a whole, along with the process and creation of two new pieces of work: Solo Flight by Katie Herron Robb and Hmong Bollywood by Katie Ka Vang.

Click here to listen to the Katies and Meena Natarajan tell all!