Spring 2005
"AiR-Rated"
with Guest Feature "Missed Sigh Gone"
May 1 ~ Blanchard Great Room

Click for larger image

 

PROGRAM

AiR-RATED

“Sure Thing” by David Ives
Adapted and Performed by Mallika Aryal and Rhea Ghosh

Excerpt from Mimicry by Diana Pho (’07)
Performed by Tracy Zhu, Elsa Tung, Smita Gopinath, &Lee Hong Lee

“In The Shadows of the Himalayas” by Mallika Aryal (’05), Nayantara Kakshapati (’05) and Smita Gopinath (’06)
Performed by Rosie Vasquez, Tamanna Ahmad, and Elsa Tung

“Dr. Bollywood” by Smita Gopinath (’06)
Choreographed by Piya Sircar
Performed by Fayza Sohail, Elsa Tung, Natercia Rodrigues, and Lauren Tseng, Piya Sircar

~ Brief Intermission ~

MISSED SIGH GONE
Directed by Jane Jung

The Heat is on in Saigon
Rewritten and Performed by Giles Li

THE HEAT IS REALLY ON IN SAIGON THIS TIME
Featuring Ash Hsie, Melissa Li, Sung Yun Lee, Judy Tan, Jessie Tran

Lyrics vs. Reality
by Giles Li

THUY AND KIM
Featuring Ash Hsie, Melissa Li, Sung Yun Lee, Judy Tan

She Said No
Written by Shailja Patel
Performed by Son-Ca Lam

Miss Auschwitz
Written by Ky-Phong Tran
Featuring Jason Fong, Ash Hsie, Angie Hu

ROOM 317: THE REMIX
Featuring Ash Hsie, Sung Yun Lee, Melissa Li, Judy Tan

 

SYNOPSIS OF MISS SAIGON

Chris and John, American servicemen in the Vietnam War, take a night off from serving their country by killing Vietnamese peasants, and go to a local bar where the Engineer, a Vietnamese pimp, is holding a beauty pageant featuring his prostitutes, including 17-yearold Kim, whose parents have been killed in the war. (Who killed them is conveniently left out of the plot.) John buys Kim for Chris and they promptly fall in love, get married, and get pregnant. Three years later, Thuy, a North Vietnamese soldier to whom Kim had been arranged to be married, comes for her; he sees Kim and Chris’s son Tam and threatens to kill the boy, so Kim shoots Thuy to death. (Thuy is Evil Asian Man #2; the Engineer, of course, was Evil Asian Man #1. Nice Asian Man #1 shows up later, after the play, when the theater has closed and you go out to dinner at a Vietnamese restaurant.)

Then a bunch of other stuff happens, including the famous helicopter scene, in which Kim remembers the day Chris left Vietnam and she was denied entrance into the helicopter. As Chris realizes he’s losing Kim, John tells him not to feel guilty because, hey, war is cruel.

Cut to Bangkok, where Kim, Tam, and the Engineer are now refugees and John - now an advocate for Amerasian children - has brought Chris and his new American wife Ellen to find Kim and Tam. Kim and Ellen meet, while Oblivious Chris wanders the streets of Bangkok. When he finally finds Kim and Tam - who, as a character with no lines, is basically just another prop throughout the play - she shoots herself in a final act of selflessness, so Tam can go to America with his father, Ellen can rest easy and competition-free at night, Chris can go on pretending she never existed, and the Engineer gets screwed one last time because he now has no ties to anyone in his dream and America. And Kim joins the ranks of legendary characters of color in pop culture who teach the white characters a valuable lesson and then disappear.

DESCRIPTIONS

The Heat is on in Saigon. The original version of this song is the big happy flashy opening number in Miss Saigon; our version is slightly different.
THE HEAT IS REALLY ON IN SAIGON THIS TIME. We couldn’t help but address it twice. The original musical starts with the Engineer holding a “Miss Saigon” pageant for the prostitutes as a ploy to entice U.S. servicemen into spending more money. We take a deeper look into what’s really going on in this scene.
THUY AND KIM. In the original play, when Thuy tries to kill Tam, Kim ends up killing Thuy. People say this play reflects the horrors of war, but the only two characters who die—Kim and Thuy—don’t die because of the war; they are Vietnamese who die at the hands of Vietnamese. Good job Miss Saigon! Asians are successfully portrayed as both victims and villains while the Americans are pretty much along for the ride.
Miss Auschwitz. Seeing two white French dudes write a play about Vietnam was so inspiring, we have an excerpt from an interview of two Vietnamese Americans who were motivated to write a play of their own.
ROOM 317: THE REMIX. In the final scene of the original play, in a brief encounter Ellen mistakes Kim for the maid. Later, Chris finds Kim just before she takes her own life because she can’t have Chris, and also so Chris is guilt-tripped into taking Tam to America. We rewrote this totally awesome scene with a different ending using actual lines from the play.

ABOUT THE GROUPS

Asian American Interpretive Realities (AiR) uses theater and spoken-word to illuminate issues relating to the Asian and Asian American communities, thus promoting political and social awareness and empowerment. Jane Jung, director of Missed Sigh Gone, co-founded AiR in 1999.

~

The following is excerpted from Missed Sigh Gone’s original Playbill,
February 24, 2005:

“Welcome to Missed Sigh Gone, the Asian American community response to the racist-ass musical Miss Saigon.

Since Miss Saigon opened on Broadway over ten years ago, it has visited our communities in waves, returning every year in a different theater, in a different corner of the country. Because the playwrights were white Frenchmen, every production of the play reminds us of the ways that people outside our community love to tell our stories as though they were their own, and even tell us how we should feel about it, but ultimately bear no responsibility for the damage these negative and inaccurate portrayal have on our community.

Instead, as a group of Asian American artists involved in the Asian American community, we choose to create and produce new works inspired by the musical Miss Saigon and to engage our local community in that conversation and dialogue. We invite you inside a tradition that has passed on from those before us in the Asian American community across the country: people and organizations like us who have raised their voices to speak their piece about Miss Saigon.

Our intention in creating tonight’s show is to use our own voices, our experiences and our lives to tell our own stories. We have been marginalized and silenced for too long, letting others take the power in telling the stories that have affected us and our community.”

Missed Sigh Gone is sponsored by Asian American Resource Workshop and
Boston Progress Arts Collective

~

Tonight’s event is sponsored by the Dean of the College, Dean of Students, President Joanne Creighton, and AASIA.

Special Thanks To:
Dean of the College, Dean of Students, President Joanne Creighton, AASIA, Jane Jung and the cast of Missed Sigh Gone, Student Programs, Tech Assistants: Sam Arni and Karen Hopper, Rabia Shahzad, and everyone in the audience!