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With a passion for theater and the wish to create an art space for the foreign community in Ho Chi Minh City, some expats have paid from their own pocket to make their own shows.
A hard way to follow
Jaime Zuniga from Nicaragua, and Brian Riedlinger and Aaron Toronto from America met together in the middle of Saigon. The three men, who share the opinion that “couldn’t live without theaters”, decided to make their own dramas amid the lack of English theaters for expats living in Vietnam. Since then, their art performance group Dragonfly made its debut last October with Oscar Wilde’s masterpiece “The Importance of Being Earnest”, in English .
The Dragonfly group, which has so far performed two English plays in HCMC, admits that it’s hard to for foreigners to do theater shows in Vietnam. The group’s latest show, titled “The Last Five Years” and held in June, was performed only three times.
Under local regulations, every cultural work needs to be approved by cultural managing agencies before being publicly released. The easiest way for foreign artists to put on a show is to cooperate with local performance art organizing companies, and those units will be in charge of asking for approval for their shows.
Dragonfly recounted that it was hard for them to find a company to help them in asking for approval for “The Last Five Years”. Moreover, after the show was approved, the group continued to encounter trouble in promoting it. They had to release leaflets, sell tickets and contact local media by themselves.
However, the play still suffered financial loss since organizers could not prepare it well due to the shortage of time and the high expenses for staging.
Another performing arts group, North-East-West-South (NEWS), also had trouble getting their ideas to the stage. Norwegian Cliff Moustache and Vietnamese – American Nguyen Nghieu Khai Thu were passionate about combining Vietnamese hat boi and classic Western drama on the stage. Though the group doesn’t have to worry about money for shows since it’s funded by Norwegian Royal, NEWS said it is also facing problems in finding partners in Vietnam to launch their project.
Keep the faith
Despite such obstacles, these artists have kept the faith of English plays. NEWS’s three previous productions, including “The Journey Through Identity” in 2007, “Journey and Destination” in 2008, and “One More Summer Night Dream” in 2009 were praised by audiences, encouraging the group to stage its fourth drama, “Romeo and Juliet”, this July.
Similarly, after Dragonfly’s “The Importance of Being Earnest” and “The Last Five Years” received positive responses from critics and audiences, the group is planning their third appearence on stage, a drama named “Little Princes” which will be released this October.
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