'Vietgone' writer Qui Nguyen continues a trilogy about his Vietnamese parents setting down roots in America. This new production carries Nguyen's signature: blue-collar immigrant characters who curse a lot, break out into hip-hop and perform martial arts.
What makes Nguyen’s work different is its unflinching portrayal of working-class immigrants. While structuring the plays as traditional three-act, character-driven theater, Nguyen has infused the works with some of the signature features of the New York-based Vampire Cowboys, an Obie Award-winning troupe he co-founded in 2000.
He proudly invited his mother to see his show. “She saw it on a night when it was a really receptive house, so I was stoked,” he says. “But I could tell she was super unimpressed. She said, ‘It just didn’t sound like you. … My son is funny and surprising and rebellious. I expected that to be onstage.’”
“It’s way more personal,” he says. “This is more universal stuff. There’s a lot more poetic license on this one because it’s about my parents’ marital problems, but some details are my story, things my wife and I have gone through.” “It’s weird,” Nguyen says. “I did ‘Vietgone,’ and it did well, and it seemed like Hollywood was, like, ‘Come to me!’ But all that stuff was happening simultaneously — while I was writing ‘Vietgone,’ I was writing for TV.”
Although he’s living his TV and film dream, he’s not willing to give up writing for the stage. In fact, Nguyen remains one of the most sought-after young playwrights, with commissions from theaters across the country, including Center Theatre Group in L.A. and Goodman Theatre in Chicago, Oregon Shakespeare Festival and New York’s Atlantic Theater Company and Playwrights Horizons.in Westwood next year.
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