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60 CHAPTER 2 Staging the Doi Moi Generation and the Treasures of Vietnamese Tradition Drama begins on the back of Nguyen Thi Minh Ngoc’s motorcycle as she heads directly into oncoming traffic with the sangfroid of a Ho Chi Minh City native. Although Vietnam has one of the highest motorcycle fatality rates per capita in the world, it is only by motorcycle that the actor-playwright-director can zip around the city to make her daily dozen consultations, rehearsals, and performances . Her schedule is particularly frenzied during Tet, the Lunar New Year, when the HCM City theatres work overtime to accommodate holidaymakers’ leisure, bonus packets, and desire for entertainment. Some theatres present three performances a day, and cinemas are temporarily converted into stages for live presentations. Revivals and new plays compete for audience attention; comedies are in great demand since the main criteria is that the play end happily to ensure peace and prosperity in the New Year. HCM City, however, is unusual in Southeast Asia in that it has a substantial appetite year round for locally written plays.1 In contrast, in the capital Hanoi there are frenzied pre-Tet preparations, after which the city, including its theatres, shuts down for the holiday. Hanoi residents celebrate indoors, in intimate gatherings of family and friends, leaving the streets quiet. The New Year holiday exemplifies the differences between the two cities, in both the public’s and the government’s relationship to theatre. In HCM City, theatre is not an elite entertainment, but enjoyed by urban residents across the social spectrum. The seasonal fare attracts students, laborers , middle-aged couples, and families with children because the tickets are affordable at five to ten US dollars, even when they double in price during Tet.2 Unlike in the car-clogged streets of Bangkok and Manila, the spectators STAging The Doi moi generATion | 61 as well as performers whiz around on motorcycles and easily park them at the venues.3 Despite the popular Korean television serials and easily available VCDs and DVDs that have hurt the native film industry, live theatre continues to thrive because the city created a theatre-going habit a century ago, and playwrights tap into sources both immediate and local, drawing audiences to reflect on the past, deal with the present, and hope for the future. In 1999 Tet coincided with the Saigon 300 Festival, a celebration of the three hundredth anniversary of the older central section of the city. The festival created a demand for new scripts celebrating the city and its history as it once again becomes the country’s brash commercial center—a great change from the post-1975 sense of defeat and nostalgia, when residents identified with the American film Gone with the Wind. Nguyen Thi Minh Ngoc’s Saigon Village, commissioned by director Tran Minh Ngoc especially for the festival, explores relations between the viet kieu, the overseas Vietnamese who left during and after the war, and those who remained. Nguyen’s play, which evokes the Vietnamese diaspora’s perspective on the “new Saigon,” had originally been called Saigonese, but the title had been rejected by censors because it implied a separate local identity. The character and history of Saigon remains a sensitive topic. As it prospers, Saigon is more openly asserting its own identity while the government in Hanoi remains suspicious of its separatist tendencies. Saigon Village involves a young viet kieu woman born in California making her first visit back to Saigon to see her grandfather. Her backpack is stolen immediately after she arrives (street theft is rife in the city). When the neighborhood street vendors who barely eke out a living help her, she is overwhelmed by their kindness, which she contends she could not have found in California. The viet kieu, many of whom have become prosperous abroad—or at least take pains to appear so when they return—initially incurred resentment from locals. But as HCM City residents themselves began to enjoy more capitalist amenities, their attitudes toward the viet kieu relaxed. Such “coming home” plays like Saigon Village represent the postwar reality of dispersed families, while reassuring audiences that those who remained behind have the monopoly on Vietnamese virtue. Concurrently, Nguyen’s sister, Nguyen Thi Minh Phuong, was starring in Giac Mo Dien anh (The Movie Dream)—a made-for-Tet satire performed in a temporarily converted cinema. She played a rich woman who wants to make a film starring her daughter and herself, a practice among...

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