2021-Present

Nam Phong Dialogues

Kevin Pham (Political Theory, University of Amsterdam) and I bring our scholarship to the broad communities we care about by offering bite-sized Vietnamese history in casual banter.

Our episodes range from film and literature reviews (both academic and non-academic), personal stories, and theoretical concepts applied in the Vietnamese context.

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2018

Dans la zone libre /
In the free zone/
Trong vùng tự do.

The piece is a three-act play based on my archival research in France, summer of 2016.  Set in the midst of the Vichy government, the story follows a group of Vietnamese workers in Southern France. There is Thanh, an ambitious youth in his early 20s who never finished his baccalaurat due to costs, Cuong, a wise forty-year-old who hides his ability to read Nietzsche regularly because of the tensions with Germany at the time, and enthusiastic Loic, who is naïve but eager to learn about colonialism, communism and all the –isms in between. Each of these characters represent an important figure in the early 20th century: the intellectual, the revolutionary, and the average civilian. Along with the other men in their company, they learn the French language, the philosophies of work and freedom, and the possibilities open to them once in France.

Read the program here.

A contribution in the public humanities

What I find unique in theatre, especially as a mode of exhibition, is the fluid boundaries between performer and audience. The spatial limitations of a theatre require a director’s creativity but also the imagination of the public to arrive at a certain portrayal of any given scene. In my past experience in small productions, I found that this fluidity between performer and audience also translates to the invocations of similar feelings, not only because they are shared, but also because theatre, in the classic sense, is a reflection of the public. Opting to explore my familiarity with theatre, in spaces beyond the stage, my project shares my research in a creative way that allows me to incorporate an art form I find critically engaging and aesthetically rewarding.