by Linda Chin
‘Cambodian Rock Band’ – Written by Lauren Yee; Directed by Marti Lyons; Scenic Designer by Yu Shibagaki; Costume Design by Izumi Inaba; Lighting Design by Keith Parham; Sound Design by Mikhail Fiskel; Music Direction by Matt MacNelly. Presented with Victory Gardens Theater and City Theatre Company at the Merrimack Repertory Theatre, at 50 East Merrimack Street through November 10, 2019.
In a classic conversation between parent and child, the child/adolescent/adult-child says, or shouts:
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
And the parent stumbles and stammers in response:
“It’s grown-up business. I didn’t want you to worry. Or, I’m sorry. I didn’t know you wanted to know.”
Or my late mom’s guilt-inducing favorite:
“You’ll understand when you become a mother.”
In defense of parents, sometimes these responses are covers for feelings that are too recent or raw to think about, much less talk about; memories too painful to remember and recall. They’re also reminders that whether we’re in everyday or extraordinary circumstances we’re mere mortals, just ordinary humans trying our best. Lauren Yee’s Cambodian Rock Band explores the relationships between father and daughter in a Cambodian-American family, friends in a rock band, and citizens and their country. Set in Phnom Penh, Cambodia against a backdrop of one of the world’s greatest crimes against humanity, it is hands-down the most powerful theater experience I’ve had in recent memory. Its characters, music, and story punch you in the gut ‘til you’re gasping for air, and leap into your heart, then settle and take permanent residence.
The play spans 33 years following the Khmer Rouge’s rise to power in 1975. Dictating that the nation start again from Year Zero, Pol Pot seized cultural control by isolating his people from foreigners, and targeting and torturing the educated middle class, intellectuals and musicians. He ordered the conversion of community centers to death camps to imprison and execute men, women and children, one of the most notorious being the former school Tuol Sleng. In the four year period (1975-79) that the Khmer Rouge attempted to extinguish the culture of the generation before, they claimed the lives of nearly 2 million.
Merrimack Repertory Theatre’s production of Cambodian Rock Band brings the 60s & 70s Cambodian rock scene to life on stage and gives us the opportunity to reclaim a piece of this culture. Yee’s play with music – or rock concert – cleverly intertwines songs by contemporary LA-based band Dengue Fever, Cambodian oldies, and “The Times They are A-Changin’” by Bob Dylan. Marti Lyons directs Cambodian Rock Band’s creative collaborators with passion and precision. The six-member cast assumes the roles of Duch, head of the Tuol Sleng S-21 jail (Albert Park) and the five young musicians in a Phnom Penh garage band (Eileen Doan, Peter Sipla, Christopher Thomas Pow, Gregory Watanabe, Aja Wiltshire). As individual performers and as an ensemble, the six actor-musicians are electrifying; their physical energy and emotional stamina is unflagging throughout the two hour performance (the only break being a 15-minute intermission).
Several actors also double as other characters in the story’s 2008 scenes: Watanabe plays Chum, a Khmer Rouge survivor and Californian-American who travels to Phnom Penh after a 30 year absence to visit his daughter. Wiltshire plays his daughter Neary, who hadn’t stepped foot in Cambodia until after college, and has been living and working there for the past two years. Pow plays Neary’s boyfriend Ted. Their scenes together are delightful, and show us attributes of Asian American men and women’s personalities – funny, sexy, adventurous, artsy – that are not often portrayed on American stages.
Cambodian Rock Band is full of powerful moments, for me those between father and daughter the most poignant. Neary’s determined to unravel one of the many unsolved mysteries of the Khmer Rouge regime, and to see Duch punished for his war crimes. Chum encourages her to come home and go to Cornell Law School, then dismisses her efforts as a waste of time. “You are American and I raised you better than this,” he tells her. “I taught you not to care.” Neary answers, “Can’t I care about you? About what your life was like?” This exchange opens dialogue, and unearths feelings, secrets, and shame that have been suppressed for decades. The two come to better understand why Chum wasn’t always “present,” in her parents’ marriage or at her music recitals when she was a kid.
Our parents also raised us not to know, sometimes not to ask, and often not to tell. In this case the pronoun “our” includes the two impeccably dressed women with beautifully coiffed white hair my friend and I met in the ladies room, the cast members we chatted with in the lobby, the two college students we carpooled with on the drive home to Boston from Lowell. A small sample, but representative of the power of arts and culture -particularly live theater and music – to connect people, to sometimes even save them.
Arts organizations like the Merrimack Repertory Theatre have the power to produce, to convene artists and audiences and connect communities, to bring audience members of all generations, cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds together in the shared experience of live theater. Lowell has the largest Cambodian population on the East Coast (second to Long Beach, California), including multigenerational survivors of the Khmer Rouge, so MRT’s production carries special significance that should not go unrecognized.
Theatre artists in the cast, creative and production teams have the power to tell the stories they’ve been entrusted to tell in the most truthful way possible. This cast’s care and respect for their work, this play, the creative community they’re part of, and each other was evident onstage and off. Yes, they make me proud to be a fellow theater artist, and to be Asian. The same sentiment goes for Lauren Yee, who just two weeks ago learned that she (and Jackie Sibblies Drury) won the 2019 Steinberg Playwrights Award. Yee uses her playwriting superpowers to “create the blueprints for worlds shaded in and populated by a village of collaborators.” She deeply understands the importance of a village in nurturing creative communities; long may her work continue to rock and raise, connect and bind us. For tickets and additional information, go to: https://mrt.org/
