Summer Rolls is currently being staged at the Park Theater in London until July 13.
The play is the first-ever bilingual play written in Vietnamese and English performed in the UK. Set between 1989 and 2002, Summer Rolls follows a young British-Vietnamese girl named Mai who navigates her family's secrets and wounds through her photography.
Via the perspective of Mai, who is the youngest daughter in the family and struggling with her identity as a second-generation immigrant in Britain, the play explores aspects of being British-Vietnamese, a community often overlooked in cultural narratives surrounding British immigrants and the Vietnamese diaspora.
Summer Rolls presents the writing debut of Tuyen Do, a British-Vietnamese actor and writer. It is produced by Van Thanh Production, a firm she set up with producer Tuyet Van Huynh.
"When I started writing this play over seven years ago, I didn’t imagine I would be the first. I just wanted to write something from the heart and something I recognized. As an actor I didn’t see anything that represented my own experience, and writing was my solution. It has been a long and difficult journey, fraught with rejections, self-doubt, and fear. But it has also been a journey full of learning, overcoming the voices in my head, and facing up to the questions of identity and longing that fueled my writing," said Tuyen Do in an interview with Resonate.
Check out the teaser for the play below:
[Photo via The Guardian]
