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Letters from Home is an interdisciplinary solo theatre performance that uses multimedia practices to tell the story of a Cambodian American woman as she explores her connection to family, legacy, and her father’s art. It is an intergenerational collaboration between Kalean Ung as writer/performer and her father, Chinary Ung, as a composer. The performance creates space to explore their respective artistic practices, incorporating historical research to examine the Cambodian Genocide of the 1970s, the efforts of Chinary Ung to save his family members, and the legacy of that trauma on their art.
There are multitudes of stories contained in the letters received and written by Chinary Ung, Cambodian refugees, and others involved in their resettlement – narratives of struggle, triumph, life, and death. One aspect of this play that may resonate with survivors of war, genocide, and the ruptures of migration is the exploration of intergenerational storytelling as a healing practice. Chinary Ung and Kalean Ung use music and performance to interpret and make sense of the past, but it is through their collaboration that healing might be possible. In Letters from Home, Chinary Ung says to his daughter, “Kalean, Art is not a documentary. Art is an expression of humanity. This degree of human suffering we can all relate to. Write a story that touches all of humanity...Kalean I don’t know how to work with words, but you do.” Fusing together words and much more, Letters from Home asks us to think about ways to create a home for our stories.
Kalean Ung brings Letters from Home to UC Irvine on February 13, 2020 at the Claire Trevor Theater.
Kalean Performance.mp4The opening of "Music Letters Home" exhibit in the OC&SEAA Center included live music performances. This clip features Kalean's vocals as she plays the crotales (antique cymbals)
Susan Ung performs one of Chinary Ung's works, "Spiral XI: Mother and Child," on the viola at the exhibit opening for "Music Letters Home," on February 13, 2020
Chinary Ung, Marina McClure (director of Letters From Home), and Kalean Ung going through notes after a dress rehearsal at Independent Shakespeare Co. in Los Angeles, CA, November 2018.
Chinary and Kalean at Cambodian New Year celebration in 1987.
Production still of Letters From Home during the run at Independent Shakespeare Co. Los Angeles, November 2018.
“Although the genocide was happening through the 70’s the letters written to my father and grandmother, who were here in the U.S., were addressed in 1980, four years before my parents were married and six years before I was born. This was when our surviving family members who had traveled by foot for over a month finally reached Khao I Dang, a refugee camp in Thailand. After years of suffering, loss, starvation and torture, it was here where they were trying to get out of danger as their country was in shambles. For them, my father was their only hope of escaping.” - Kalean narrating in "Letters from Home."
“I put the [letters] in the boxes and I taped it. And from that point, until 40 years later, Kalean heard about it . . . I did not suggest to her what she should do, but my instinct say that’s probably the right person to, . . . So she went there, . . . She opened it and so forth. There was only a few that were in English, 90 percent is in Khmer. She doesn’t know Khmer language. And so, when she got the admission to pursue, to study, theater at the...California Institute of the Arts. She was inspired by some of her teachers and she want to create...a family tree kind of story.” - from the Oral history of Chinary Ung, November 12, 2019.
LETTERS PART 2.mp3Chinary Ung recalls how Kalean Ung came to create her play in the clip above.
“You tell me that the working title of the piece should be “Letters from Home.” You say, that although most of the letters were written in the refugee camps in Thailand, that the word “home” here should not be taken literally. You say that one can explain the word “home” as the Khmer Psyche expressing itself through the common language by common people and members of our family. What you don’t realize is that I do take the title literally. These letters live in my home.” - Kalean narrating in "Letters from Home."
Interview with Kalean Ung about her play "Letters from Home."
"Song of Compassion" composed by Chinary Ung for Kalean Ung's "Letters from Home."
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