 The first intergalactic, international, intercontinental, hemispheric, North American, United States, Washington, District of Columbia, Lawn New Year Festival, here at the TCG Theater Nation. Oh, Ajahn, Lawn New Year is my favorite time of year because it is the one time of year that all Laelotians come together. Yes, it is so true. It is important to celebrate where we come from. Laos may be far off land in Southeast Asia, but we Laotians can be found everywhere. Where are the Laos? Who here is from DC? Anyone from DC? Do you know how people in DC? Okay, you need one now. Yes, Maryland. There are a lot of people in New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Texas, West Coast, Oregon, California. Now people in Alaska. Oh, and Hawaii too. There are also now people internationally. England, Canada, Salami, France, Argentina. Oh, Savaiti, Australia. Ajahn, you should not bow so quickly. A true Laos properly greets someone and bows slowly. Yes, you know the young people, they often ask me why is it grandma, grandma? They see it so slowly. Savaiti. Are they tired? Are they lazy? Are they drunk? No, it is because they are very sabai. Very relaxed. If I were to say to you, I am not so relaxed. You are not so sabai. Okay, let's have Ajahn be sabai. Let's put our hands together. Please put your hands together. Sabai be on three. Three, two, one, two. Oh, I feel better already. Very nice. So Ajahn, since we are making this down, let us tell them what Ajahn means. Ajahn is a La word. So see here is Ajahn because she is a University of Hawaii East West Center Scholar and a PhD professor of literature. And she teaches at the University of Nebraska and she is a former Miss Laos New Year. Ajahn, that was a long time ago. I have since got my PhD and tenure. Now Ajahn here is Ajahn because he is royal family lineage goes back to Laos. This is the University of Laos where he studied at the Wat Wat. Wat Siang Tong. Yes, Wat Siang Tong the temple where he studied knowledge and always seeking knowledge and wisdom for enlightened men. Thank you very much. Thank you for the great introduction. So today we are here to celebrate the rich cultural heritage of Laos. Our program includes Laos cultural entertainment, Laos traditional fine food, art exhibition, but don't forget the tamakung, the papaya salad tasting contest. That is a big event. And we also have the Miss Nang Sakhan Parade and the Miss Laos New Year beauty pageant. But Ajahn, there are some phalang here in the audience. Oh, white people. Okay, I see a few. Why don't they know about Laos? Why don't people know about Laos? They know about Thailand. They know about Vietnam. They know about Cambodia. They know about Burma. Myanmar Ajahn. Burma. Myanmar is a military state. Why don't people know about Laos? Why do people know more about the more? They know why people know more about the more. Why do people know more about Laos? Well, the anthropologists, they love the more. They have no more land. Oh, there is no more land. Oh, so why do people know? Why don't you tell it? The anthropologists love the more. Because they are so exotic. Exotic. Exotic. Well, I think people know more about Laos because of their connection to the CIA. That's right, that Central Intelligence They know why you see them more now. We have Ajahn. He is a master can player. A wonderful treasure in our community. I love the can because Laos music is the best. Laos dance is the best. Laos culture is the best. Laos is the best. Laos is the best. Thank you. So that's just a quick excerpt of our show Refugee Nation and we frame it in a Long New Year festival. So in between the scenes though, we have, between the festival scenes, we have scenes that take place out in the community and around the country. And the way that we created this show was to collect stories from the Laos and Refugee community across the country and put them together in the show. And what we found a lot was certainly the Laos New Year festival is the big festival where everybody gets together and it's always a good face. It's always the cultural dance and the folk traditions. But everyone on stage has had a refugee experience and we were talking about most of the interviews that we found out at every city we went to it was the big thing was intergenerational disconnect. So we have a scene where there's an elder and a college student talking and the recent college graduate actually is trying to do a horror history project and wanting to interview her elders but then coming across an elder who is a leader in the community but unknown to her but probably could have been predicted he was suffering from PTSD himself. So talking, it was very difficult to get him to talk about his past but also through this work we've learned that talking about your past is also part of the healing process. So we've had those experiences and presented this work in the community for healing from the refugee experience as well. So the play took us about 10 years to develop having met different communities and so this is an image of, if you can see the image it's our presentation, I believe this one is at our most current version which was presented at Los Angeles Theatre Center in Los Angeles and this was the scene where Leilani is talking about where I play an elder and she plays a younger generation in these issues. So as Leilani had mentioned as much as artists that we want to present in a theater space with lights and sounds and set guess what, the community doesn't come to the theater or they're not used to coming to the theater. So what do we do? We go up into the community and we present and this is actually a presentation of an excerpt of similar to what we just did at a Lawn New Year Festival in Sacramento and I guess how many people were out there and show you the crowd that was looking at us, that's our audience. How did we get that audience into the seats? And so we have to be able to find some way within our artistic practice in the way that we created it and fortunately in the way that we created Refugee Nation. The word is modular so they're scenes, they're episodic and so we were able to do that and Sacramento was amazing. Out of a show with you, a quick story we did this show in Berkeley, we performed it at La Peña Cultural Center there's a huge community of loud people in Richmond which isn't too far from Berkeley and we performed at a Lawn New Year of over 600 people there, we did this particular excerpt right here I love it, just great! So we said okay great, come and see the show, it'll be at Berkeley, it'll be over at La Peña Cultural Center and they said oh no no and as we were leaving I think some of the elders were like oh that was enough that was great and I was like no but there's more! Please come! Hey you know what, it's over at La Peña Cultural Center, it's on Shattuck Avenue, it's just one exit away from Costco and I know you all go to Costco so it's one of those things where it's just a challenge to get the audience to come out and especially our communities and so we got about 10% of the community that came out to that performance and when they do come, I mean seeing the performance, seeing the reflection of their community out there, it's definitely very transformative, impactful and powerful So a lot of the work was created very episodically so some scenes we could do at Lawn New Year festivals and other scenes we couldn't really do at outdoor festivals because there was too dramatic and you really needed a quiet space but we still have done it, like this was a rehearsal that we did at the Tamay Arts Academy in Long Beach before we were about to head out on tour again Yeah so what I wanted to say and what this reminds me of this image is how even though the play that we've created, Refugee Nation, it's a very Lao-centric play, it's about the Lao community, it's based off of the Lao community but out of that story are human and universal themes that connect. This is a primarily Cambodian community in Long Beach, this is the Tamay Arts Center in a community center in their space and similarly this where they invited us to come and share our piece and there are all these connections, like the Cambodian community, the Vietnamese community, the Hmong community and so similar stories but told in specific points of view. So one of the commissioners of our work was actually from Alaska and so one of our first places we went to was Anchorage, Alaska and we presented an early version of the work and Anchorage people don't know is per capita one of the most diverse cities in the country so we performed at a middle school and did a workshop at the middle school and it's probably the first time we were able to do a theater workshop with 20 Hmong students, just all Hmong students and we presented it in an assembly to a very diverse, they speak something like 17 languages at this middle school, including native Alaska languages and so there was many people who could relate to the show. It was interesting because one of our community organizer actually was Hmong and she was telling her son who went to that school to go to this workshop and he was like, no I won't go to that workshop, I'm not a refugee and so she sat him down and said, well let me tell you what your grandmother went through to bring you to this country and by the time she told the story of escaping from Laos during the Vietnam War era and coming to the United States he was proud to be a refugee and then came to the workshop and participated in the workshop. So that has happened with this work, we've been now touring it for a decade and so in every city we go to that has happened, this intergenerational conversation has started from the show. But very early on we also were sent to Homer Alaska where there were no refugees. So how do we work with elementary, we've given an elementary school workshop so how do we work with elementary school students to have them understand the story of a refugee. So we engaged various versions of Augusta Bolao technique and various other techniques to help figure out how do we create empathy around the refugee experience. So for example did anybody want to, hey Bernie, thanks for us pulling you in. Would you like to help with this workshop with us? We're going to just demo it instead of making you all put down your lunch. And can we have one more volunteer? Anyone? Just, we're going to do a little come on. Okay, so are you guys familiar with the Augusta Bolao? Augusta Bolao. Have you ever heard of Modo the Image? Okay, I'm going to do a speedy version of Modo the Image. So Modo the Image is, do you know Modo the Image? Okay, so you are the sculptor, you are the play. So he will create an image for us by positioning you without speaking in a position that reflects the image we're talking about. Okay, so Modo the Image of, I'm going to be speedy, Modo the Image of War. So usually in this process I would tell them you can show them how to do it, like just switch your facial expression so that they can mirror it. You can also move them specifically. So go ahead and stay in that image real well. I'm going to add just a little too. Yeah, so, there we go. That's great. Okay, and release. So thank you guys. That was a speedy Modo the Image. Usually scaffolded, you know, one line does the sculpting, one line does the modeling. We do a couple words. And then we do like teblos, where we put this images together to create one image. So with the Homer, it was our first experiment with working with a non-refugee workshop around a refugee issue, and we asked him to do images of war. So kids play war all the time. Everyone did an image of a soldier or death, someone dying. And at the end of the workshop we asked, well, how come no one do refugees? So predictably, if we're in a room, most of the time when we do Modo the Image of War, people will do soldiers, they will do dying, they will do bombs exploding, but they don't do refugees unless of course we have refugee students in the class. And those are the only times we see people do images of refugees. And the thing that we want people to walk away with is every war that has ever been, there are refugees. And so when we engage in a war, whether you're for it or against it, not preparing for what happens to the refugees is something that all of our countries are not prepared for. So we have taken this work and started working for the last three years, we culminated working with taxi drivers. For us it was a very natural progression because in taxis we found people who themselves were refugees had been freedom fighters in another country before they came here, had been lawyers, had been doctors, were family men, and they found that driving a taxi was a good entryway profession. So we started collecting those stories three or four years ago before the whole Uber lift thing started, and we started collecting those stories. So we went between Minneapolis and Los Angeles, collecting stories and doing workshops, and was interesting in every city depending on which refugee community or immigrant community is there, we definitely talked to different ethnicities. So in Minneapolis this is our LA cast, there you go, go ahead. This is one of our first interviews in Minneapolis. We found that the taxi drivers, we were told by everyone that all of the taxi drivers came out of the Starbucks, which is right next door. The Starbucks was so crowded we had to go to the Ruger's Bagel next door to be able to have conversation. And right here we have two of our Minneapolis ensemble members, the young women, Ifra Mansour and we're interviewing these two men. On the left of Ifra is Ifra's dad who is a leader in the Somali community in Minneapolis. And in the middle we have another man who is a taxi driver himself. So by Ifra's dad showing up suddenly people were willing to talk to us because they knew who Ifra was. And the funny thing is Ifra is an actor and he's a musician. So the night of our performance he couldn't come because he had his own show. But it was really incredible to have someone in the cast who was Somali, who was connected to the community and helped us invite people to talk to us. So we got to know a lot more about the Somali community in Minneapolis through doing taxi driver stories and collecting taxi stories. We also went to the dispatch and then we would ask our ensemble members to go out and collect the stories as well so that when we came into workshop they already had the stories in their minds and then we used various exercises and games to try to work with the stories and find interesting ways to play with the stories to create new stories and create the show that we did. So we ultimately had an ensemble in two cities so that we were able to present global taxi driver in Minneapolis with a mix of L.A. and Minneapolis actors and then in Los Angeles primarily L.A. actors but a lot of Minneapolis stories. Just to add to what you're saying in addition to learning about the refugee community in Minneapolis and Somalia because we were working with taxi drivers in L.A. as we did interviews and checked out taxi companies. There were a lot of Eastern European Ukrainian, Armenian. So it was really interesting to find these lines, these coming ground in terms of refugee stories. And very impactful when we did it in Minneapolis at Intermediate Arts a high school we worked with at the school, Como Park High School brought their youth many of them are from Somalia, from that region it was the first time they've ever heard their own language on stage and it was just so very impactful and powerful for them to see that and it was just through global taxi drivers. And again we were working with Intermediate Arts their props we were working with them and they set up the workshops in the schools and that particular school again was one of the most diverse high schools in Minnesota and they speak numerous languages we ended up doing a workshop with at least 40 or more students and various some of those girls were in the headdress so there were things that we needed to adjust to make sure that we didn't partner boys with girls or the girls were partnered together so they could freely work with each other especially around the model touching each other but of course our well-prepared workshop is interrupted by a fire bell so we were sent out of the cafeteria where we were doing the workshop into the snowy parking lot to kill time and so finally I said well which workshop which exercises can we do so we did I was like okay well we're standing here long enough let's try to do some exercises in this circle we did the very basic warm up where you do your hand 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 down to 1 so we did that I'm like okay we're still standing here from 10 to 1 so well you know there's so many languages in this circle let's do it in every language that we can think of and so we did it in Moong we did it in Nepalese in Kiran we did it in Somali Sudanese Swahili we just kind of kept going and killed the time but it was really beautiful to see the kids well first of all for me to learn all those languages and also for the kids to for the first time share the language with each other because one of the things when there's that many languages in the room you definitely could hear a hum going on and you know at first as a teacher you're like I don't speak attention but really what's happening is there's translation going on and the students are translating for each other so this was a way to get it into the exercises and play with them and make it part of breaking down the barriers of being shy and not wanting to kind of speak in front of a big group So continuing on our journey working with refugee and immigrant communities we're excited to say our most current work that we're developing with the Micronesian community in Hawaii and that's really exciting the Micronesian community is complex as we're learning and there's been an influx in Hawaii and there's been a big breath because a lot of the generations before are looking at this new group and basically just being ignorant about why they're there Micronesians are, well let me show you some pictures of similar work that we've done So Micronesia is a set of, there's Polynesia, there's Melanesia there's Micronesia, so it's hundreds of islands and many different countries under the banner of Micronesia so what we're learning we've only done, we did a series of workshops with youth in Hawaii The more we learn, the more we learn we don't know what Micronesia is, there's the Federated Nations of Micronesia Federated States of Micronesia, which includes four different island groups, yeah Costa and Pompeo And then there's also the Marshallese Islands, which isn't technically under that banner but when we talk about Micronesians they get clumped within that label There's a lot of prejudice and discrimination because their numbers are rising in the housing projects and in the healthcare systems and of course the response of people who live even in Hawaii forgetting that their own background, they come from similar backgrounds is go back to where you came from In this case there's no place to go back to, the islands by 2020 some they're saying that something like 80% may not be livable water is rising, not that they're going to be underwater but that the water is rising enough to affect the drinking water so they're uninhabitable So in this case they really absolutely cannot go back and what else are we going to Well, look at the picture, this is an image of a workshop that we did with you This is specifically with Chukizu and with an organization called Adult Friends for Youth a social service organization that counsels youth at risk and these youth are specifically youth who in the high schools, when they get there they send them to the police, the police can't deal with them so they send them to Adult Friends for Youth and they are there to counsel and to be there for them In this particular image we did a workshop with over 20 of them and we had asked the story of how do you see your community, I just asked words, collective point what is in your community and one of the words that came out was Kakaroche and so we laughed because we're like oh it's Hawaii you know the big flying Kakaroches, not realizing then it was like oh they didn't mean Kakaroche in that way, they meant that we the Micronesians were being called Kakaroches, that's how they're being seen that's how they're being perceived and this was from a workshop they're a tableau of the reflection of that for them so like based on the model of the image you know scaffolding those exercises into building tableaus, we asked them to okay so we asked well what does Kakaroche mean and they all in unison said it means us this is what the community calls us and in fact there was a radio DJ who was using the word Kakaroches to describe the Micronesian community and luckily people protested that and he got into trouble but it's just a reflection of what is in the language in Hawaii right now against the Micronesian community, so we challenged them separated them in groups and said okay well take on one of these words that was in the community poem and this group took on Kakaroches so as you can see two youth are playing Kakaroches and the others are trying to stomp on the Kakaroches and so we saw this image and we had to take a moment back and say okay I didn't tell you we were doing theater of the oppressed but this is a clear image of oppression to me and so we had to have a discussion about what oppression is and this high school group the counselors told me like you might need to explain what oppression is to this group because they didn't even know what it was so I was like this image this is exactly to me an expression of oppression but of course we had a long conversation around what is happening in Hawaii and what creates that feeling So as you can see if you think about it as a youth the challenges if you are from that community to even find a sense of pride a sense of confidence hopefully through what we're working we can highlight that sense of pride and we wanted to highlight so this was just an extension of the workshop but in terms of connecting with the community there is an organization called Pacific Voices led by Inno Senta Kiku Sound who is actually one of our allies she is herself Chuki's leader in her community and these are her kids and so we partnered up with them and they have a space at the public housing sector for those who are familiar with that and they have a space and she just brings the youth to connect and to learn about their culture and so we are inspired to kind of partner up and hopefully bring a sense of theater and our practice into them and of course with this group they are younger elementary school kids and we'll do theater games and we'll do basic theater games with them and maybe some theater of their press model of the image but we weren't trying to get them to do images of war or oppression or we didn't try to push them in that direction at all but they themselves ended up doing tableaus that showed very violent images and I was like there was guns, there was death, there was people hitting each other and so I asked them like why are you doing you know is this live in your community life or is this from movies and they're like oh no this happens all the time so this is at Columbia Park Terrace which is a housing project they said oh yeah just the other day the guys from CAM4 came down and CAM4 is the other housing project and there's a rivalry between the two housing projects which are just up the freeway from each other there was a big fight just the other day in the parking lot which is right outside this room so I was born and raised in Hawaii and I remember there was a violent place to grow up but I had forgotten and by every single workshop we had done from the elementary school kids all the way to the elders violence came up and I had forgotten just how violent it can be to grow up in Kalihi I didn't grow up in Kalihi, Ova did grow up in Kalihi but I had forgotten here he is so that was something that we're in the process of developing this work we just started we're going to head back to Hawaii in July to do more story collection then at the same room as that with Eno's help she also put together a she has a women's group with the Chukis women so she invited me to come and be the guest speaker at the women's group and she didn't tell them we were doing theater I didn't want to let on we were doing theater I didn't want people to get scared so we just did story circle style theater not telling them it was theater and so we sat in a circle and I did like the name game so it's say your name and do a big motion with it so it would be like Ova which he always does Ova I can't do it as big as him but they did it in their seats and then everyone does their name but then we have to do everybody's name in the circle so you remember everybody's name so by the end of it all of the women were like laughing and yelling and they never didn't necessarily leave their chairs but they were sweating so it can be loud and and I know you can be expressive and I know you can tell your stories and that was theater you just did theater and this is fun so then we did and then I did try to get them out of the seat by doing cultural mapping who here has done cultural mapping you know what I'm talking about I asked them to stand in the room where you were born and so you get up and you stand in the room where you're born stand in the room where you live now and I wanted to see how is it a little bit different with Chucky's women and I said well okay so pretend these are their Chucky's islands stand in the room where you were born and immediately they were like oh we're all going to go to one island because there was only one island that has a hospital so all the women got up ended up on the okay they decided where the islands would be the main islands here the far out islands over there there's another far out island over there most of the women get on the main island and there's three women out on the outer islands so we asked them well you know and Eno was the most surprise our community organizer was the most surprise she was like wait a minute what I thought everybody would be on the main island where were you all born so one woman says I was born in the house the other woman says I was born in the bush and then the last woman says I was born on the beach so I mean that was the first time I've ever done cultural mapping with a specific Chucky's group and I was really trying to figure out okay what is the difference because we're talking about having assimilation challenges and so even just doing cultural mapping you know we had to do where were you born and then where were you from because in Chucky's or in Chuk you know some folks lived on the outer islands but they all had to come from the main island for school for hospitals to catch the main ferry to go to outside of Chuk so I mean already we're just learning so much from working with this group and this is one workshop that I've done with that particular group of women so my next question that was Eno also pointed out to us I was trying to get like okay what are some of the fundamental differences about living in islands and then coming to Hawaii Hawaii's still an island but the difference is coming to the United States and an urban center and an urban culture so what is different like how do you move like I imagine you move between islands in a different way so they explained to me how they have ferry boats that go along to each island and then go to the main island so they pick up people along the way and go to the main island and of course that means they're gone for like the semester of school and then they go back so they started to tell me about stories about like being on the boat and talking with their friends thinking that their friends are all going to school and then suddenly at a certain point they all start jumping off the boat because they want to they're not actually going with her they're swimming back to the island because they're going to stay home while she goes to the school on the main island and then of course they had stories about oh there's always tears I'm like why because they're living their mom behind oh no not bad I mean maybe the first time no after that it's their boyfriends and their girlfriends staying on the boat as long as possible and then their lover jumps off the boat to go back to the island while their boat sails away but the other key thing that you know said was you know in the United States we think about the water as separating us in Chuk they think about the water as connecting us so we are connected by the ocean so with that I wanted to introduce a writing exercise to you do you all have a writing do we have time still for writing? Yes, yes, let's do it. Let's do it. I would love to introduce this idea to you so while you get out here to your utensils I'll tell you a little bit story around how I came to this writing exercise our friend who's a poet and a cultural leader in Hawaii named Darlene Rodriguez she's Filipino from Hawaii introduced this writing exercise to me and it's called I carry in my baka so baka meaning canoe so thinking about the first Hawaiians who sailed from Tahiti to Hawaii when they left Tahiti they didn't know where they were going they didn't know they would end up all they knew is that they weren't going to come back they were just following the stars and the currents to find Hawai'i so I carry in my baka to me it means you start off with the words just I carry in my baka or I carry in my canoe and then you write down what you would carry with you so it could be very literal the things you would carry with you it could be metaphorical just think about that I carry in my baka and we'll give you five minutes to just go ahead and close out closing out on either the list or what you're writing everyone good yes does anyone want to read what they wrote would anyone like to share in their baka what do they carry on their journey anyone yes back there I carry in my baka my memories my Benadryl and EpiPen my family and friends my imagination my courage my dream for the future regardless of whether or not I probably have my fears in there somewhere a notebook and pen, comfortable shoes, and my phone and charger hahahaha I can actually use more of that she was a baka without the shape that's a modern baka fear of the walking dead beautiful thank you memories tools maybe a knife music a shawl a camera a good book my tai chi fan my reading glasses family photos a tote bag in which to collect things lip balm and tissues thank you anybody else go for it Jackie my courage and five gallons of mountain spring water we share one cup I carry 12 q-tips to clean my ears when necessary I carry my silence so I can listen to the water Jackie's stories and nonsense names the flap of the hummingbird beautiful thank you anyone else yes right things I'm coming from memories of where I'm from the memories of the people I've known it brings with me what I need to survive the journey food, water, clothing what I'll need for where I'm going to survive seeds, chickens, tools and what I need for life ahead which all turned out to be cultural like books, music, musical instruments and recipes oh yes I don't know anyone else want to share and you don't have to if you don't want to so we're just opening it up yeah I'll share if not yeah sure let's do one more and then we'll okay mine was and I'm sorry I had I came in late so mine was a little more metaphorical that's perfect it's all this is an exercise I get a little emotional so there we go I carry in my lap the smell of yasmine puritans and preachers privilege and guilt an alphabet seen here as backwards with letters that connect and take shape depending where you put them Mazahar and Kansas Beirut and Bethesda Mill Valley, New York, Washington Trablos, Damascus, Hala, Palestine villages and mountains that looked to the sea the Mediterranean hollowed buildings filled with bullet holes and memories streets I've never seen but recognize balconies filled with jasmine and mint my grandmother's voice piaf and laughter the rhythm of dead Becky do-do-tick-a-tack, do-do-tick-a-tack do-do-tick-a-tack, do-do-tick-a-tack words that mean things I don't fully understand but I'm beginning to remember dum thank you what a great transition thank you so much so these are just we're just sharing some of the exercises but at this point in our session we'd like to have a discussion a question and answer session well and I wanted to say I mean the purpose of the exercise is to be specifically like it is a powerful exercise in thinking about what you would the vaka itself is metaphorical right in this case we're talking about Polynesians and we're talking about ancient Hawaiians or ancient Polynesians coming to Hawaii but I found it as a powerful exercise in talking about the refugee experience so it could be what would you carry in your suitcase I mean with the Lao community we asked what did you carry like in the early stages of the piece we didn't have a set so we would ask the community to give us pieces that they would have carried with them across the Mekong when they had to escape so we would cover the stage with dip khao which is the little maybe go to a Thai restaurant to get the sticky rice in a little straw container we got a lot of dip khao to hang from the stage mats mostly with a lot of cooking stuff but it would be the sin this fabric here or the more traditional ones or those pieces that you would carry so there was so many stories that we got around what was the thing that you carried and some people I remember one of your aunties saying she put seeds in her mouth so that she could plant the herbs when she got to Hawaii or wherever she ended up that she could plant those herbs so that she could have the right ingredients but in whatever case it is whether it's a vodka or a suitcase or just anything you can carry it is a really powerful exercise and of course in this conference setting you know like bam do it but in our workshop it's a lot more again scaffolded given enough space for it to breathe for us to think and talk about it so we'd like to open up into a discussion or a Q&A speedy theater methodology any questions or comments or thoughts anything we need to clarify one comment we're talking about helping younger generations understand the experience of older generations I saw it done once with sort of older elementary school kids I think who were not necessarily themselves from a refugee experience but it was almost a combination of this exercise explaining saying like what if they came and knocked on your door and said your family has to leave in a half hour and you can only take as much as you carry and so asking kids what would they take with them and it was really kind of adorable like I would take my blue sweatshirt with a sweater and like my Walkman or you know or Xbox or whatever but others were really like very much more thoughtful and it was a way to give kids that entry point into what the refugee experience might be like that wasn't too harrowing to ask them to think about what is your definition of a refugee someone who's been forced out of their home land well there's the very we've had that discussion many times there's the what is the legal definition is there escaping war I think I believe someone else can give me the legal legal definition huh? or natural disaster it's true for natural disaster as well the legal definition actually I happen to know is not a natural disaster it's you flood persecution you've crossed an international border and it's on account of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group there are different definitions the legal definition is one and I was about to say that the other definition so like legally the Micronesians wouldn't be refugees but the people are using the term climate refugees I think John Kerry actually started using the term climate refugees even though technically they're not refugees and academics have started using forced migration forced to be much more inclusive and then it's funny because we also do a bit as the Ajans breaking down the stages of a refugee so it becomes even more metaphorical like the refugee mentality and we talk about refugee mentality being in survival mode and as if you could move from refugee to immigrant and so the immigrant is someone who's adjusted, they may not speak the language but they have a job, they're able to function in the society and citizen being someone who takes care of the community and is active in the community so it's not the literal term of citizenship that you can vote but that you actually are going to take care of your community and that one the Ajans pose as not everyone can achieve citizenship even people born in the United States can't be a citizen don't necessarily behave as citizens if you're not taking care of your community or thinking outside yourself so we play with that idea of what is refugee, immigrant and citizen have you ever thought of exploring people who escape to the south side of Chicago neighborhoods that are under duress and have to figure out how to get out of there we've never specifically targeted that but I think in developing refugee nation there's actually one story, one of the characters in it actually in the interviews he was actually refugee from Laos he didn't know he was because his parents didn't tell him he ended up being jumped into a gang he's Laos but he got dumped into a Filipino gang lives in Koreatown trying to escape kind of that lifestyle but for some reason is trapped because of the lack of knowledge and he's my generation, he's actually around my age seeking and searching actually for connection he was looking for other Laos folks and when he heard about our project he actually came out and we interviewed him and he had a fascinating story because of getting in trouble he was imprisoned he spent, he did his years in prison but right as he was about to get out INS came and took him and he was detained and he was held in Arizona Detention Center federal and it was because he was a citizen, he found out he was not a citizen when he was detained there and then he asked his mother who actually had PTSD and so she, because of the fact that they hadn't communicated in the years that they've been here that post-war after the effects of post-war they never really had that conversation his lawyer forced him to find out because he had to prove his refugee status and at this point he's in a federal prison he had a gang life he didn't even know he wasn't a citizen so his lawyer said you need to talk to your mom about how you got here and to prove your refugee status and that's the first time he spoke to his mother about escaping from Laos, about the Vietnam War and of course since she had PTSD she didn't want to talk about it and that's why she had never talked about it before she was someone who lived in Los Angeles but never turned on the lights at night then that was one of her symptoms because during war time you don't want to be able to be seen so you don't want to get bombed so the sounds in LA triggered her so the lights would always be off in their house at night anyway so he had to go back to her and talk about this with her but there was one clear case of needing to understand your refugee status and not knowing that he wasn't a citizen he just didn't know and we're finding out about in doing the work with the Micronesian community we're finding out that a lot of kids are going through that as well and it's also not as clear cut because Micronesians are coming from war and they're not, you know there's citizenship there's weird, I mean so not good with remembering the legal ramifications that are going on between the US and Micronesia there's a lot of they can become, there's some laws that are saying they can't become citizens so there's a whole bunch of different things going on with that community but the kids who are getting into trouble are then finding out oh wait, we're not a citizen, we're raised here we don't get it exercises like this with first generation kids and their parents and then understanding how refugee status, the mentality can continue into the next generation even if you're born in the country that you're living in right now so the answer is yes, but what happened what have you done to find the thing interesting well, the Micronesian groups that we were talking about, they were all the women were definitely first generation the kids were first generation even the high school youth were all first generation I'm sorry, what was the rest of that so the impact yeah, thank you from actually having done Refugee Nation Nationally I mean there are many it's been healing for that first generation because when parents and grandparents or parents and children come and see the show or experience this either a workshop or a process, they do talk I mean it opens up doors in terms of stories I mean it's kind of like what we were excavating with the VACA exercise one example was actually in Minneapolis when we did Refugee Nation, we met a Lao man who was actually in the military he saw a map of the bombing the bombing sites and he actually revealed to us that he helped radio in, he's Lao he fought with the US against the other regime and he called in, he's bombing his own people in his own country he actually because of part of this experience and seeing Refugee Nation it opened up it was a healing thing for him because he felt really guilty being you know bombing his own people, it took him that long he was actually in prison in a re-education camp after the war and then he was let go and released afterwards so he had this whole journey but it opens up and so his kids actually are learning more because it's basically we've been a catalyst for dialogue another really great wonderful story is when we did it in Alaska there's a large veterans community there from various different wars and actually when we did the show one of the veterans came up to me after the show and he gave me a picture and I was like what is this picture and it was actually a picture of him doing covert work he's American, he's white as white can be but because he was a veteran of the Vietnam War he wanted to give me this to share and he was like we need to tell these stories so those are the transformative impactful stories that we can share when we early couple years we started doing this project we started talking about the re-education camps they call it seminar but it's actually communist detention centers in Laos that happened after the Vietnam War and we were telling we were talking to his mom had seen the show for the first time and we went out to dinner and we were talking to her and Ova was like wait a minute mom, dad what happened between the end of the war and us coming to the US that was what 5 years or something from 1975 to 79 the war was over in 1975 so there's a 4 year gap there so I was like mom what happened what happened with the war ended and she goes oh you didn't know dad was taking to a seminar camp he was taking to a re-education camp this is all the years that I lived, it was close to 30 years I've never heard of this story so it took us doing the show to have her reveal the story of and I think that's where generationally it's been it's a struggle for them and I mean seeing the show the show is about this the two things is I want to know my history and this is mostly from the younger generation I really want to know my history and then the older generation saying I want to forget my past and that's that conflict that we share and hopefully through the show people are open to that that's what I want to hear right now exactly I just want to speak back on that that idea because I have a show that's also I'm loving ease it's about the talking to my grandmother I've done a lot of work with the UN around these stories and what you were saying from me experience it's sometimes the people who don't want to carry that anymore the relief in telling it to the people who want to carry it now and then the act that I was reminded of just literally speaking it I'm a writer I'm a performer I do this but even so the act of telling it and what that raises is so powerful I'm sorry that I missed the beginning and I'd love to hear more about how you use that in different communities just this small exercise and that intergenerational sort of healing I think before I forget I also want to make sure that you I don't know what your funding sources are all of that but having done some stuff with the UN I think there would be some really interesting overlaps in what you're doing because of their a lot of focus obviously on refugee migration stuff as well we got a wrap up I would say let's talk we have to wrap up we have been doing the work with the Laotian community for over a decade but as we kind of did a quick slideshow of the other communities we're working with and where we're at is how does how do the refugee how can we connect the refugees communities together because there's of course each community each story has its distinct differences but it's a repetition of this the refugee experiences there's a repetition there and I think what we're trying to develop with our methodology is how do we then take the work we've done with the Laot community and work with other refugee communities to help tell their stories and help have that empowerment happen so like we've had recent refugees come and see the our story our show refugee nation and be like oh that's happening in our community is this what happens when you come to the United States and we're like oh yeah yeah but now there's resources now the folks that we've met along the way who are over generation 1.5 generation are now in key positions in like Catholic social charities refugee resettlement we've met immigration officers who were once refugees themselves so I think that there has been progress and so as artists I'd like to be part of that progress of at least helping people helping the new refugees adjust through art with Kobchai Laila as we say mahalo and thank you very much for being a part of our session thank you so much