A Cultural Conversation
Resource Guide
ORDWAY CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS
TABLE OF CONTENTS
3
PRODUCTION PROGRAM NOTE
4 the Vietnam era
6 production history, controversy, AND community impact
8 bibliography of resources AND
A PARTIAL LIST OF community RESOURCE organizations
PRODUCTION proGRAM note
A MISS SAIGON GLOSSARY
James A. Rocco l Ordway Vice President/Programming and Producing Artistic Director
AMBASSADOR GRAHAM MARTIN
American Ambassador to Vietnam, he was
one of the last out of the embassy on April
29, 1975.
ourselves into the Vietnamese world of
religion, mysticism, and a permanent
sense of fate, along with their practical
sense of survival during times of war.”
Miss Saigon opened on September 20,
1989, at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane
in London, and closed on October 30,
1999, after playing 4,264 performances.
Claude-Michel Schönberg and Alain
Boublil wrote Miss Saigon on the heels
of their first major success, the landmark
musical Les Misérables. As of January
2013, Miss Saigon is the 11th longestrunning Broadway musical in musical
theater history.
Schönberg and Boublil set out to write
a love story against the backdrop of the
Vietnam War. To this day, the mere mention of the war in Vietnam, stirs deep
emotional responses from people from
all around the world. Schönberg and
Boublil had no idea that they would create one of the 20th century’s most controversial pieces of musical theater.
When asked about the show, the two
men said, “We resolved to write our own
story of a misunderstanding between
two individuals of different cultures,
but projecting it into a tragic period of
modern history—a time when that basic
misunderstanding between two people
could reflect the deeper misunderstanding between their respective countries at
war.
We knew we wanted, in the very
beginning of the score, to hear this clash
between two cultures. We tried to put
Lea Salonga originate the role of Kim
and catapulted to fame with the show.
Jennifer Paz, who followed Lea Solonga
in the role, is pictured below as Kim
in Miss Saigon.
The original Miss Saigon was one of the
most spectacular and technically complex productions ever staged. 266 people worked on the London production
at each performance. (Only 47 of those
appeared onstage.)
Miss Saigon opened at the Broadway
Theatre, New York City, on April 11, 1991,
and closed on January 28, 2001, after
playing 4,092 performances.
The New York Times called it,
“Gripping entertainment”
The Chicago Tribune called it,
“A triumphantly vibrant, courageous
work of musical theater.”
Miss Saigon has won 30 major theater
awards including three Tony® Awards,
four Drama Desk Awards and three Outer Critics Circle Awards. It has played in
25 countries, 246 cities and translated
into 12 different languages. And like
Vietnam, the mention of Miss Saigon
continues to stir passionate emotion.
Information for article and glossary provided by
Behr, Edward, Mark Steyn. The Story of Miss Saigon. Arcade Publishing Company, Inc.
BANGKOK
The capital of Thailand, it was the destination for many refugees from Vietnam,
travelling by boat across the dangerous
bay of Mekong. These refugees became
known as “boat people.”
FOB
A derogatory adjective for Asian Americans,
referring to the immigrants who once
came to America by boat.
BUI-DOI
The Bui-Doi, or “the dust of life,” were
the children of American soldiers and
Vietnamese women. These children were
often shunned by both their American
and Vietnamese families.
HO CHI MINH
Leader who formed the North Vietnamese
army and led the invasion into the South.
Called “Uncle Ho” by his followers.
PAPER TIGER
A term, meant to be insulting, that the
Viet Cong used for the American army.
A “paper tiger” looked fierce, but would
crumple in a fight. It implied Americans
were not as strong as they appeared to be.
RE-EDUCATION
Many South Vietnamese people were
put in camps after the fall of Saigon to
“re-educate” them in the Communist
doctrine. “Re-education” often involved
torture and brainwashing. In Miss Saigon,
the Engineer spends three years in a reeducation camp before looking for Kim again.
SAIGON
Capital city of South Vietnam, it was
renamed Ho Chi Minh City when the North
Vietnamese took control on April 30, 1975.
It was the home of the American Embassy,
where, in the show, John and Chris are
stationed.
THIEU
Nguyen Van Thieu became President
of South Vietnam in 1967. He resigned in
1975, just before the Communist invasion
of Saigon.
VIET CONG
Communist forces hiding in South Vietnam.
They joined with the North Vietnamese to
overthrow the South Vietnamese government and reunify Vietnam.
Jennifer Paz in Miss Saigon and as The Narrator in the Ordway’s 2010 production of
Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor® Dreamcoat. She went on to tour with the Ordway’s
production of Joseph in Japan. (Photos courtesy J Paz)
VISA
The Engineer tries to buy a visa to get into
America. A visa is an official permit authorized by the government, allowing passage
into a country. These were at a premium in
Saigon.
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the Vietnam era
when Japan surrendered, Ho Chi Minh’s
forces took the capital of Hanoi and
declared Vietnam to be an independent
country, the Democratic Republic of
Vietnam. France refused to recognize
Ho Chi Minh’s Republic and returned to
Vietnam, driving Ho Chi Minh’s Communist forces into the north.
For centuries, Vietnam struggled with
domination by imperial and colonial
powers. In ancient times, China ruled
Vietnam. In 938 AD, Vietnam became
independent and a succession of Vietnamese dynasties flourished while the
nation expanded geographically and
politically until the late 1800s, when
France colonized the Indochina Peninsula and took control of Vietnam.
Vietnam nationalist movements arose
in the early 1900s, with citizens demanding more self-governance and less
French influence. The most prominent
of these was headed by the Communist leader Ho Chi Minh, who founded a
militant nationalist organization called
the Viet Minh.
WORLD WAR II
During World War II, France lost its
foothold in Vietnam and Japan took
control of the country. The Viet Minh
resisted the Japanese and extended
its power throughout Vietnam. In 1945,
Ho Chi Minh appealed for aid from
the U.S., but because the U.S. was
embroiled in the escalating Cold War
with the Communist USSR, it distrusted
Ho Chi Minh’s Communist leanings and
aided the French instead.
A DIVIDED COUNTRY
Fighting between the Viet Minh and
the French continued until The Geneva
Accords of 1954 declared a cease fire
and officially divided Vietnam into
North Vietnam (to be governed by
Ho Chi Minh and his Communist forces)
and South Vietnam (to be governed by
a French-backed emperor). The Geneva
Accords stipulated that the divide was
temporary and that Vietnam was to be
reunified under free elections to be held
in 1956.
THE COLD WAR
AND THE DOMINO THEORY
The U.S. believed that the “fall” of North
Vietnam to Communism might trigger a
fall of all Southeast Asia to Communism.
Therefore the U.S. felt compelled to
offer support to the South Vietnamese
government which in turn proclaimed
itself the true government of Vietnam.
The lines for international involvement
were now clearly drawn and the elections that had been scheduled for 1956
were cancelled.
Throughout the early 1960s, the U.S.
supplied South Vietnam with equipment
and advisors. Officially the U.S. was
committed to minimal involvement, but
in 1964 when North Vietnamese patrol
boats attacked American destroyers
in the Tonkin Bay, Congress passed
resolutions giving President Lyndon
19 4 5 19 5 0 19 5 4 19 5 6 19 6 0 19 6 3 19 6 4
Ho Chi Minh
declares
Vietnam’s
independence
U.S. pledges
military aid
to help the
French
President
Eisenhower
outlines the
Domino
Theory
Geneva
Accords
French
leave
Vietnam
John F.
Kennedy
elected
U.S.
President
Ngo Dinh
Diem,
1st President
of South
Vietnam
and
President
Kennedy
assasinated
Lyndon B.
Johnson
becomes
U.S.
President
4
Gulf of
Tonkin
Incident
In the Civil War there was an expression. Soldiers said they wanted to “see the elephant”—meaning they were eager to go into battle.
Once they dealt with the horror, they never wanted to see the elephant again. —Lynn Higgins, Helicopter Pilot, Vietnam
The Antiwar Movement
Throughout the war, Vietnam sustained
repeated bombing and fighting that
destroyed much of the country, creating
a population of homeless and penniless
people. Many fled to the comparative
safety of the cities, where, as shown in
the first act of Miss Saigon, women were
often forced into prostitution.
In 1969, Ho Chi Minh died in Hanoi while
an antiwar movement within the U.S.
gained momentum. Students, counterculture hippies, and many mainstream
Americans denounced the war. These
protests became increasingly violent—
as unmistakably revealed, in 1970, by
the deaths of four students at Kent
State University when Ohio National
Guardsmen fired on a crowd.
Vietnamization and
U.S. Withdrawal
Finally, in 1973, after nearly two years
of negotiations, cease-fire agreements
between the U.S. (with Henry Kissinger
as U.S. negotiator) and the North Vietnam government were signed in Paris.
American troops soon left Vietnam.
In the spring of 1975, North Vietnamese
forces launched an all-out offensive on
South Vietnam. The South Vietnamese
capital of Saigon fell to the North Vietnamese. On April 30, 1975, the country
was reunited under Communist rule as
the Socialist Republic of Vietnam and
the war in Vietnam ended.
COMPILED BY James A. Rocco
Vice President of Programming and
Producing Artistic Director at the Ordway.
Butler, David. The Fall of Saigon. Simon and Schuster
Karnow, Stanley. Vietnam, A History. The Viking Press
SparkNotes. The Vietnam War (1945-1975): Summary of Events
(www.sparknotes.com/history/american/vietnamwar/summary)
Phan, Shandon. Vietnamese Amerasians in America, AsianNation: The Landscape of Asian America.
19 6 5 19 6 8 19 6 9 197 0 197 3 First American
Troops
arrive in
Vietnam
Tet Offensive
My Lai
Massacre
Richard M.
Nixon
elected
U.S.
President
PHOTO: budgettraveltalk©2012
Johnson power to proceed against
North Vietnam, and the “Americanization” of the war began. By the end of
1966, there were nearly 400,000 U.S.
troops in Vietnam.
Nixon
announces
Vietnamization
The Ohio
National
Guard
kills four
unarmed
students at
Kent State
University
May 4.
Cease fire
signed in
Paris
End of draft
announced
Last troops
leave
Vietnam
1974 197 5
Nixon resigns
Gerald Ford
becomes
U.S.
President
Remaining
Americans
Evacuate
Vietnam
Controversial
“Operation
Babylift”
begins.
5
Eunha Na, Ph. D. candidate in English at University of Minnesota,
Twin Cities, specializing in contemporary women’s theater.
Bomi Yoon, Ph. D. student in English at University of Minnesota,
Twin Cities, specializing in contemporary Asian American drama.
History of the Production
Miss Saigon is a musical by Alain Boublil and ClaudeMichel Schönberg (also famous for Les Misérables) that
tells the tragic tale of a romance between a Vietnamese
woman and an American GI. It was their second collaborative project after the huge success of their landmark
musical, Les Misérables in 1985. Boublil and Schönberg
came up with an idea of a new type of musical that is not
just based on Western theories and musicology but one
where West meets East in creating music, characters,
and story. The process of Miss Saigon was itself a global,
international project. It was the first musical that featured
multiracial and Asian characters. The creative team literally crossed the oceans in their search for an actress to
play the role of Kim, a Vietnamese heroine. After intensive auditions in major cities in the U.S. as well as Hawaii,
it was in the Philippines where they found Lea Salonga,
whose spectacular debut as Kim would launch her career
as an international star.
Since its opening, Miss Saigon has attracted both
commercial success and active protests. This is true
of the local production as well. Miss Saigon returns to
Ordway Center for the Performing Arts almost 20 years
after its Twin Cities’ premiere. During that premiere, the
Asian American community protested the show, and this
new production in 2013, has already attracted its share of
controversy with Asian American groups
protesting its revival.
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Why the controversy over
a work of musical theater?
The Controversy of Miss Saigon & The Butterfly
Stereotype
The protests over Miss Saigon have to do with its
popularity, which hinges not only on its entertaining
elements of song and dance, memorable music, tearjerking melodrama, and spectacle, such as the nowfamous helicopter evacuation scene, but also with its
representation of Asian women, East-West relationships,
and transnational adoption.
For a contemporary audience, Miss Saigon reworks
an all-too-familiar stereotype of the submissive and
hyper sexualized Asian woman. Boublil and Schönberg
have traced their inspiration for the musical to a photograph of a Vietnamese woman giving up her child to an
American GI, which reminded them of Puccini’s opera
Madama Butterfly (1904). Madama Butterfly’s tragic
heroine sacrifices herself for the love of the worthless
Pinkerton, an American naval lieutenant, and this opera
sets up a racial typecasting of Asian and Asian American
women as “butterflies.” This interracial dynamic has been
memorably satirized by playwright David Henry Hwang in
his Tony® Award-winning M. Butterfly (1988), in which the
main character flippantly remarks of the fantasy of the
constant pairing of the “submissive Oriental woman”
and the “cruel white man.”
“Consider it this way: what would you say if a blonde
homecoming queen fell in love with a short Japanese
business man? He treats her cruelly, then goes home for
three years, during which time she prays to his picture
and turns down marriage from a young Kennedy. Then,
when she learns he has remarried, she kills herself. Now,
I believe you would consider this girl to be a deranged
idiot, correct? But because it’s an Oriental who kills
herself for a Westerner—ah!—you find it beautiful.”
Miss Saigon dramatizes such recurrent themes as love
that transcend racial and cultural boundaries (although
with consequences), ultimate maternal self-sacrifice, and
quest for the American dream. However, in many ways,
characters in Miss Saigon complicate and defy racial and
gender stereotypes that are seen in many versions of
the Butterfly stories. Like other “butterflies,” Kim initially
appears as a naïve, submissive girl. At the same time, she
is also a strong mother figure who would do anything for
her son. Chris is far from a Pinkerton, (a cruel American
white man who brutally abandons his Asian mistress),
and his loyalty to Kim and inner conflicts make his actions
credible and redeeming.
Implications of the Narrative on Contemporary Issues
Under its romanticized façade, Miss Saigon raises
poignant and complex questions about relationships
between people and cultures, especially those that are
affected by political and historical situations. Kim’s
yearning for a reunion with Chris and the Engineer’s
hope of going to America are representative of the
American Dream of many Vietnamese people. Kim’s
ultimate self-sacrifice confers her own dream onto her
son, who will live a “better life” in America as son to his
white American parents. Such an ending, which seems to
leave us with a sense of hope as well as pathos become
ambiguous and ironic now that we are informed of the
many real life stories about the children of Vietnamese
women and American soldiers known as Bui Doi.
The U.S. political involvement in the Pacific region in
the later half of the 20th century has resulted in mass
transnational adoption of Asian children like Tam and
other war orphans. They as a group became a symbol
of American post-war economic prosperity and the
successful inclusion of minority immigrants under the
umbrella of ‘multicultural family.’ Romanticizing Tam’s
migration to America runs the risk of overlooking the
multi-layered aspects of transnational adoption: the
nations, organizations, global politics, and the individuals
involved. The diverse backgrounds and personal histories
of transnational adoptees are dissolved into an archetypical story of “Amerasian Tam” through the musical’s
melodramatic and emotionally manipulating love story.
By portraying the U.S. as a benevolent, paternal figure
and Asian children as the orphan in need of rescue, such
narratives of transnational adoption fashion the image
of adoptees as the “lucky” transnational immigrants,
who are indebted to their saviors in “realizing” the
American Dream.
Community Impact
The Asian American community cannot but feel
concern for the racial and gender stereotypes that
can be perpetuated through Miss Saigon, especially
when the Asian or Asian American stereotypes—exotic,
erotic, prostitutes, pimps, gangsters, evil, illegal
labor, victims, and “Butterflies”—affect individuals.
The cultural representations of Asia and Asian people
seem to reiterate racial and gender stereotypes long
perpetuated through Butterfly myths in Western
imagination. From the original casting of a white actor
(Jonathan Pryce) for the role of the biracial Engineer
with yellowface to the criticism surrounding the racially/
ethnically/culturally coded narrative, Miss Saigon brought
together Asian American communities to collectively
challenge centuries-old Orientalist discourses in the form
of artistic and political expressions.
There are no clear-cut solutions to these controversies
but there are questions we might need to think about
this season: What kinds of conversations could this show
generate within our close community? How does this
show reinforce or challenge our assumptions about
ourselves and others in our community? How should we
as global citizens engage with Miss Saigon in relation to
a complex international political landscape?
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Resources
ONLINE ARTICLES
“’Welcome to Dreamland:’ Power, Gender, and Post-Colonial Politics in Miss Saigon” by Eleanor Ty in Essays in Theatre,
November 1, 1994. Available to download at http://www.academia.edu/1790289/Welcome_to_Dreamland_Power_Gender_
and_Post-Colonial_Politics_in_Miss_Saigon_
“Challenging the Asian Illusion” by Gish Jen in the New York Times August 11, 1991
http://www.nytimes.com/1991/08/11/arts/challenging-the-asian-illusion.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm
“Gripe: ‘”Miss Saigon” is a Celebration of Stereotypes’ by Dorinne Kondo in the Los Angeles Times February 18, 1995
http://articles.latimes.com/1995-02-18/local/me-33478_1_miss-saigon
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/16/us/vietnam-legacy-finding-gi-fathers-and-children-left-behind.html?hp&_r=0
Books
About Face: Performing Race in Fashion and Theater by Dorinne Kondo
http://www.amazon.com/About-Face-Performing-Fashion-Theater/dp/0415911419/
A History of Asian American Theatre (Cambridge Studies in American Theatre and Drama) by Esther Lee Kim
http://www.amazon.com/History-American-Theatre-Cambridge-Studies/dp/1107402921/ref=tmm_pap_title_0
National Abjection: The Asian American Body Onstage by Karen Shimakawa
http://www.amazon.com/National-Abjection-Asian-American-Onstage/dp/0822328232/ref=pd_bxgy_b_text_z
Performing Asian America: Race and Ethnicity on the Contemporary Stage
(Asian American History & Culture) by Josephine Lee
http://www.amazon.com/Performing-Asian-America-Ethnicity-Contemporary/dp/1566396379/ref=pd_bxgy_b_text_y
The Things They Carried (fiction) by Minnesota author Tim O’Brien
http://www.amazon.com/The-Things-They-Carried-OBrien/dp/0618706410
Resources on the Vietnam War
The Fall of Saigon by David Butler
http://www.amazon.com/Fall-Saigon-The-David-Butler/dp/044012431X
Vietnam by Stanley Karnow
http://www.amazon.com/Vietnam-A-History-Stanley-Karnow/dp/0140265473
Flashbacks: On Returning to Vietnam by Morley Safer
http://www.amazon.com/Flashbacks-Returning-Vietnam-Morley-Safer/dp/0312924828
Resources on Miss Saigon
The Story of Miss Saigon by Edward Behr and Mark Stein
http://www.amazon.com/Story-Miss-Saigon-Edward-Behr/dp/1559701242
*This list is meant to be an introduction to the content controversy surrounding Miss Saigon. It is not complete,
but gives a sampling of voices on the subject. We did not include information on the casting controversy surrounding
the first American production of Miss Saigon, although that is touched upon in the books listed above.
COMMUNITY Resources
The narrative of Miss Saigon references historical and present-day practices that are social justice issues in many communities.
Below is a partial list of organizations in the Twin Cities that work on these causes.
YWCA St. Paul and Stand Against Racism
http://ywcaofstpaul.org/
http://standagainstracism.org/index.html
The Advocates for Human Rights
http://www.theadvocatesforhumanrights.org/
Women’s Foundation of Minnesota
http://www.wfmn.org/
Breaking free
http://www.breakingfree.net/
World Without Genocide
http://worldwithoutgenocide.org/
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