About this Event
With the support of the Virginia Arts Festival, composer Randall Eng and librettist Monique Truong will present two scenes from their opera-in-progress NORFOLK on Wednesday, November 11, at 7 pm at the Attucks Theatre.
Over the course of a week, four singers will workshop musical scenes from NORFOLK, an opera that is currently in the process of being written. This workshop culimates in a public presentation, conducted by Kelly Kuo and directed by Dennis Yueh-Yeh Li, which includes approximately 30-minutes of music, followed by an artist talk-back and Q&A session with the audience.
ABOUT THE OPERA:
To Rose, her father Dr. Young Sing is the archetypal Chinese American success story: respected doctor, family man, and Staten Island country club member. Now in his eighties and recovering from a stroke, his memory is disjointed yet vivid. As it ebbs and flows, it transports them from 2021 to the segregated South, circa 1947, where Rose meets a 15-year-old Young Sing, waiting tables at The Oriental Chop Suey Café in Norfolk, Virginia, a city with a Chinese and Chinese American community since the late 1800s. A detached dreamer, Young is an avid fan of Westerns, whose mythos of manhood, individualism, and nationhood he’s absorbing at every matinee. Rose becomes an “impossible witness” to a series of formative moments within her father’s early life, taking them from Norfolk circa 1936, 1947, and 1950 to 1988 Staten Island. She recognizes the seeds of his optimism and can-do approach, but she’s also confronted by all that he had left behind, willfully forgotten, and ignored. Rose attempts to answer the heartbreaking, existential question that he had once asked of his 15-year-old self: “Can a ‘Chinaman’ become a cowboy?” While the racist epithet shocks and stings them both, how father and daughter answer this question about non-belonging and home; rejection and insistence; and boundaries and possibilities reveals a generational gulf, one that becomes more navigable with every story spoken and shared.
CAST
Rose / Davy's Mother: Karen Vuong
Young's Mother: Hai-Ting Chinn
Young: Xiaojie Ji
Uncle Rich / Davy: Junhan Choi
Pianist: Jason Wirth
CREATIVE TEAM
Composer: Randall Eng
Librettist: Monique Truong
Conductor: Kelly Kuo
Director: Dennis Yueh-Yeh Li
Producer: Abagael Cheng
Agenda
🕑: 07:00 PM
Workshop Performance
🕑: 07:30 PM
Artist Talkback and Q&A
Event venue & nearby stays
Attucks Theatre, 1010 Church Street, Norfolk, United States
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