'Saigon' director (@hollandfestival) seeks extreme emotions: 'I don't want any more distance between the story and the audience.'

'Never, never would I make a performance about my mother, or about myself. Jamais.' Caroline Guiela Nguyen, child of 'a marriage between a Vietnamese mother and a 'pied-noir" (Algerian Colonial) is not into personal stories. The theatre-maker captured audiences' hearts at last year's Avignon Festival with the play Saigon. This touching, deeply human play (*****) is on at the 2018 Holland Festival in Amsterdam. I went to preview in Berlin, where Saigon was showing during its European victory tour.

'Actually, this project has a very playful reason,' Nguyen says afterwards. 'When we are on tour, we often eat with the ensemble in Vietnamese restaurants. One day, the thought crept into my head that really no one knew the history of the people who worked there. While the French eat there so often. I wanted to make stories in that place. Exactly that place.'

Nostalgia

Saigon is set in the setting of a Vietnamese restaurant, or rather two Vietnamese restaurants. One in 1956's Saigon, the other in 1996's Paris. They are exactly the same, but that's not a problem. In fact, my favourite Vietnamese restaurant in Utrecht is also a copy of the decor of Saigon. As a matter of fact, it is also called that. 'All Vietnamese want their décor to preserve the memory of their past in Vietnam. They are places where exile and memory are kept alive.'

Subject is the rather violent fate of Vietnamese who had to leave the country in 1956, after France had withdrawn from south-east Asia a few years earlier[ref]Commentary by historian John Kleinen: That went very orderly, completely different from the way the Americans left Vietnam 20 years later. The reasons for the French departure are complex, but the term "fleeing" does not apply to it.
The repatriation of remaining troops began on 20 May 1955 and ended on 28 April 1956. Vietnamese who had fought for the French or had been granted French citizenship during the French colonial presence were given a choice by nationalist President Ngo Dinh Diem in 1956: stay and become citizens of the Republic of Vietnam (in the South) or leave for France. For Vietnamese who had fought in the French army and for the children of French soldiers fathered by Vietnamese women, there was hardly any choice. [/ref]. They were not allowed to return for 40 years (partly because of an international boycott) until 1996, when US President Bill Clinton lifted sanctions and the borders reopened. Those 40 years of exile are a trauma for many Vietnamese. Also for Nguyen's mother, but when she took a trip to Vietnam with her mother in 1997, she was hardly aware of the ferocity of that event.

Loaded

'When I started making the play, I wanted it to be set in 1956 and 2016. It had to be about a very near present. It was the French actors of Vietnamese origin who told me that there was a much more important date - 1996. That was the year the Vietnamese government invited the exiles to return. Only then did I realise how fraught that trip was in 1997.'

'This is exactly also why I don't like it when people say that I bring my own history or that of my actors on stage. It's the other way around. The project brings back my memories.'

Unintelligible

One of the memories was the difference between the Vietnam from her family's stories, and the Vietnam she saw in 1996. In the show, one of the highlights is a scene in which one of the characters, on returning to his old place, is laughed at by his second cousins because he appears to be speaking in an unintelligible, old-fashioned dialect. 'Vietnamese is a language that has hardly any written tradition. It is mostly handed down orally. As a result, it changes very quickly. We noticed this during rehearsals. The French Vietnamese were regularly at odds with the young Vietnamese interpreter who was my assistant. But it really is true: in Vietnam, you can not only hear from someone where they are from, but also from which era they are from.'

The realism in the show is further heightened by the fact that some of the actors are Vietnamese themselves. They are pros from Vietnam, who do not speak a word of French. Their input was essential to deepen the story, according to Nguyen. The acting style of the Vietnamese actors is something to consider, though. At a certain point, the oldest actress playing the mother figure reaches a state of emotionality that might be a bit too intense for down-to-earth Dutchmen. Still, it works.

Typically Vietnamese

'Be assured that in France we don't like to see extreme emotions on stage either,' Nguyen says. 'Still, I am someone who does like to push things to the limit. I always wondered where that came from, and while rehearsing in Ho-Chi-Minh City, I found out where I got it from. It's typically Vietnamese. Every story there has to end in tears, and they are also very good at making that happen. So I thought: I can't make this performance on this subject if I am afraid to allow such intense emotions. I didn't want any more distance between the story and the audience.'

No documentary

While she wants to reduce the distance between story and audience, Nguyen does ensure that no story of her own is told on stage. Nor do the actors draw on their own memories: 'There is no similarity between the actors' lives and the story we tell. I absolutely do not make documentary theatre, as, for example, Mohamed El Khatib has done with the supporters of RC de Lens, which is also at the Holland Festival. There, people are telling their own lives on stage. With us, it's the exact opposite. While writing, I cannot get it over my heart to ask my actors to bring their own lives on stage. Especially when I seek the emotions as I do.'

'The whole play is made up. I made up the big love story in the play in my study. Of course based on what I had read and heard, but it is pure imagination.'

Good to know

Saigon can be seen at the 2018 Holland Festival on 13 and 14 June. Information and booking.