Event and Ticketing Details
Dates & Times
Friday 13 March
6:15 PM - 7:15 PM
People – families – of diaspora carry the traces of change: new circumstances, different languages, uncertainty and often trauma. How do the ghosts of history and geography affect the everyday experiences and identities of people today? And what happens when the places where your parents and grandparents lived no longer exist – or you don’t share a language with your parents because you grew up in different places?
For Asia TOPA 2020, theatre director Caroline Guiela Nguyen presents SAIGON – a moving family saga tracing the paths of 11 characters across history and space. In March, her translator, Nguyen Duc Duy, will join Australian writer Benjamin Law for a conversation about language, theatre and comedy, and this incredible play that places the art of translation at centre stage. They will also explore the intergenerational, intercultural dimensions of their work – treasured by audiences, but largely missing from international stages. Hosted by Beverley Wang.
Presented in partnership with Asia TOPA.
Featuring
Benjamin Law
Benjamin Law is the author of The Family Law (2010), Gaysia (2012), the Quarterly Essay Moral Panic (2017) and editor of Growing Up Queer in Australia (2019). He's also an AWGIE Award-winning screenwriter who created and co-wrote three seasons of the award-winning TV series The Family Law (SBS/Hulu/Comedy Central Asia), wrote the sold-out mainstage play Torch the Place (Melbourne Theatre Company, 2020), and is co-executive producer, co-creator and co-writer on the forthcoming Netflix comedy-drama Wellmania. Every week, Benjamin co-hosts ABC Radio National's weekly national pop culture show Stop Everything! and interviews public figures for Good Weekend magazine (the Age/Sydney Morning Herald). He is a literary scout for Hachette Australia, board member of Story Factory, committee member of the Jesse Cox Audio Fellowship and ambassador for Plan Australia, the Australian Literacy and Numeracy Foundation, Victorian Pride Centre, Bridge for Asylum Seekers and the Pinnacle Foundation.
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Beverley Wang
Beverley Wang is the ABC’s National Culture Correspondent. As culture correspondent, Beverley merges years of experience in journalism and media with a deep knowledge of pop culture to share analysis across multiple ...
Nguyen Duc Duy
Nguyen Duc Duy was born and grew up in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. In 2012, Nguyen commenced a French translation major at the University of Pedagogy, and during that time translated on a variety of topics from piping and plumbing, waste management to butchery. In 2015, Nguyen met theatre director Caroline Guiela Nguyen and started providing translation for arts and culture. Nguyen translated the stories gathered from Vietnamese people in Paris and Ho Chi Minh City as part of research for Caroline Guiela Nguyen’s acclaimed theatre production SAIGON, which charts the story of Vietnamese exiles living in France. SAIGON premiered at the 2017 Avignon Festival and is presented as part of the 2020 Asia TOPA festival in Melbourne.