Echo 2011: Cal VSA’s Annual Cultural Showcase

As mentioned in the last post, OneVietnam will be helping promote the 2011 Vietnam Film Festival as a formal media partner.  That event kicks off today in Southern California, but for folks at a geographical disadvantage, fret not–there’s yet another visual and aural Vietnamese event happening this weekend in Northern California to satiate your cultural cravings. UC Berkeley’s Vietnamese Student Association will be holding their annual showcase this Sunday, April 10, from 1 – 4pm at the Zellerbach Theatre. You can purchase tickets here. (Sorry out-of-state and not-in-America readers; you’re a little out of luck this time, but you can check OneVietnam.org’s community calendar for more events.)

The show is entitled “Echo” and will feature student written and directed theatrical performances, dance and music, among a host of other sure-to-inspire spectacles.  As current Cal VSA President Alexander Vu further explains, “This year, we’ll be focusing on the modern Vietnamese American community, an aspect left untouched for several years through our culture show, so we’re definitely excited to address this community and the issues affecting this community.”

In particular, the show will be enriched by an exploration of the Vietnamese American experience in New Orleans:

Our stories, influenced by the real-life Vietnamese American community of New Orleans, are brought to you through a lyrical and poetic series of vignettes, visual media, musical numbers and dance performances, coupled with powerful verse. The larger story evokes provocative questions: how do Vietnamese Americans see themselves in national and city-machine politics; how does the Vietnamese community choose to confront and accept multiple genders and sexual identities; and how do the legacies of war and an ever-opening Vietnamese market economy change the ‘homeland’ that overseas Vietnamese do and will encounter?

Interested?  Ready to see a student-produced event transform your afternoon (and perhaps even your way of thinking of Vietnamese identity, your world view)?  Find out more about the culture showcase at http://www.heartheecho2011.com/.

It’s a beautiful thing, isn’t it?  When younger folks embrace heritage.

 

Images from the cultural show’s homepage