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SIA(B)
Written by May Lee-Yang
Directed by Robert Farid Karimi
Performed by Katie Ka Vang and May Lee-Yang
Reinventing the one person genre, writer May Lee-Yang enlists the talents of performance artist Katie Vang to tell her personal story of a Hmong woman who feels silenced living in the U.S., torn between her love for Nintendo games, pop culture and her own Hmong culture. She searches to gain her voice again by fleshing out and reassembling the real voices of the Hmong community members around her mixed with the images of karaoke pop music, Hulk Hogan, and Laura Ingalls Wilder. Each character taking her closer to the discovery of her Siab, the Hmong word for liver, the Hmong symbol for an individual’s core, and learning that home is where the Siab is. For a community who has historically been searching for home, Lee-Yang’s story is a humorous, emotional journey that shows how we can all find our voices, our center, by remembering the community around us.
“Often goofy and at times mournful, but the playwright’s overarching quest for understanding and self-discovery is so true it borders on heroic.”