SAIGON MITEM 14

“When we talk about Saigon, what are we talking about? France? Vietnam? Martin Sheen at the beginning of Apocalypse Now? The 235 restaurants that bear that same name in France? It’s not only about the Vietnamese, or about the French who left for Indochina, it’s about our collective memory. Saigon belongs to all of us.” Caroline Guiela Nguyen spoke these touching words at the Avignon Festival, where the play was performed in June 2017. The peculiarly-named theater company – Les Hommes approximatifs (Approximately people) – was established in 2009 at the initiative of the director, who, having staged a number of classical plays, intended to make “the sound of the world” heard and adapted contemporary topics to stage with her actors and co-creators, with great success. Although Caroline Guiela Nguyen has Vietnamese roots on her mother’s side, the production she directed is not autobiographical, and she did not really want to talk about colonization. The topics of exile, displacement, the loss of one’s mother tongue, torn-apart families, and lovers forced to part appear through the fates of individuals in the Parisian restaurant of Vietnamese immigrant Marie-Antoinette, where memories of the past recur through karaoke songs. Last year, the performance toured various parts of the world, and the stories of these fates must have had different overtones in the various places where they were performed. They will surely strike a deep cord in the hearts of the Hungarian audience.