Katie Ka Vang’s New Play Holds 50 Years Of Hope
By Lianna Matt McLernon
Made through community engagement, “Hmong Futures” makes its world premiere April 11-May 3.
Katie Ka Vang’s theater project, “Hmong Futures: The Future of Us,” is both a commemoration of 50 years of Hmong people in Minnesota and a vision of the next 50. Making its world premiere with Theater Mu from April 11-May 3, it is a homecoming story of three generations of women woven through with insights and stories from community engagement events and activities that took place during 2025, the 50th anniversary of Southeast Asian people in Minnesota.
“As a first-generation Hmong American, my worldview was largely shaped by my refugee parents’ lived experiences related to political persecution, traumatic experiences, displacement, and poverty, and it was largely how I saw myself until I found theater and art,” Vang says. “I hope my work is a vessel for myself and my community to co-create ideas that point toward liberation and transformation.”
Vang first came up with the concept of “Hmong Futures: The Future of Us” – which is its working title – in 2023. She had always been inspired by her mother’s lived experience as a farmer and knew she would infuse it into a play one day. Theater Mu ended up commissioning it when Vang pitched the idea, and together they applied for and received the Joyce Award in 2024.
From there, Vang assembled a local Hmong advisory committee and began community engagement. Over multiple community dinners, interactive activities at major community events such as the Hmong National Development Conference and the Little Mekong Night Market, one-on-one interviews, and ongoing discussions with community leaders, Vang gathered input, stories, and experiences to ground the building out of her script.
The play’s community-based approach was backed by a $100,000 award from the Joyce Foundation, but other organizations have recognized how important this work is, too. For instance, the Minnesota Historical Society is specifically allotting part of its grant to fund a “making of” documentary around the play to capture how this production fits into today’s context.
Mu managing director Anh Thu T. Pham explains that the “making of” documentary also captures the purposeful work behind increasing Hmong representation, not just the production itself. “It’s really been wonderful hearing from Katie about meeting with groups of people from nonprofits that no longer exist. And for myself, as a person who is Southeast Asian, who has a niece and nephews where the Vietnam War and the wars in Southeast Asia are now history for them… for this grant, it was, ‘What can we actually capture and what can we archive as a way for culture and community from here on out?’”
While the beginning of rehearsals will cement the story, Vang says the play has been continually “emerging.” Mu has held multiple workshops to dive deeper into the play’s themes and explore its characters, but Vang knows she cannot call the script “done” without understanding how ICE’s recent Metro Surge would affect the world of the play and continues to tinker with this aspect.
“The story is a little different from the seed of the idea… but it’s still within this framework of the Hmong community and what does the future look like, and what’s needed to thrive,” Vang says. “I’m centering Hmong characters and a Hmong family because representation matters, but it’s a story for everyone. As of now, the play takes place in 2031, one full presidency after the current ICE occupation and the climate has shifted.”
Healing has always been at the heart of the play, though, and is the undercurrent of all Vang’s body of work. “WTF,” her first play ever produced, followed two friends on the cusp of adulthood as they wade through expectations, responsibilities, and differences across culture and generations. Her 2023 Mu world premiere with Melissa Li brought two sisters back together with vulnerability and honesty.
With “Hmong Futures: The Future of Us,” Vang conjures up a co-op farmhouse owned by Zong, a 60-something refugee immigrant. Life has settled into a rhythm, but the unexpected return of her estranged daughter, Foua, upends the routine into broken conversations and tense standoffs. Then when her granddaughter, Maly, also arrives, the three must figure out how they all fit together.
Director Reena Dutt says, “All of us have a family history we are moving through. Some difficult, some joyous. In ‘Hmong Futures,’ we’ll be moving from a place of hurt into a place of healing, and I’m looking forward to exploring what this means to Katie, me, my cast, and ultimately the audience, who’ll get to chuckle alongside us – at moments, uncomfortably – as this story unravels.”
The world premiere will run at the Gremlin Theatre for three weeks this spring, and Vang hopes that, as with all her artistic work, it will compel people to ask how they can better themselves and their communities. She says, “I write in hopes of transformation for me and my Hmong American and Asian American people and do this by summoning up courage to look at the things we do to ourselves and each other so we can change.”
Images courtesy Theater Mu.
