Creating Home In “HMong Futures: The Future Of Us,” Theater Mu’s New Play
Q&A With The Show’s Cultural Consultant, Pang Foua Xiong
By Leanna Matt McLernon
Theater Mu’s upcoming premiere, “HMong Futures: The Future of Us” is a specifically HMong American story. Written by local playwright Katie Ka Vang and running April 9 – May 3 at the Gremlin Theatre, the script examines how a family can heal as three generations of HMong women live under the same roof for the first time in years. Helping create that specific world and that sense of home is Pang Foua Xiong, the production’s cultural consultant.
As a cultural consultant, Xiong has been pulled into a myriad of conversations, such as vegetable preparations, HMong dialect clarifications and pronunciations, and whether shoes would be heaped on the floor or in a tidy shelving unit. These are the decisions that root a story and its characters in authenticity.
“It’s those elements like that, that I get to – through my personal experiences and also being in that lived experience in our culture and our language – make sure it’s all represented well. You think that there’s one way of living in our experiences as HMong, but there’s so many things that could be missed,” Xiong says.
She adds, “I love the way that my role has such flexibility to weave in elements of what could feel familiar with certain audiences. Not just for the HMong community, but for other people who are also finding moments of ‘home’ or something to relate to that we all share.”
Before you see the show, find out how Xiong got connected to the show, the importance of storytelling, and what stood out to her about the script.
How did you get connected to “HMong Futures?”
I’ve done some theater work with Katie, and someone had reached out because of that connection.
Right before COVID was “Face to Face: Hmong Women’s Experiences.” It was with Ping Chong Company from New York [presented at Park Square Theatre], with Katie producing and directing. There were four or five of us HMong women who were telling our stories: just true, real lived experiences from our own voices. We got to read each other’s stories and do a live performance, and that was the first time I got to work with Katie.
But how I met Katie – I want to say I was probably 14, 15 years old when I first learned about Katie and her work. Back then, we didn’t have a lot of HMong people in acting or the entertainment industry at all. I got into John Casablancas, one of the talent agencies in town. I was looking for other HMong people to connect with, to see if there were other folks that had the same interests. And I found that name, Katie Ka Vang, and I was like, “That’s another HMong person.”
What originally drew you to working on the production?
I had just gotten done with another production with In Progress, a storytelling of HMong experience in filmmaking and in news broadcasting, and really uplift those moments in our community. That was a series of six events over the last couple of months in my work.
We were talking about not only telling stories of our past experiences, but also, “What can we now tell about our future?”
Growing up, my parents were always like, “Well, one day we’ll return home,” and that was constant in our house with my grandparents and our parents. But now growing up, and being that 50 years have passed, there is no going back home to some sort of physical place.
We are building home here, now, in Minnesota with these stories. So, with “HMong Futures,” it was really a connection of how we are finding home in our stories and how we relate to our experiences across cultures.
During the first rehearsal, the cast read aloud the script for the first time with everyone. What about even this early version of the play stood out to you?
There’s so much. The mixed family relationship. The mom finding new romantic relationships. The ways the kids and the elders were reacting to each other. Just having that multi-generational experience and telling a story of the future.
I mean, when I think about 2030, when the story is set, and just hearing what was surfacing through the production, there’s still so, so much trauma. But “HMong Futures” shows that there’s also so many ways that we can heal.
Images courtesy Jacob Her.
