'Where Elephants Weep' presents Cambodia's story in an opera, letting a wounded nation revive art
April 22, 2007
By Lisa Panora,
Boston Globe Correspondent
Small wonder that Tony Re-al seems so comfortable in the opera "Where Elephants Weep."
"I'm a Cambodian who moved to the US to escape the killing fields," said the 28-year-old actor. "I'm not even trying to understand the character, because I see it with my own eyes. I lived through it. I experienced it."
Born in Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge regime, Re-al and his family fled to Thailand when he was an infant. He was 8 when they arrived in Lowell, where they still live.
Re-al will be playing a bodyguard in the opera, but there are many parallels between his life and that of the main character, Sam. Both Sam and Re-al work in the music industry as producers, and they both returned to their birthplace as adults.
"The only difference is I didn't become a monk," said Re-al, chuckling.
"Where Elephants Weep," set in the years just after the Cambodian holocaust, is being billed as that country's first rock opera. But it's also one of the rare artistic endeavors of any kind from a country still recovering from the devastation under Pol Pot.
When the opera is performed for the first time this weekend, it will be in Lowell, where many residents have a direct connection to that history.
"The act of creation has to involve the people around you," said Victor Moag, who got to know Lowell's Cambodians while directing the opera.
"I'm calling up exactly what the people of Lowell call upon every day," he said. "Even though they have this tremendous history with this sort of scarring, there is a smile and joy that is manifested on a daily basis in the community, because they know that sense of living is what will help them persevere."
Re-al's experiences as an artist reflect a search for his heritage and a voyage to his roots. In addition to being a producer, he rapped about contemporary Cambodia for years as lead vocalist of the now-disbanded SEASIA. The Cambodian-American fusion hip-hop group, based in Lowell, paid tribute to its members' heritage, urging young people to preserve the culture and traditions of Cambodia.
"Thanks to my surroundings and my parents, I'll never forget my heritage," Re-al said. "Hearing my parents' and other people's stories of the killing fields inspired me to think deeply."
Re-al learned of "Where Elephants Weep" through a friend and secured a part with his rapping ability and raw talent. Twenty minutes after auditioning, he was cast in the role of the lead bodyguard, the lead nonsinging, rapping part.
Re-al says Catharine Filloux was able to capture the Cambodian voice in her libretto, which is loosely based on the renowned Khmer love story "Turn Teav." Filloux, a New York native who won the Kennedy Center Award for a recent play, has been writing plays about Cambodia since the late 1980s. In 2003, she was a Fullbright senior specialist in playwriting in Cambodia and experienced the contemporary culture.
"When I read the lyrics, they blow my mind," said Re-al. "This is Cambodia expressed in hip-hop poetry form. She's from the West, but she knows Phnom Penh. She definitely knows it."
One of his character's most memorable lines, and Re-al's favorite, will be sure to raise a few eyebrows when it's performed in Cambodia in 2008:
Why would a monk give up on his vows only to hide in a superstar's house? Up in the room he's undoing her blouse.On a clear day can see all the way to Laos.
Re-al, one of only two ethnic Cambodian actors in the cast, said that because of their brutal past, there is a lack of Cambodians who can express themselves artistically.
"I hope this show inspires the younger generations to be creative and gain a little more respect for what their parents went through," Re-al said.
Most of the cast consists of Filipino-Americans and Japanese-Americans. The other Cambodian, Ieng Sithul, is a prominent actor and singer of traditional Cambodian forms.
"He is absolutely steeped in the traditional folkloric arts," Moag said. "He is always making us aware of the history and how it affects the Cambodian ear and eye. We try to bring him in so we don't go too Western."
But the East-meets-West theme is clearly an element of the opera and draws many parallels to Re-al's work with SEASIA.
"This show has allowed me to further those fusion ideas," he said. "We're blending the traditional sounds with hip-hop, glorifying the ancient instruments with new sounds. People in the Western world aren't going to know what hit them. This is originality."
Applying a hybrid musical style, the opera integrates traditional Cambodian harmonies with a contemporary Western sound. Calling for a 10-member band, the orchestration includes electric guitar, electronic drums, and keyboards, as well as such Cambodian instruments as buffalo horns, bamboo flutes, gongs, and the chapei, an instrument like the violin.
Many of the Cambodian instruments had to be modified for the score of Him Sophy, a Russian-trained Cambodian composer who survived the genocide. The musical team added an extra row of bars to an Angkor-era xylophone and an extra ring of chimes to the gong.
Pol Pot's regime demanded the elimination of artists, writers, musicians, and intellectuals. An estimated 90 percent of the country's intellectuals perished over four years. Even wearing glasses was grounds for execution.
For that reason, very little new artistic activity has emerged from Cambodia. Instead, the past two decades have seen a widespread effort to preserve the country's 1,000- year-old arts, which were on the brink of extinction.
John Burt, producer of "Where Elephants Weep" and chairman emeritus of Boston-based Cambodian Living Arts, says he hopes this piece can help break new ground in Cambodian arts. Conceived after Burt's trip to Phnom Penh several years ago, the opera is part of his group's work to breathe life into the arts.
"I returned from Cambodia riveted and moved by postgenocide survivors," Burt said. "Out of that experience, I realized how much the country was longing to preserve their traditional arts. But I wondered how the next generation of Cambodians could emerge with their own voice and not just by mimicking the West."
Burt envisioned musical theater, specifically an opera, as the vehicle for which the Cambodia-American story could be told. With so many accounts chronicling the four years the Khmer Rouge ruled Cambodia, Burt wanted to explore what happened to the refugees after the regime fell.
"In the tradition of the Jewish holocaust, the story of the Khmer Rouge must be told over and over," Burt said. "But this story focuses on something different, what happens to people when they move away from their homeland and try to go back."
With the second-largest Cambodian population in the United States, about 35,000, Lowell was an ideal setting to tell that story. The producers chose Lowell over Long Beach, Calif., because the Cambodian population is more concentrated.
"We're so thrilled to have such an incredible celebration of diversity here in Lowell," said L.Z. Nunn, executive director of the Cultural Organization of Lowell.
The production has been warmly welcomed by many local restaurants and businesses. Educational activities will be running in conjunction with "Where Elephants Weep," which will allow local students to sit in on rehearsals and discuss what it means to be Cambodian.
"There is such a strong vibrancy among the Southeast Asian population," Nunn said.
"'Where Elephants Weep' will allow them to engage with their homeland and build a new bridge."
The opera will be performed from Friday to Sunday at Lowell High School, 50 Fr. Morissette Blvd. Call 978-446-7162 for tickets, which are $20 and $10.
April 22, 2007
By Lisa Panora,
Boston Globe Correspondent
Small wonder that Tony Re-al seems so comfortable in the opera "Where Elephants Weep."
"I'm a Cambodian who moved to the US to escape the killing fields," said the 28-year-old actor. "I'm not even trying to understand the character, because I see it with my own eyes. I lived through it. I experienced it."
Born in Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge regime, Re-al and his family fled to Thailand when he was an infant. He was 8 when they arrived in Lowell, where they still live.
Re-al will be playing a bodyguard in the opera, but there are many parallels between his life and that of the main character, Sam. Both Sam and Re-al work in the music industry as producers, and they both returned to their birthplace as adults.
"The only difference is I didn't become a monk," said Re-al, chuckling.
"Where Elephants Weep," set in the years just after the Cambodian holocaust, is being billed as that country's first rock opera. But it's also one of the rare artistic endeavors of any kind from a country still recovering from the devastation under Pol Pot.
When the opera is performed for the first time this weekend, it will be in Lowell, where many residents have a direct connection to that history.
"The act of creation has to involve the people around you," said Victor Moag, who got to know Lowell's Cambodians while directing the opera.
"I'm calling up exactly what the people of Lowell call upon every day," he said. "Even though they have this tremendous history with this sort of scarring, there is a smile and joy that is manifested on a daily basis in the community, because they know that sense of living is what will help them persevere."
Re-al's experiences as an artist reflect a search for his heritage and a voyage to his roots. In addition to being a producer, he rapped about contemporary Cambodia for years as lead vocalist of the now-disbanded SEASIA. The Cambodian-American fusion hip-hop group, based in Lowell, paid tribute to its members' heritage, urging young people to preserve the culture and traditions of Cambodia.
"Thanks to my surroundings and my parents, I'll never forget my heritage," Re-al said. "Hearing my parents' and other people's stories of the killing fields inspired me to think deeply."
Re-al learned of "Where Elephants Weep" through a friend and secured a part with his rapping ability and raw talent. Twenty minutes after auditioning, he was cast in the role of the lead bodyguard, the lead nonsinging, rapping part.
Re-al says Catharine Filloux was able to capture the Cambodian voice in her libretto, which is loosely based on the renowned Khmer love story "Turn Teav." Filloux, a New York native who won the Kennedy Center Award for a recent play, has been writing plays about Cambodia since the late 1980s. In 2003, she was a Fullbright senior specialist in playwriting in Cambodia and experienced the contemporary culture.
"When I read the lyrics, they blow my mind," said Re-al. "This is Cambodia expressed in hip-hop poetry form. She's from the West, but she knows Phnom Penh. She definitely knows it."
One of his character's most memorable lines, and Re-al's favorite, will be sure to raise a few eyebrows when it's performed in Cambodia in 2008:
Why would a monk give up on his vows only to hide in a superstar's house? Up in the room he's undoing her blouse.On a clear day can see all the way to Laos.
Re-al, one of only two ethnic Cambodian actors in the cast, said that because of their brutal past, there is a lack of Cambodians who can express themselves artistically.
"I hope this show inspires the younger generations to be creative and gain a little more respect for what their parents went through," Re-al said.
Most of the cast consists of Filipino-Americans and Japanese-Americans. The other Cambodian, Ieng Sithul, is a prominent actor and singer of traditional Cambodian forms.
"He is absolutely steeped in the traditional folkloric arts," Moag said. "He is always making us aware of the history and how it affects the Cambodian ear and eye. We try to bring him in so we don't go too Western."
But the East-meets-West theme is clearly an element of the opera and draws many parallels to Re-al's work with SEASIA.
"This show has allowed me to further those fusion ideas," he said. "We're blending the traditional sounds with hip-hop, glorifying the ancient instruments with new sounds. People in the Western world aren't going to know what hit them. This is originality."
Applying a hybrid musical style, the opera integrates traditional Cambodian harmonies with a contemporary Western sound. Calling for a 10-member band, the orchestration includes electric guitar, electronic drums, and keyboards, as well as such Cambodian instruments as buffalo horns, bamboo flutes, gongs, and the chapei, an instrument like the violin.
Many of the Cambodian instruments had to be modified for the score of Him Sophy, a Russian-trained Cambodian composer who survived the genocide. The musical team added an extra row of bars to an Angkor-era xylophone and an extra ring of chimes to the gong.
Pol Pot's regime demanded the elimination of artists, writers, musicians, and intellectuals. An estimated 90 percent of the country's intellectuals perished over four years. Even wearing glasses was grounds for execution.
For that reason, very little new artistic activity has emerged from Cambodia. Instead, the past two decades have seen a widespread effort to preserve the country's 1,000- year-old arts, which were on the brink of extinction.
John Burt, producer of "Where Elephants Weep" and chairman emeritus of Boston-based Cambodian Living Arts, says he hopes this piece can help break new ground in Cambodian arts. Conceived after Burt's trip to Phnom Penh several years ago, the opera is part of his group's work to breathe life into the arts.
"I returned from Cambodia riveted and moved by postgenocide survivors," Burt said. "Out of that experience, I realized how much the country was longing to preserve their traditional arts. But I wondered how the next generation of Cambodians could emerge with their own voice and not just by mimicking the West."
Burt envisioned musical theater, specifically an opera, as the vehicle for which the Cambodia-American story could be told. With so many accounts chronicling the four years the Khmer Rouge ruled Cambodia, Burt wanted to explore what happened to the refugees after the regime fell.
"In the tradition of the Jewish holocaust, the story of the Khmer Rouge must be told over and over," Burt said. "But this story focuses on something different, what happens to people when they move away from their homeland and try to go back."
With the second-largest Cambodian population in the United States, about 35,000, Lowell was an ideal setting to tell that story. The producers chose Lowell over Long Beach, Calif., because the Cambodian population is more concentrated.
"We're so thrilled to have such an incredible celebration of diversity here in Lowell," said L.Z. Nunn, executive director of the Cultural Organization of Lowell.
The production has been warmly welcomed by many local restaurants and businesses. Educational activities will be running in conjunction with "Where Elephants Weep," which will allow local students to sit in on rehearsals and discuss what it means to be Cambodian.
"There is such a strong vibrancy among the Southeast Asian population," Nunn said.
"'Where Elephants Weep' will allow them to engage with their homeland and build a new bridge."
The opera will be performed from Friday to Sunday at Lowell High School, 50 Fr. Morissette Blvd. Call 978-446-7162 for tickets, which are $20 and $10.
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