Where Elephants Weep: Head monks offended, High-ranking gov't officials enjoyed the show

Ministry of Information does not ban “Where Elephants Weep” show in Cambodia

04 Jan 2009
By Duong Sokha
Ka-set
Unofficial translation from French by Luc Sâr
Click here to read the article in French
Click here to read the article in Khmer

On 04 January, the minister of Information clarified the fact that his ministry did not ban the “Where Elephants Weep” show – “which allows the world to know about Cambodia” – but the ban is only held against the TV broadcast on this show in the kingdom.

The rock opera, the music of which is composed by Cambodian composer Him Sophy, received large media coverage that went well beyond Cambodia’s border, and John Burt, its US producer, plans to present the show in a world tour. Following sold out shows in Phnom Penh a few weeks ago, the show is still being discussed … by monks.

In fact, Cambodia’s head monks are offended by some scenes in the show which was broadcasted by a Cambodian TV channel on 25 December. These head monks said that the saffron robe is insulted and they let this issue be known to the ministry involved. In the complaints sent to the ministry of Cult, these monks demanded that these shows be banned, and they succeeded in canceling the second broadcast of “Where Elephants Weep” on CTN on 01 January.

The head monks blame the young hero of the show for his lack of rigor because he abandoned the monkhood robe as quick as he is ready to pick it up again, following a long love story with a pop singer, the whole scene was performed around some dance steps and singing.

Khieu Kanharith defended this work [that several Cambodian government officials went to watch without ever criticizing this social satire], explaining that the show watchers are better informed than Cambodian spectators are about the rock opera genre which is “different from the ayay” (a form of Khmer traditional theater).

“What these head monks raised was not wrong ... But this does not justify asking apologies from the producer and artists. The latter were creators first of all!” Khieu Kanharith then indicated that the ministry of Culture will closely examine the show and it will identify elements that need to be corrected. He then went on to congratulate the rock opera producer who chose to “work with Khmer and foreign artists.”

Cambodia's elite applaud Vancouver director's ambition

December 4, 2008
MICHELLE VACHON
From Thursday's Globe and Mail (Toronto, Canada)

PHNOM PENH — Director Robert McQueen's first taste of meshing opera with diverse cultures came by way of the Vancouver Opera, which asked McQueen to set Mozart's The Magic Flute among British Columbia's native people. His 2007 production used a forest setting with props and costumes inspired by traditional designs from 10 West Coast native groups, and he modified the text to include words from a Coast Salish language. But "the story remained the same," McQueen said, "and I did not touch one note of the music."

Then, used to uncharted waters, McQueen decided to take on another challenge, this time with an entirely new work: staging Cambodia's first rock opera, set in that country, and blending rock music with the eerie sounds of its traditional instruments.

Where Elephants Weep premiered last Friday in Cambodia's capital of Phnom Penh. Fred Frumberg of Cambodia's non-governmental organization Amrita Performing Arts, which is producing the show, says it is the most ambitious production staged in the country since the 1960s.

So rare was the occasion that on Friday Cambodia's major players in arts and culture as well as the city's usual special-event crowd, complete with government officials and the diplomatic corps, packed the Chenla Theatre at the corner of Mao Tse Tung and Monireth boulevards.

McQueen, just days before the opening, was still nervous about the finished product. "If you're directing a Neil Simon play, you can probably figure out on day one what opening night is going to look like," he said while overseeing one of the last rehearsals in Phnom Penh. "What's kind of extraordinary for me is that I have no idea how it's going to turn out."

It was the concept, rather than the scale or newness of the work that had prompted McQueen to get involved in the project. He said the two years he spent working on The Magic Flute in Vancouver, his hometown, made him incapable of going back to the usual musical or opera fare.

Until then, McQueen's career had followed a more traditional path, which had included directing Puccini's La Bohème for the Canadian Opera Company in Toronto and the musical The Spitfire Grill at the Grand Theatre in London, Ont., and playing the role of associate director for Mamma Mia! at New York's Winter Garden Theatre.

While he worked on The Magic Flute, he said, "without consciously knowing it at the time, it began to alter the kind of theatre that I wanted to be doing."

McQueen said he was now eager to explore how cultures could come together in a project and not so much blend as "inform" each other.

In Where Elephants Weep, a Cambodian man visits his homeland in the mid-1990s after immigrating to the United States as a child at the end of the Khmer Rouge regime in 1979. As he finds himself a stranger in a culture he no longer knows, he falls in love with a woman pledged to her brother's business partner in an arranged marriage.

The story reflects the mixture of Western and traditional elements of today's Cambodia: women in long silk skirts next to others in short dresses or pants; men praying at Buddhist pagodas in the morning and splitting their time between karaoke bars and sex workers at night.

At Friday's performance, the artists received a standing ovation, which is quite unusual in Phnom Penh, and at the reception afterward, Cambodians as well as foreigners were enthusiastic about the show, the few dissenting voices those who dislike musical theatre in general.

Where Elephants Weep was created by Cambodian music composer Him Sophy, Franco-American librettist Catherine Filloux and U.S. executive producer John Burt. McQueen met the team in Phnom Penh in 2003 while he was travelling in Asia. But with Burt and Filloux based in New York and Him Sophy in Phnom Penh, it would be four years before the three were ready to call on McQueen finally to stage the show.

The cast consists of one Cambodian singer and New York singers with Asian roots, as no Cambodians with musical-theatre-type voices could be found in the country. Actors, dancers and the 11 rock and traditional musicians are Cambodian.

Many of the scenes, and especially those at pagodas, involved "cultural protocol considerations," McQueen said: "I couldn't just stage the scene the way that I wanted to ... because to a [Cambodian] local audience, it might be complete confusion if they see monks doing something that monks would never do."

Customs in Cambodia are mainly taught through oral tradition, so McQueen relied on his Cambodian assistants to let him know whenever a scene did not ring true. And yet, he pointed out, "I still had to draw on what I know as a theatre maker - I can't abandon that because that's me, the storyteller - and I had to include the information that was coming at me and figure out a way of weaving them together so that they meet."

Most of the opera is in English with occasional Khmer songs and dialogue; subtitles were provided in English and Khmer.

Where Elephants Weep is being staged in Phnom Penh through Sunday, with plans to tour in Asia and North America, Burt said. As for McQueen, he is heading for the Galaxy Theatre in Tokyo where he will stage "Carousel, one of the most American musicals ever written, and I'm doing it in Japanese."

Cambodia's first rock opera hopes its stage will be a bridge

The lead male character, Sam, rehearses in a Phnom Penh studio in early November.

Friday, November 28, 2008
By Miranda Leitsinger

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (CNN) -- A man strums an electric guitar while another musician blows on a buffalo horn converted into an instrument. A boy performs the traditional Cambodian monkey dance spliced in with breakdancing beats while a singer raps to the moves.

The artists are rehearsing for Cambodia's first known contemporary rock opera, "Where Elephants Weep," which makes its world debut Friday in Phnom Penh.

The production, loosely based on a classical Cambodian love story and performed in both English and Cambodian, is part of a bid to revive the arts in the Southeast Asian country, where most artists died under the Khmer Rouge, an ultra-Maoist movement bent on building an agrarian utopia.

"I think when any culture is interrupted by the tragedy of war, it's particularly important to go back and visit those (ancient) traditions, but we are in the 21st century and it's also important to bring those traditions forward," said John Burt, the show's executive producer and founding chair emeritus of Cambodian Living Arts, which commissioned the production.

"Where Elephants Weep" is the tale of two Cambodian-American men who return home after surviving the 1970s genocidal Khmer Rouge regime to reconnect with their roots but are confronted by the tragic past as well as an unfamiliar modern Cambodian society. One of them ends up in a pagoda and ultimately dead, while another falls into a doomed love affair with a leading local pop singer.

"There are many, many twists and turns in the love story that we have created that bring together the marriage of east and west and also address very specifically the clashes between east and west, between modernity and ancient life," Burt said.

Those worlds can be seen in the dance, where American and Cambodian choreographers fused traditional Cambodian dance, including using shadow puppets cut into the shape of elephants, with the back spins and handstands of breakdancing.

The music also parallels the east-west journey of the two male protagonists.

Composer Him Sophy, who studied in Russia for 13 years after surviving the Khmer Rouge labor camps, has blended rap, religious chanting, rock, his country's ancient music, operatic styles, pop and even added a Khmer Rouge propaganda song as a cell phone ringtone in the production.

Two musical ensembles will perform on the stage: a traditional Cambodian one that includes some 37 instruments such as the long-neck guitar and a one-stringed instrument; and a Western rock band outfitted with drums, an electric bass, piano and synthesizer.

"I knew before that it would be so difficult for me as a composer because traditional musical instruments are never played in big performances, Cambodian musicians never read (musical) notes, they don't work with a conductor and especially related to the tune -- the pitch of traditional instruments -- it's not enough tune to perform with the rock band," Him Sophy said.

To resolve the tune issue, the composer said he and his team "reinvented" some of the Cambodian instruments, such as the buffalo horn -- believed to be used for some 1,000 years to call elephants.

"The commission of this opera ... was to inspire and invite him (composer Him Sophy) to bring his own voice of the ancient Khmer sound into his own score that married his traditions with western pop and rock tradition," Burt said.

Most of Cambodia's artistic traditions had been passed down orally, from teacher to student, up through the 1970s. But a majority of the country's artists were some of the at least 1.7 million people -- nearly a quarter of Cambodia's population -- who died under the Khmer Rouge from execution, disease, starvation and overwork, according to the Documentation Center of Cambodia.

Five of the regime's former leaders are awaiting trial before a U.N.-backed tribunal for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The loss of Cambodia's artists spurred efforts to find survivors who could instruct future generations about the country's ancient arts, some of the instruments of which can be seen carved on the temples of Angkor Wat, which are up to 1,200 years old, in Siem Reap.

Cambodian Living Arts now has 20 master artists teaching nearly 400 students, plus an archive sound studio. The group is expanding its efforts to include commissions of new work, such as the rock opera.

Him Sophy lost two brothers to the Khmer Rouge.

One of the songs he composed for the production, "No Mother," is about those who lost their parents under the Khmer Rouge, and the main character, Sam, has suppressed many of his painful memories of being a child soldier during that era.

"Of course, the tragedy for Cambodian people, I cannot explain it all, but I would like to show it through the opera," he said.

The story is not just a reprisal of the country's tragic past, but a look at it today: there are scenes of beer girls and nightclubs, Buddhist religious ceremonies and a planned traditional arranged marriage, and the newly rich living in freshly-acquired luxury homes.

Burt said a Cambodian-American friend inspired him to bring forward the story of those refugees who go back and "land in this very betwixt and between place, where they are not really American, they are not really Cambodian."

The cast includes Cambodian-Americans, one who said the experience has been a homecoming of sorts for her.

When Amara Chhin-Lawrence, 27, came to Cambodia for the project in 2003, "it was very much a feeling of being at home ... because there wasn't this dual nature anymore."

"This is where I feel like my yearning for my homeland will rest," she added.

Burt, who had to have a theater renovated to accommodate the size and scope of the show since there was no suitable venue in the country, aims to take it to other cities around the world but believed it was important to have the world premiere in Cambodia.

"Cambodia soon will and should have the stages that can welcome international touring shows, that can welcome the shows of their own people, and our hope is that this show really raises the possibility for that to occur," he said.

The creative team also hopes audiences will view Cambodia differently after seeing the show.

The production presents "Cambodia in the light that it so urgently needs to be shown in," Filloux said. "And that is not in terms of the Khmer Rouge regime, not in terms of looking in the rearview mirror, but in looking towards the resilience of spirit of Cambodian people, at the enormous challenges that they have faced and how their art and their sensibility and their spirituality can utterly transform them."

"Where Elephants Weep" runs through December 7.

Unique Rock Opera To Debut This Month

"Where Elephants Weep" combines modern Western instruments like electric guitars with traditional instruments like the twin gongs, above.

By Kong Sothanarith, VOA Khmer
Original report from Phnom Penh
04 November 2008

“Where Elephants Weep,” a rock opera blend of Western and Cambodian performing arts, will begin a 10-day run in Phnom Penh later this month, organizers said Tuesday.

More than 60 Actors, dancers, singers and musicians from Cambodia will join American performers for the show, the first of its kind in Cambodia.

“Where Elephants Weep” is the story of a Cambodian-American named Sam, who returns to Cambodia to become a monk. He meets Bopha, a well-known singer, at the pagoda where he stays. Sam defies a chief monk and leaves the pagoda and religious life, and a story of love and tragedy begins.

The story was written by Catherine Filloux and is a modern adaptation of the traditional Khmer folk story “Tum Teav.”

The music was composed by Him Sophy, who was trained in Russia and who worked in New York for a year with producer John Burt. The show played in Lowell, Mass., in April 2007, and Burt called it “a dream” to bring the show to Cambodia.

“Cambodian survivors have given me a lot of inspiration,” Filloux told reporters Tuesday. “When I was given an opportunity to write an opera with Him Sophy, it really seemed like an accumulation of everything that I had done so far.”

The show will run Nov. 28. and Dec. 7, and organizers hope it will play in other countries across Asia before they return to the US.

“We trained together with foreign actors and I was very impressed from the first,” said Ieng Sithul, a Cambodian performer who plays the stringed “chapei” and is a flute coach for the show.

Thai Norak Satya, secretary of state for the Ministry of Culture, welcomed the presentation of a “mixed” show.

“We can consider that the show of multi-nationalism is an event that has never been in Phnom Penh,” he said.

Filloux said the story was ultimately about Cambodia.

“The place where elephants go to cry in the story represents some level of the soul of Cambodia,” she said.

Music returns to the stage in Cambodia

The nation's first rock opera, with a blend of modern and traditional sounds, debuts soon.

November 2, 2008
By Ker Munthit
The Associated Press

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia - Cambodia's first rock opera will premiere in Phnom Penh next month, a cultural milestone in the Southeast Asian country where performing arts were banned during the brutal Khmer Rouge years.

"Where Elephants Weep" is an East-meets-West blend of traditional Cambodian music and Western rock that is modeled after "Romeo and Juliet" and inspired by the Broadway musical "Rent."

Organizers said Wednesday the show will open a 10-day run Nov. 28 in a converted movie theater in the capital, Phnom Penh, a year later than its planned debut at the end of 2007.

The show was commissioned by Cambodian Living Arts, a project of the Boston-based nonprofit organization World Education, which seeks to revive traditional Cambodian performing arts and inspire contemporary artistic expression among Cambodians.



Charley Todd, a co-president of the CLA's governing board, said the opera had a successful preview last year in Lowell, Mass., which has a sizable community of Cambodian refugees.

But producers needed extra time for fine-tuning.

It is expected to later tour in other countries, including the United States, South Korea and Singapore.

Arts and entertainment were banned when the Khmer Rouge ruled Cambodia between 1975-79 and killed some 1.7 million people through starvation, disease, overwork and execution.

Execution sites from the time now serve as grim attractions for tourists visiting Cambodia.

"Where Elephants Weep" is an operatic take on "Tum Teav," the Cambodian version of "Romeo and Juliet."

It tells the story a Cambodian-American who lost his father during the Khmer Rouge era and returns home after Cambodia's civil war to trace his roots.

In Phnom Penh, he meets and falls in love with a Cambodian woman who works as a karaoke singer.

The music was composed by the Russian-trained Cambodian maestro Him Sophy.

He was inspired by the musical genre of the rock opera "Rent," which he saw twice during a trip to New York City.

Cambodian musicians in the performance use electric guitars, electronic drums, keyboards and traditional instruments like buffalo horns, bamboo flutes, gongs and the chapei, a long-neck lute with two nylon strings.

After seven years of work, Him Sophy said he expected a celebration — both on stage and in the country.

"It is going to be a big national cultural event," Him Sophy said. "And the entire team is committed to making it happen flawlessly and perfectly."