Cambodian Artists To Share Peace-Building Efforts

Catherine Filloux has written four plays about Cambodia, in addition to “Where Elephants Weep,” which proved widely popular. (Photo: by Vandy Rattana)

Nuch Sarita, VOA Khmer
Washington, DC Friday, 20 August 2010

“We will discuss with the guidance of peace-building scholars and practitioners a range of questions about the relationship between the arts and conflict.”

An American playwright who focuses on Cambodia is set to take part in a symposium with other Cambodian artists that looks at the relationship between the arts and peace building.

Catherine Filloux, a French-Algerian American who wrote the popular musical “Where Elephants Weep,” told VOA Khmer recently that Cambodian theatre artists Chhon Sina and Ieng Sithul will also travel to New York for the Theatre and Peace Building in Cambodia Symposium at Fordham University.

The symposium will be held Sept. 20 and Sept. 21. Following that, the artists will take part in a conference held by Theater Without Borders, called Acting Together on the World Stage: A Conference on Theatre and Peace Building in Conflict Zones, from Sept. 23 to Sept. 26.

On Sept. 20, she said, “We are going to be having an open rehearsal of Chhon Sina’s new play...‘Phka Champei,’ about a sex worker and victim of domestic violence who lives in a slum in Phnom Penh.”

The following day, “there will be a panel in which will be discussed issues of theatre and peace building, and we will do an excerpt from Chhon Sina’s play, and we will also have Ieng Sithul perform,” she said.

Filloux has written four plays about Cambodia, in addition to “Where Elephants Weep,” which proved widely popular.

Her plays include “Eyes of the Heart, Photographs from S-21,” about a woman who suffers from psychosomatic blindness after the Khmer Rouge regime; “Silence of God,” about Pol Pot; and “The US Complicity in What Happened in Cambodia.”

The second conference will discuss how current Cambodian artists worked following the Khmer Rouge “and have used art as a way to express human rights and also as a way to heal,” Filloux said.

Other participants come from countries like Peru and Ireland, as well as Native Americans from the US. All will have a chance to discuss parallels in their rebuilding efforts.

Rithisal Kang, a Cambodian Fulbright scholar in the US, will also attend.

“We will discuss with the guidance of peace-building scholars and practitioners a range of questions about the relationship between the arts and conflict,” he told VOA Khmer. “I believe we will learn and gain understanding of the nature of conflict, causes of violence and the meaning of peace.”

‘Elephants’ Music Composer Looks Ahead

By Taing Sarada, VOA Khmer
Original report from Washington
29 July 2009

Following the success of the Cambodian rock opera “Where Elephants Weep,” composer Him Sophy is back to work on new music.

“Where Elephants Weep” was a contemporary show unlike anything Cambodians had seen, and Him Sophy spent seven years producing it. Now, the composer told VOA Khmer in an interview, he is creating new musical performances, including traditional music, to bring more visitors to Cambodia.

“I am composing music for Cambodian tourism called, ‘Cambodia Is a Kingdom of Wonder,” he said.

The idea is to introduce would-be visitors to Cambodia through song and video.

“This music will make the tourists in the world interested and want to visit our Cambodia,” he said.

Him Sophy said he would also like to write music to commemorate Cambodians who died under the Khmer Rouge and will produce a soundtrack for a film produced by the Women’s Media Center.

The US Embassy has asked him to write music for a concert “to remember the reestablishment of diplomatic relations between Cambodia and America,” he said. “I will write some rock music and a lot of pop music.”

Him Sophy earned a doctorate degree in music composition after 13 years in Moscow. He then studied three more years and received a doctorate in Arts and Science. He also took a scholarship from the Rockefeller Foundation to study in New York and California.

The composer has future plans for “Where Elephants Weep,” hoping to bring it to a wider audience, including a performance in Long Beach, Calif., home to the largest US population of Cambodians.

“The economic crisis has delayed us a little bit, but we will try to go there,” he said. “The Cambodians in America want to see Khmer rock opera.”

Him Sophy is working in an environment where rock and pop music are gaining popularity. There are many concerts across Cambodia, and several music companies have been able to make it in the industry.

However, Cambodia’s musicians are still weak in playing Western-style music or instruments, such as the piano, violin, trumpet, saxophone or trombone.

Meanwhile, there are few composers or songwriters who can create original Cambodian rock, choosing instead to mimic foreign songs and adding Khmer lyrics.

Him Sophy said that not many people want to create original music because Cambodia does not have a copyright law to protect their compositions. A stronger law would see more original creations, he said.

Him Sophy was scheduled to discuss his activities at a lecture on Wednesday at the Reyum Institute of Arts and Culture in Phnom Penh.

Group hopes to put on Cambodian rock opera in Long Beach

A creative team that produced a successful premiere of the Cambodian rock opera "Where Elephants Weep" in Phnom Penh showed film clips of the play to residents in an attempt to generate interest in bringing the play to Long Beach. (Vanta El/For the Press Telegram)

06/03/2009
By Greg Mellen, Staff Writer
Long Beach Press Telegram (California, USA)

LONG BEACH - After a failed attempt to land in Long Beach in 2007, and a highly successful run in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, a Cambodian rock opera may be ready for some West Coast exposure.

At least that's what the creative team behind "Where Elephants Weep" is hoping after local residents reacted enthusiastically to film clips from the play's run in Cambodia that were shown recently at Mark Twain Library.

Although members of the New York-based group are reluctant to talk about what exactly it will take to bring the production to Long Beach, they were upbeat after meetings with several young leaders in the Cambodian community.

The first time the project was proposed in Long Beach, playwright Catherine Filloux said her group "did not feel a groundswell in Long Beach."

This time, however, her hopes are higher that the community will rally behind the project, especially in the wake of the play's popular run in Phnom Penh in November and December.

"Where Elephants Weep" was first opened in Lowell, Mass., in what Filloux said was a workshop. But the community response was "awesome," according to Filloux, and she hopes the same kind of momentum and support can be built here.

However, she notes that since her team is based on the East Coast, it will be up to the Long Beach community to make it happen.

Director Robert McQueen predicts it could take a year-and-a-half to bring the production to Long Beach.

In Phnom Penh, the cast was led by Cambodian star Ieng Sithul, who plays the Buddhist abbot, and Michael K. Lee, an emerging Broadway musical performer.

The play is a sort of bicultural take on the ancient Cambodia tale of "Tum Teav," which has been called the Cambodian "Romeo and Juliet."

It is in both Khmer and English, with subtitles projected onto screens around the stage.

In this telling, however, gray-clad rappers and traditional Apsara dancers intermingle as an expatriate Cambodian-American returning to his homeland struggles to reconcile an internal clash of cultures and desires.

The play is a collaboration between Soviet-

trained composer Dr. Him Sophy and Filloux.

Him, a survivor of the Khmer Rouge genocide of the late 1970s, received a scholarship to study music in Moscow in 1985, where he earned a doctorate in musical art and composition.

Filloux is an American of French-Algerian descent who has lived and taught in Cambodia. This is her fourth Cambodian-themed drama.

Bringing the production to Long Beach is not a small task. Organizers plan to talk to operators of venues in the Southland and members of the arts community. However, they stress it will be up to the local community to spearhead the effort.

Local residents are enthused about the prospects.

"Cambodia has so much to share with the community," says Richer San, who was part of the group that invited the play's producers to air the clips of the play at the library.

"I feel like this a a grand slam for Cambodians and for getting past the killing fields," said Filloux. "It's appealing to the young because it's supermodern and accessible. It shines a light on Cambodian culture that's so accessible."

greg.mellen@presstelegram.com, 562-499-1291

Controversy over the Rock Opera "Where Elephants Weep"

Dear Khmerization,

I read this article in Cambodge Soir, and noticed it wasn't up on KI Media, so I translated it and put it up on my blog. Usually KI Media has translations up before I even knew that an article existed. If you want to post it on KI Media, please feel free to use this translation. If not, that's fine too -- I just want to save you guys some work just in case. Thanks for maintaining a great blog!

Ly Arun

Controversy over the Rock Opera "Where Elephants Weep"

A monk calls for a ban on the distribution of the TV show and demands public apologies from the writers and actors.

The Supreme Patriarch Non Gneth got hot under the collar while watching the rock opera "Where Elephants Weep" this past December 25 on the CTN television channel. He made it known in a message addressed December 30 to the Ministry of Cults and Religions, which he forwarded to the Ministries of Culture and of Information. According to him, this work touches "on religious precepts" because the actors that play the roles of monks singing and dancing are a little too "delinquent" for his taste. Other grounds for this monk's wrath include the words uttered by one of the characters, "a monk wants a woman," and the fact that a monk had watched a woman from a hiding place. Accordingly, he calls simply and purely for a total ban on its broadcast and asks the actors who play the roles of monks and the opera producers to offer public apologies.

From the Ministry of Culture's office, one source points to a possible "confusion," saying more specifically "that no decision has yet been made." Khieu Kanharith, Minister of Information, has for his part asked his counterpart in the Ministry of Culture not to ban future performances of the opera, but only its broadcasting on Cambodian television. The minister, who sees no need to be too "purist," believes that through this show "the quality of Khmer art will be recognized" overseas.

In response to this controversy, the musical composer of "Where Elephants Weep," Him Sophy, himself Buddhist, would like all to understand that this opera completely serves Buddhism, because if the characters of the monks run into trouble, it's because they didn't listen to their temple abbot. And to wonder, "if you say that this opera is against Buddhism, then why not say that the local newspapers that publish articles about monks who rape women are also against Buddhism?"

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.”

Cambodian monks force nation's first rock opera off air [-Will the Tum Teav story be banned next?]

PHNOM PENH (AFP) — Cambodian monks have persuaded authorities to ban the country's first rock opera, which features actors dressed as clergy who break into song and dance, saying it insults Buddhism.

In a letter sent to the ministry of cults and religion, as well as to the media, the Supreme Sangha Council of Buddhist Monks also demanded an apology from the show's director, writer and actors.

"Where Elephants Weep", a modern take on a traditional Cambodian love story that merges pop and rock music with more traditional and historical Cambodian tunes, played in Phnom Penh from late November through early December.

It tells the story a Cambodian-American man who returns after the demise of the 1970s Khmer Rouge regime to reconnect with his roots. While he is a monk, he falls into a doomed love affair with a pop singer.

The last straw came when the show was aired by a local television station last week, prompting the monks' council to write to complain.

Cambodia is predominantly Buddhist and monks are expected to be austere and eschew worldly pleasures such as entertainment.

"Some scenes in the story insult Buddhism," the letter said in asking the ministry to "ban the performance and airing of the opera."

The council objected to many scenes, including one in which the actor "left the monkhood and slept with a woman, but a moment later (he) put the robe back on to be a monk again..." said the letter, dated December 30.

The show "oppresses Cambodian Buddhist monks, causes more than 50,000 monks to loss their honour, value and to express frustration," it added.

Religions minister Min Khin duly stepped in and the television station was ordered not to go ahead with a second broadcast planned for New Year's Day.

The show had a successful US preview last year and, after its run ends in Cambodia, it is expected to tour South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan before returning to the United States.

Organisers behind the opera were not immediately available for comment.

Saving Cambodia's musical heritage

12/24/2008
NOAH GRIFFIN, Staff Report
Marin Independent Journal (California, USA)

IN 1994, young Scott Stafford, was awarded special honors from the University of Chicago Music and Composition Theory Department. His honors thesis developed group theory to analyze traditional Balinese polyrhythm, drawing new parallels with Western Harmony.

Stafford, a San Rafael resident, most recently composed music and produced additional recordings for Pixar's critically acclaimed 2008 "Presto." At the time of his graduation, he had no idea his thesis would lead him down the path to helping rescue and preserve the Cambodian musical legacy.

The story of the brutal Khmer Rouge regime, graphically depicted in the poignant portrayal in the book and 1984 film, "The Killing Fields," not only left an estimated 1.7 million dead, but nearly decimated the Cambodian musical legacy of thousands of years by systematically eliminating the music teachers who could pass on the country's musical heritage.

Stafford, on a family trip to the area, traveled to Siem Rep City. There, he heard a performance of the moribund music played from an ancient instrument he had seen carved in bas relief on the walls of Bayon, one of the main temples of Angkor Wat. The instrument is called the Kse Diev, meaning one string.

You pluck harmonics on it, moving it on and off one's chest.

Some of the last generation of surviving players were nearly all wiped out by the Khmer Rouge. Stafford's fascination with the music, along with his training, impelled him to quench his curiosity as to the music's current status, leading him to the discovery of the fragile nature of its existence.
He quickly found that precious little of it had ever been recorded.

Stafford raised funds to found Studio CLA (Cambodia Living Arts), a nonprofit ethnographic audio visual production studio with the goal of archiving Cambodia's endangered musical traditions, training local engineers in audio and visual production arts, and providing a laboratory for new creative and collaborative works.

CLA has now has four self-produced CD's for sale in Cambodia. The recent underground documentary, "Sleepwalking through the Mekong," is based on a Los Angeles and Long Beach band's pilgrimage to Cambodia to record in Stafford's studio and to collaborate with traditional CLA artists.

Stafford has plenty of in-country support for the collaborative project.

Most noteworthy are Arn Chorn-Pond and Sophy Him, whom he met in February 2002, during his first trip to Cambodia.

Arn Chorn, by playing revolutionary songs on the flute, survived the horrors of the Khmer Rouge regime that turned him into a child soldier.

Today, he is an internationally recognized human rights leader, a recipient among other honors, of the Anne Frank Memorial Award and is the subject of the award winning documentary: "The Flute Player."

Sophy Him, a composer, is a professor of music and fine arts at the Royal Academy of Cambodia in Phnom Penh.

Stafford, in support of Him's work, has been part of the creative team supplying additional music and direction for "Where Elephants Weep," the first-known contemporary Cambodian rock opera with a mission to stir young Cambodians to honor their heritage within the context of the changing global society and to inspire them to learn more about Cambodia's performing living arts.

The opera had its world premiere in Cambodia this year. To learn more about the music and CLA's mission, visit www.whereelephantsweep.net.

Noah Griffin of Tiburon is a public affairs consultant and a former citizen member of the IJ's editorial board.

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.

‘Elephants’ Composer Sought Culture Push

Him Sophy, composer of “Where Elephants Weep”

By Nuch Sarita, VOA Khmer
Original report from Washington
11 November 2008

Click here to listen to the Khmer audio program

Cambodian-born and Russian-educated, Him Sophy is the composer behind “Where Elephants Weep,” a modern rock opera that has its roots in both Cambodia and the West and is coming soon to Phnom Penh.

The story is a modern version of the “Tum Teav” fable, where a man named Sam returns to post-holocaust Cambodia and becomes a monk before falling into a tragic love affair.

Him Sophy, a professor of music at Phnom Penh’s Royal University of Fine Arts and the Royal Academy of Cambodia, said he wanted to incorporate rock-and-roll both conceptually and artistically. He typically has not written for rock or traditional Cambodian music, but the show, which debuts in Phnom Penh later this month, incorporates both.

“We played together with the rock band, sometimes separately,” he said Monday, as a guest on “Hello VOA.” “Sometimes the solo is only rock, sometimes only Cambodian traditional, and then they come together and have another sound that you never heard before.”

The hope was to blend the styles and push contemporary Cambodian culture forward, Him Sophy said.

“Where Elephants Weep” showed in the US last year.

“It was a journey of both tragedy and hope, and one that involved cross-cultural collaboration among many people behind the scenes,” Samkhan Khoeun, co-chairman for Rock Opera Khmer, in Lowell, Mass., who was also a guest on “Hello VOA” Monday.

The rock opera, which was started six years ago, is the latest undertaking of Cambodian Living Arts, a project of World Education, he said.

Cambodian Living Arts was founded in 1998 by John Burt, the show’s executive producer, with Arn Chorn-Pond, a Cambodian refugee who was adopted by Americans and lived for a time in Lowell.

The goal of the organization is to revive and support Cambodian arts, which were nearly eradicated under the regime of the Khmer Rouge.

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."

Cambodia's First Modern Musical, Where Elephants Weep, to Premiere in Phnom Penh

Oct 28, 2008
By: Dan Bacalzo · New York
Theater Mania

Cambodia's first-ever modern music theater work, Where Elephants Weep, will make its official world premiere in Phnom Penh, Cambodia at the Chenla Theater, November 28-December 7. The production features a libretto by Catherine Filloux, a score by Him Sophy, musical supervision by Scot Stafford, direction by Robert McQueen and choreography by Seán Curran, and is produced in association with Amrita Performing Arts.

The show tells the tale of Sam, a refugee from the Khmer Rouge genocide who leaves America and returns to his homeland of Cambodia. Committed to finding his roots in his native culture, he unexpectedly falls in love with Bopha, a homegrown pop star. The musical weaves 12th century musical styles and traditional Cambodian instruments with a contemporary, Western-style rock band to reinterpret traditional Khmer music for a new era.

The show will be performed by a group of principal U.S. performers, together with a Cambodian company of actors, singers, dancers and musicians. The production is expected to return to the U.S., after playing several Asian cities, in the autumn of 2010.

For more information, visit www.whereelephantsweep.net.

'Elephants' L.B.-bound?

06/05/2007
By Greg Mellen, Staff writer
Long Beach Press Telegram (Long Beach, Calif., USA)

LONG BEACH - The story is ancient. "Tum Teav" has been called the Cambodian "Romeo and Juliet."

But it has never been presented like this: with an intertwining of traditional Apsara dancing and gray-clad rappers; American-style rock music juxtaposed with Khmer lullabies played by a 10-person Cambodian band; the story tweaked to tell the love story of an ex-pat Cambodian-American returning to his roots.

If organizers can pull it together, "Where Elephants Weep," believed to be the first professional Cambodian-American rock opera, will be seen on stage in Long Beach.

The play premiered in Lowell, Mass., to sellout crowds and rave reviews, and is slated to tour to Phnom Pehn and other Asian venues, possibly by 2008.

In the interim, producer John Burt would like to bring the production to Long Beach.

There was some talk of trying to bring the production here by April to connect it to traditional Cambodian New Year's events, but Burt thinks that might be a bit too soon.

But after two days, the producer seemed enthused about putting the project together.

"I think (the play) belongs here," Burt said. "I think there are possibilities for long-term relationships."

Burt, along with director Robert McQueen and composer Him Sophy conclude three days of meetings today with city officials, potential sponsors and community groups in an effort to make it happen.

To Burt and his group, there's more to the effort than just bringing a show to Long Beach. It is about community collaboration and creating cross-cultural relationships.

As a result, schools, libraries and community groups could all be pulled into the mix.

In Lowell, for example, some of the proceeds went to fund a scholarship to send local students to study arts in Cambodia.

Vice Mayor Bonnie Lowenthal met with the theater group and is already a proponent.

"I think the Cambodian opera is a very exciting endeavor and I can't wait to be a part of all the events surrounding it," Lowenthal said.

The play was commissioned by Cambodian Living Arts, a project that works to revive traditional Khmer performing arts and inspire contemporary artistic expression.

The melding of traditional Cambodian and Western forms makes the play unique and fulfills a goal of not only preserving and honoring Khmer heritage and art, but expanding it into new forms.

"In order for theater to have relevance," McQueen said, "it has the opportunity to move many art forms forward."

The play is an East-West collaboration with music by Russian-trained composer Dr. Him Sophy, a Cambodian genocide survivor, and text by librettist Catherine Filloux, an award-winning playwright.

For Filloux, an American of French-Algerian descent who has also lived and taught in Cambodia, this is her fourth Cambodian-themed drama.

Her first, "Eyes of the Heart," was based on a true story about Cambodian women who suffered psychosomatic blindness after witnessing Khmer Rouge atrocities. Her other Cambodian-inspired plays are "Silence of God" and "Photographs from S21."

"When I began listening to the stories, I was extremely moved," Filloux said. "But it took me a long time to understand the complexities."

Those complexities extend to Sophy's musical score. Sophy was a budding 12-year-old musician in Cambodia when the Khmer Rouge rose to power in 1975. When Sophy returned to Phnom Penh in 1979 after the Vietnamese ouster of the Khmer Rouge, he began playing the piano again and by 1985 received a scholarship from the Soviet Union to study in Moscow, where he eventually earned a doctorate of musical art in composition.

For "Where Elephants Weep," Him went so far as to reinvent Cambodian gongs and xylophones to make them blend with the Western music of the play.

Given all the interweavings of music, story and culture in "Where Elephants Weep," Long Beach, where such intermingling is played daily, seems a logical stop.

"I think it's a good idea," said Peter Long of the Cambodian Chamber of Commerce. "It would not only be a benefit for us (Cambodians) but for all of Long Beach."

Greg Mellen can be reached at greg.mellen@presstelegram.com or (562) 499-1291.

Where Elephants Weep [-Transcript of NPR interview with the show producers]

By Andrea Shea
wbur.org (Boston's NPR News Source, Mass., USA)

"Where Elephants Weep" is previewing in Lowell from tonight through Sunday.

LOWELL, Mass. - April 27, 2007 - Two million Cambodians died during Pol Pot's genocide campaign in the 1970s, including 90 percent of the country's artists.

Since then, Cambodia's artistic culture has suffered. But this weekend the first known contemporary Cambodian opera previews in Lowell, home to the United States' second- largest Cambodian population.

The love story, which fuses traditional Cambodian music with rock and roll, will eventually head to Phnom Penh next year. WBUR's Andrea Shea dropped in on a rehearsal at Lowell High School and has this story.

TEXT OF STORY

ANDREA SHEA: The new opera is called 'Where Elephants Weep.' It opens with the bleating of an ancient elephant horn. On stage right a raised platform supports 5 Cambodian musicians. They wield a variety of exotic, ancient-looking instruments: wood winds, gongs, drums, a long-necked lute. The show's Executive Producer John Burt says he jumped through hoops to get this ensemble into America for the performance. And, he says, it was tough to track them down in Cambodia.

JOHN BURT: Everything is on the grass roots level in Cambodia and there's extraordinary talent living right underneath the surface.

SHEA: Burt is also co-founder of the Lowell based preservation organization 'Cambodian Living Arts.' He says he started the group with Arn Chorn-Pond, a well-known human rights activist and flute player who survived Pol Pot's rampage.

BURT: One of the things that happens with the devastation of a genocide period when so many people perish who hold the history of those traditions is that it diminishes the possibility of new ideas to emerge.

SHEA: And what could be newer than a Cambodian opera hybrid that fuses traditional music with the most Western of music forms: rock and roll. A Cambodian rock band warms up stage left. At this recent rehearsal American Librettist Catherin Filloux goes over some changes to the script. Sam is the main character in the opera. He was raised in the United States after his family fled Pol Pot, but Burt says he goes back to Cambodia to seek his cultural identity, his roots, and his soul.

BURT: And in his return he is confronted not only with not only the ancient traditional world of Cambodia but the modern world that he is in conflict with.

SHEA: Once home Sam falls in love with a pop singer name Bopah. Burt says the Romeo and Juliet-style plot line represents the conflict between East and West. And the musical mashup does, too. For the opera's composer, Him Sophy, incorporating rock and roll works conceptually and artistically.

HIM SOPHY: Because Sam he grew up in US he got big influence from American culture, especially rock music, I think the best in the world is American rock music...important that you need to compose good music for rock for traditional, for classical, western whatever that's no problem.

SHEA: Him Sophy one of 3 classically trained composers in all of Cambodia. He usually writes for Western-style orchestras, not rock bands or traditional Cambodian musicians.

SOPHY: They play together with the rock band sometime separately sometimes soloists only rock sometimes only traditional, and then they come together and they have a different sound that you never heard before.

SHEA: But it's also risky to make something new by marrying musics from two very different cultures, according to Mark Rossi. Rossi is a professor at Berklee College of Music in Boston. He's a composer, Jazz pianist and world musician with an expertise in Indian-Jazz fusion.

MARK ROSSI: It's got to work on it's own terms and that it's got to say something new in a way that's never been said before. And it's very doable in the hands of a good composer with a good imagination and a good sense of balancing the musical forces and helping to find the differences and helping to find common ground to unify them.

SHEA: Composer Him Sophy is thrilled to have a chance to work on a synthesis such as 'Where Elephants Weep' because he says there are noopportunities to create something like this at home in Cambodia. The artistic environment there is grim and hasn't recovered since the time of the Killing Fields. Sophy himself almost died in a labor camp in the mid-1970's.

SOPHY: I was only a teenager but I worked so hard to survive myself my body looked as skeleton and no energy. After the genocidal regime I thought I was a person who lost very much, I lost my youth, I lost my time but I think my brain still worked very well so I needed to work very hard in my studies.

SHEA: He continued his musical studies in Russia. And now...years later...Sophy is working with electric guitars and Cambodian-American rap artists...such as Lowell-based Tony Real. Real plays a guard in the opera and says as a second-generation refugee he's deeply connected to his homeland.

TONY REAL: We want Cambodia to be known for its arts and culture, not just for the killing fields, and now its beginning.

SHEA: And with 'Where Elephants Weep' composer Sophy hopes to push Cambodian culture forward.

SOPHY: Because Rock and Roll is music right now, not long time ago, and traditional ensemble in Cambodia exists a very long time ago...you can say 100 years ago or 1000 years ago and now we combine with the Rock and roll because we live for the future.

SHEA: But, Him Sophy adds, we should never forget the past. For WBUR I'm Andrea Shea.