At long last, 'Cambodian Rock Band' is being staged in LA

Several years ago, playwright Lauren Yee couldn't wait to see her acclaimed Cambodian Rock Band performed in L.A. Finally, a staging of her epic play about a Khmer Rouge survivor would take place in the backyard of the largest Cambodian diaspora in the U.S.

But then the pandemic intervened, emptying theaters, and the L.A. company planning to produce the play canceled its run.

"I wasn't sure if the play would ever get to L.A.," Yee said.

After all the disappointment and delays, the joy of Cambodian Rock Band premiering tomorrow in L.A. is even sweeter.

A four-week run of the play, which is set to the music of the L.A.-based band Dengue Fever, will kick off the 60th anniversary season of East West Players, the country's longest-running Asian American theater.

Joe Ngo (l.) plays Chum, opposite Kelsey Angel Baehrens, who has the role of his daughter.

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EWP's artistic director Lily Tung Crystal said she sought to open the season with Cambodian Rock Band because it's energetic, music-driven and carries a message of hope and resilience despite the tragic backdrop of totalitarianism and genocide.

"I really consider Cambodia Rock Band to be the new American classic," said Tung Crystal. "It's so important to the Asian American community and the Asian American theater community."

The nonprofit theater is taking on greater risk than it usually does by starting the season with a $100,000 funding gap because of the play's higher production costs for its stage design and live music sets.

The hope is that ticket sales, donations and merchandise will cover the deficit.

How it all started

The idea for Cambodian Rock Band was seeded after Yee saw the Cambodian psychedelic rock band Dengue Fever perform at a music festival in San Diego more than a decade ago.

"It was like lightning struck," said Yee, who went down a "rabbit hole" researching the Cambodian rock musicians in the 60s and 70s.

"Just to hear how many of them died during the Khmer Rouge and how many of them hid their identities as musicians even afterwards was shocking for me," Yee said.

Yee started building a story around the fictional Chum, a Khmer Rouge survivor who returns to Cambodia as his American-born daughter, who works for the U.S. government, prepares to expose one of the regime's most notorious war criminals.

She recruited Dengue Fever to pen songs for her play which she interweaves between scenes. As the audience will later learn, the musical performances by the actors are an integral part of the plot.

Joe Ngo, a Khmer-Chinese American actor from L.A.'s San Gabriel Valley, started reading with Yee in 2015 as she workshopped the play. Anecdotes that Ngo shared from his parents who escaped the regime helped inform scenes.

Almost actors in Cambodian Rock Band also sing and perform instruments.

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Eventually Ngo was cast as Chum in the play's 2018 premiere at South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa. He's gone on to reprise the role in eight productions across the country, and won an Obie in 2020 for his work.

The play was going to be mounted by the Center Theatre Group until it announced productions were to be canceled at what would have been the play's home, the Mark Taper Forum, for the 2023-24 season.

The Monterey Park-raised actor was elated that, 10 years after he began working with Yee, the play was finally making its L.A. debut with three other members of the original cast and their director, Chay Yew.

Ngo said over time, he's aged into his character, and relates to the steward role Chum plays in his family.

"We always remind ourselves that (the story) belongs to the Cambodian people and the Cambodian community," Ngo said. "I have to do my best to sort of take care of the audience along the way and also be truthful and authentic in the role."

Special invite

To make it easier for Cambodian Americans to see the play based on their story, East West Players reserved 20% of the seats for community members and is offering subsidized tickets at $20 a piece, said acting managing director Kevin Johnson-Sather.

March 8 has been set aside as a special day for the Cambodian American community.

The theater is working with community organizations based in Long Beach, where the diaspora is most concentrated, to get out the word. Connie Lo, who works at Asian Americans Advancing Justice Southern California, is volunteering her time to publicize the show.

"It's so incredible that we're getting to see our story on the big stage," said Lo, who is of Cambodian Chinese descent and has seen the play four times. "Having that level of representation is something that we're so passionate about."

Lo said the show has jump-started conversations between survivors and their younger, American-born relatives. And it's gotten the older generation to recognize that it's ok, even cathartic, to be open about the trauma they endured.

Ngo said his father had warned him against taking on the role, because there was a sense that "there were consequences to talking about the truth."

Things changed after his parents came to see him perform.

"It's sort of like the light turned on for them and they're like, 'Oh, this story belongs to us, it is our history,'" Ngo said. "And before they know it, they're singing along to the songs of their childhood."