AMERICAN THEATRE | The Subtext: How Vichet Chum Measures Success

Each month on The Subtext Brian speaks with a playwright about life, writing, and no matter itches we’re scratching.

In this episode, Brian visits Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago to fulfill with the playwright Vichet Chum, a Cambodian American playwright and theatremaker initially from Dallas, Texas, who now lives in New York City and whose play Bald Sisters is now operating at Steppenwolf by way of Jan. 15, 2023. Chum’s performs have been workshopped on the Magic Theater, the Alley Theatre, the UCROSS Foundation, Florida State University, Merrimack Repertory Theatre and the New Harmony Project, amongst others. Vichet obtained the 2018-19 Princess Grace Award in Playwriting with New Dramatists, serves as an affiliate artist at Merrimack Repertory Theatre, and is a present board member for the New Harmony Project. He received his BFA on the University of Evansville and his MFA from Brown University/Trinity Repertory Company. 

Vichet talks about rising up in Dallas and being raised by Cambodian immigrant dad and mom, and the way this expertise influences his writing. Writing was not the trail his dad and mom wished for him, however he says they’ve been supportive and engaged together with his work, touring to premieres and offering feedback when his performs immediately intersect with their lives.

“In Texas,” Vichet says, “everything is competition.” That contains the speech and debate group that was central to his highschool expertise. His older brother was often called the hotshot speech and debater at college, one thing he felt like couldn’t dwell as much as. But in hindsight Chum can see he did rack up loads of wins, regardless of by no means feeling as proficient as his sibling.

And he talks concerning the surreal however rewarding expertise of being a part of his first main manufacturing with Bald Sisters, which follows two Cambodian siblings as they reckon with the legacy of their late mom and the battle and genocide that drove her from her house to the difficult lifetime of a refugee within the U.S.