A talk with the maker of A Dream in Hanoi
by Nguyen Manh Ha, "Tiềnphong" Pioneer Newspaper

Last year's Vietnam-America Theatre Exchange not only brought about a bi-lingual production of A MidsummesNnight's Dream but also another dream, which is even more sensational (ly ky). Pioneer News has spoken with Tom Weidlinger, the director and cameraman, as well as Maureen Gosling, the editor of A Dream in Hanoi.

The screening of A Dream in Hanoi on March 30th at 51 Tran Hung Dao Street (National Cinema Association) was warmly received. The audience, whether they had seen A Midsummer Night's Dream or not, assumed that the film had to be more interesting than the play! Hung, the translator in the film, confessed that he cried the first time he saw the film! One member of the National Cinema Association said: "I am an outsider and I was crying too, let alone Hung."Actually, at the end of the film, the artists were crying as if they were saying goodbye to their dearest friends and family. Tears and the verb love were spoken extravagantly. In those scenes, some of the audience started crying too.

A member of the audience declared: "The film is finely produced. Events follow one another logically and are combined powerfully, and the audience can follow the events as well." An elderly man said: "After seeing the film, we love ourselves and love you Americans more!" Director Weidlinger revealed that this April, this "manual for foreigners to work with the Vietnamese" would be shown in America. He hopes that Vietnam TV will also broadcast this film so that more people can see the film beyond the "artists-only" audiences in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City.



April 7, 2002

Labour Weekend Newspaper
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From a Dream to a Dream
By Le Quang Vinh, "Laođộng" Labour Weekend Newspaper

Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream and the Vietnam-America Theatre Exchange became the background for the documentary A Dream in Hanoi. Even now, after the film has been completed, the participants feel as if they are in a dream.

Professor Lorelle Browning, the industrious woman who had been trying for years to deploy the theatre project, says: "It took 5 years for the play to be mounted in Hanoi. I am very proud of what we have accomplished. It's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity." According to Lorelle, it is very difficult and time consuming to get approval to make such a film because "Some officials in the Vietnamese Government still feel betrayed by the international media. This was especially true just after the 25th anniversary of the fall of Saigon when so much of America's mainstream media continued to portray the country in a less-than-flattering light."

Browning remembers: "While mounting the play, we struggled, we laughed and we cried and I know Tom captured some ungraceful moments for each of us..." But thanks to his hard work, the film is so impressive and truthful that it is being praised by Vietnamese filmmakers. People are even more surprised to know that in order to arrive at a 90 minute film, the American filmmakers shot over 115 hours of film.

In A Dream in Hanoi all obstacles and problems are shown clearly. First, Director Giang's decision to add some actors to the play dismayed Co-director Allen Nause and the producer. Then tensions arose on stage when actor Do Ky criticized Kristen Brown (his American female partner) for expressing her character too strongly on stage since "American feminism clashes with Vietnamese expectations of female behavior."

A passionate kiss on stage caused a controversy between the artists of both countries. Actually, kisses on the Vietnamese stage had always been "fake"; but this is not the case on the American stage. In the end actor Doug Miller created a "little revolution" on this issue with his partner Ngan Hoa's cooperation.

The Americans were surprised that the Vietnamese theater company was not allowed to sell tickets for opening night, yet the Vietnamese still learned much from the Americans about marketing--by whatever means. There was a series of worries, misunderstandings, and cross-cultural angst during the production. However, both sides managed to overcome these difficulties and find sympathy for one another.

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SF Weekly Review

EAST MEETS WEST

American-Vietnamese relations have been cordial at best and lethal at worse, but A Dream in Hanoi proposes other possibilities for cross-cultural engagement besides war. Written, produced and directed by Tom Weidlinger, this beautifully realized documentary narrated by F. Murray Abraham follows a fall 2000 production of a Midsummer Night’s Dream in Vietnam, but it has a Shakespearean sense of drama and humor of its own. The Vietnamese and American theater companies involved aspires to create a bilingual, bicultural version of the play; the result is a clash of wills and worldviews that leaves participants from both camps forever changed.

Colorful opening images of members of the two companies exchanging pleasantries hint at a smooth transition across literary and cultural lines, but problems soon emerge. Resentments develop into ruptures that threaten to capsize the entire production, with a lot of misery and anger generated on each side during the process. Vietnamese director Doan Hoang Giang shocks the Americans when he insists on adding an entourage for Puck consisting of “six masked drummer boy fairies.” The Vietnamese shrug at the inflexible Western theater types; “Americans want a script even for a soccer match!” Even the Vietnamese Ministry of Culture and Information, which had sponsored and encouraged the project (supposedly to teach the Vietnamese how to make money from art), abruptly boots the group out of its venue and forbids them to sell tickets.

Yet A Dream in Hanoi is no gloomfest, largely because of its engaging cast and its discovery of commonality in chaos. Contentious meetings, troubled rehearsals, and tearful harangues balance with shared laughter at a joke well played or a bond over the common hatred of the costumes. As in the play, this film’s “characters” awake from their dream with everything right again.

—Gary Morris

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