When stories go untold, they can be lost forever. Opening June 11 and running through July 31, Theater Mu and the Jungle Theater break open a musical narrative that spreads across generations with Cambodian Rock Band.

It’s part dramatic tale and part rock show. The show features songs by Los Angeles band Dengue Fever (who are heavily inspired by Cambodian rock and pop music) and classic Cambodian hits performed by Mayda Miller, Greg Watanabe, Eric Sharp, Shawn Mouacheupao, Christopher T. Pow, and Deryck Hak.

Besides having about six songs in the show by Dengue Fever, playwright Lauren Yee was actually inspired to write "Cambodian Rock Band" because she saw a concert by Dengue Fever, according to Lianna McLernon, Theater Mu marketing & communications director. They've worked together from the beginning, and in one of the first performances, two of the band members actually taught the cast how to play their songs. Lead vocalist Cchom Nimol has also helped another production of the show with language consulting.

Working through the generational trauma that refugees often suffer, Cambodian Rock Band is about a daughter on a journey to connect to her roots and as well to her father.

Director Lily Tung Crystal, who serves as St. Paul-based Theater Mu’s artistic director, brings with her a background of acting and the Asian American experience to the play. Tung Crystal grew up in Los Angeles in California, and spent many years in her 20s navigating what it meant to be a Chinese American.

“I lived in a very white community growing up,” she shares. “I was the only Asian girl in my class, and everybody would try to set me up with the one Asian boy in my class. My mom tried to force me to learn Chinese, and I did very reluctantly. I had a lot of resistance to it because all my friends were white. There were parts of my culture that I really tried to push away because I wanted to fit in, so I really grappled it with my identity. But I also felt in college there was a judgement of if you weren't Asian enough, you were called a banana or Twinkie, and that was getting it on both sides. The white community sees you as one way, and then the Asian community feels like you're not Asian enough. For a lot of my 20s I went to Shanghai to study Chinese.”

Tung Crystal studied the language and culture and ended up starting an English language magazine while working as a foreign correspondent and doing theater on the side during her time in China. What she found was these jobs all had a common thread of storytelling running through all of them. Having only acted, she hesitated when an artistic director in the Bay Area urged her to direct the David Henry Hwang play, Chinglish. He saw her potential to bring out stories through lived experiences and leading others to expand on the stories. When Theater Mu was looking for a new Artistic Director in 2019, she weighed on it until one day a conversation between Tung Crystal and her son and his friends pushed her to make the choice.

“I got the job offer and waited almost two weeks to make a decision, since we were living in California,” she says. “My son’s friend asked why we were moving to Minnesota, and my son said it had to do with money. I turned to him and said, ‘You know, honey, money is important, of course. It's important that we can live and pay for a place to live and eat and do the things that we want to do in life. But for me and your daddy, it's not really about the money. It's more about what we want to do in the world, the impact we want to make. And this job will allow me to do my life's work.’ That came out of my mouth. I looked at my husband and we both were like okay, fine, let’s do it. It took me having to explain to a 9-year-old what I needed to understand myself. So, I decided to come out here.”

Her decisions have shaped many of the shows presented by Theater Mu, and many immigrants and first-generation Asian Americans can find themselves in the story that plays out in Cambodian Rock Band. The tale centers around Chum, who returns to his homeland of Cambodia for the first time in 30 years after fleeing the Khmer Rouge because his daughter, Neary, is prosecuting one of the political party’s most notorious war criminals.

Danielle Troiano, who plays Neary, shares, “The famous saying is, ‘We learn history, so we don't repeat it.’ I don't know how much people actually uphold that belief, but I also believe that humans are imperfect creatures who are capable of really, really terrible things. I think everyone should know that and everyone should hear stories of extenuating circumstances and where you analyze, ‘What would I do in that situation? What are the limits and weak points of humanity? Where do you stand true and your morals, and is the individual to blame or is the system to blame?’ It's a question that I think it should bring up for people. History contains a lot of answers, but it should also make you question the way that you function in the world. That is part of the play, but it’s also about the love between a father and daughter, and that's the heart that drew me to the play — also the fact that the play is based off of real-life history that people should know about.”

The idea and audacity of having all different heritages of Asians represent Cambodians is not lost on Theater Mu, so they made sure to have Cambodian consultants in the room when rehearsing and prepping for the show. At every step of the process, those individuals were called upon to answer the cultural accuracy that was being portrayed.

As a Filipino woman, Troiano weighs in on how she approached her role, “I have never been able to play a Filipino. If I waited for a Filipino role as an actor, I would never work, and this is the first time I am playing a Southeast Asian as a Southeast Asian. Though I can't relate directly on the Cambodian front of things, I know that the heart of the character Neary as an Asian American. I was able to connect with her culture, and I see her roots and in myself alarming amount of myself in her — even if we don't have the exact same background. The need to connect with culture is there and I feel that that's the most important thing for me to feel justified in this play. As much as I would like to say every show should be cast 100% racially, I would just never work and a lot of Asian Americans would just never work. So we do our best as a collective diaspora to band together to do the best job we can say with this history and with this story.”

Tung Crystal adds, “If you're an Asian American theater maker, it's like a beacon for you and a home for Asian American artists.”

Cambodian Rock Band opens June 11 and runs until July 31, 2022, at the Jungle Theater, located at 2951 Lyndale Ave S, Minneapolis. Tickets