The four plays of this year’s festival are The Penelopes by Kira Rockwell, I An a Mother F**king Superstar by Valeka Jessica, BlerdMan by Thomas Brazzle and Queen (of the American Nail Salon) by Ryan Vo and Corey Bradberry. Each play will have four performances.
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Meanwhile, Vo’s play will have him occasionally stepping into the role of his own mother, a Vietnamese migrant who moved to Mississippi postwar and adapts to the unfamiliar culture. Much of the play will also deal with their relationship.
“It’s a religious play that deals with Buddhism as well as Christianity being in the Bible Belt,” Vo said. “So it’s not only a clash of my Asian-American upbringing but my mother’s raw Vietnamese upbringing immigrant experience clashing those two ideologies. But also in the play, we deal with some religion. So it’s like my mother, who is a devout Vietnamese Buddhist, and, in my life, I’m not religious anymore, but there was at one point in my life where I was very religious growing up in the South. So we do touch on that in the play, and it’s hopefully layered enough that it is a one-dimensional piece.”