Katie Ka Vang was a year into remission from non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 2017 when she decided she wanted to write about her experience, but she didn’t really know how.
Vang had written about her health journey previously, as in her work “Final Round,” which had performances at Dreamland Arts in 2016. A performance artist and playwright, Vang has a Master of Fine Arts from Brown University and has been celebrated for her writings that draw on personal experience as well as work grounded in the Hmong experience.
But in 2017, she felt stuck.
“I wasn’t ready to write about it,” she says. “But as a writer, I didn’t know that. And I kept trying to do it, so I just got really frustrated with myself.”
In “Again,” Vang’s first musical, she collaborated with composer Melissa Li to create a story about a Hmong American memoirist and cancer survivor named Mai See, who works in a quirky bookstore. She gets approached by a Hmong American filmmaker named Quest, also suffering from chronic cancer, who wants to interview her for a documentary film. What transpires is an unlikely friendship where two people learn what they need to move forward in life despite their cancer diagnoses.
“It sounds very woo-woo, but it’s really about what do we need to feel whole,” Vang tells me in an interview.
During her period of feeling stuck, she ran into a friend from New York, who was in town doing the Composer-Librettist Studio, a program by Nautilus Music-Theater for writers and musicians to develop work making music theater. The program sounded intriguing, so Vang went to the workshop presentation.
“I was like, holy shit,” Vang says. “I think maybe this thing is not in text and dialogue, but maybe it’s supposed to be told through music. It really piqued my interest.”
Vang grew up in Hmong churches. “Praise and worship and singing in choir and all that is really a part of my wheelhouse,” she recalls thinking. “I was like, ‘Oh, I wonder if this can actually be a thing. I can resurrect music back in my life again, in a way that feels healthy, and right.’”
Afterwards, she pitched her libretto to Theater Mu. That’s when she connected with Li, and Vang would share drafts of scenes and monologues with Li in what she calls “brain dumps.” From there, the two artists would discuss structures and Li would pull out pieces of text that could be a song.
“Right from the beginning, I knew that I wanted pop songs,” Vang says. “I wanted this to be a musical. And I wanted it to be pop. That really informs the lyrics and the way that the lyrics are laid out.”
This being her first musical, Vang had a learning curve in process, about things like scansion and rhyme schemes. “It really is an art form. And also it’s really taught me how to write lyrics,” she says.
Vang isn’t one to shy away from things, especially taboo topics. Having been diagnosed with cancer in 2012, she’s addressed her health struggles in a several projects. “I am not very precious about language,” she says. “I kind of just write it the way that I talk, which is unfiltered, raw and kind of rough.”
Vang also said she feels supported at Mu, where she’s working with a primarily Hmong cast. “So much of what they bring into the room informs the piece,” Vang says. “And they can act as dramaturges too. It’s so helpful.”
Also collaborating on the project is Thai American director, Nana Dakin. “She’s been instrumental in this,” Vang says. “She understands the nuances of our community and culture that not a lot of directors would. That has saved me so much time.”
“Again” has previews this week Wednesday, March 29 and Thursday, March 30 at 7:30 p.m. Performances are Friday, March 30 and Saturday, April 1 at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, April 2 and 2 p.m., through April 16 ($45, If an audience member needs to pay less, they can choose to pay less — as little as $10 per ticket.) More information here.
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