Facing the music: 'Cambodian Rock Band' drums up war crimes and deep family history

Mention Cambodia to many Americans and the image that comes to mind is "the killing fields," photojournalist Dith Pran's term for the blood-soaked soil of his homeland.

During the 1975-79 dictatorship of Pol Pot, Cambodia lost an estimated 2 million people — a quarter of its population — to war, execution and starvation.

Lauren Yee's play "Cambodian Rock Band" is helping to change the perception of the Southeast Asian nation even as it grapples with a heavy history.

The drama, which opens Saturday in a Theater Mu co-production at the Jungle Theater, features a live band as it tells of a father's return to Cambodia after 30 years. Chum has come back in search of his wayward daughter, who is helping to gather evidence for the prosecution of war criminals.

The play leans into generational chasms and the necessity of addressing the past in order to move forward. It also is about the power of culture. When the Khmer Rouge took over in 1975, they declared a new era starting from Year Zero, and banned a raft of artistic practices, including music, as they sought to take the country back to an agrarian past.

"Regardless of how you enter the play, music transcends all borders," said Yee, a celebrated playwright. "We can all remember certain songs or albums that we listened to at very specific times in your life, transporting us back to those emotions. So music is a time machine that helps transport us back."

Generational secrets

"Rock Band" caps a trio of Yee plays that center on Asian American identity and generational secrets. She kicked off the series with "The King of the Yees," about searching for her father in San Francisco's Chinatown after his disappearance, and "The Great Leap," a basketball-themed drama that the Guthrie Theater staged in 2019.

In crafting "Rock Band," Yee sought to thread an almost impossible needle. It's a father-daughter story set against world events. The father has tried to keep his traumatic history from his daughter, but she can feel it in her bones.

"It's a lot of things rolled into one," Yee said.

Yee did not imagine she would write a story like this. More than 10 years ago, when she was in graduate school at the University of California-San Diego, a friend dragged her to see Dengue Fever, a band that built its reputation playing Cambodian oldies.

Yee was enchanted.

"It's that moment when you hear a sound and you're immediately arrested," Yee said. "I went in knowing absolutely nothing about the band and their music but afterwards, I wanted to know everything about their story, their songs. That was the rabbit hole I jumped down."

It would be some years before the contours of the play came together. She was having a workshop in Seattle in 2015 when she met a versatile actor named Joe Ngo who could effortlessly embody the lead character of Chum.

"His parents were born and raised in Cambodia, they lived through the period in the play, and he played electric guitar," Yee said. It was kismet.

Ngo would star in the 2018 world premiere at South Coast Rep in Southern California.

Celebration of life

The Twin Cities cast features Greg Watanabe, who has played Chum at theaters in Chicago, Pittsburgh and Lowell, Mass.

"When you tell people that it's set against a genocide, they think it'll make you feel hopeless," Watanabe said. "But this story ultimately is about survival and how we celebrate life."

And because of its very specificity, it resonates in a universal way, said Mu artistic director Lily Tung Crystal, who is helming this production.

"My father comes from a family of 17 children in China, and the majority of his siblings were killed by Communist soldiers," Tung Crystal said. "This is a part of the fabric of my family.

"I don't want to diminish anyone's suffering, but this is a story of resilience. My parents grew up with so much suffering and loss, there's a pride in weathering this and making a better life for our children."

Jumping back and forth between the 1970s and 2008 — the time of the Cambodian war crimes tribunal — "Rock Band" mixes fiction with real history, including the S-21 prison in the capital city of Phnom Penh, where an estimated 20,000 were housed before being killed.

Eric Sharp plays the man who ran that facility, known as Duch (pronounced Doik).

"The reason we know about Duch is not because he was the most evil or most important person of the Khmer Rouge," said Sharp. "He was an ordinary guy who was so good at his job. Before the Khmer Rouge, he was a math teacher. And he documented everything, basically building the [war crimes] case against himself."

Sharp visited Cambodia in 2009 while Duch was on trial.

"I don't think Cambodians want to be defined by this event," Sharp said. "When we were there, we were hosted by this family, and it was beautiful. And I don't want to speak for the playwright, but I think that's what Lauren is leaning into — taking this painful period and giving it more dimension."

'Cambodian Rock Band'
Who: By Lauren Yee. Directed by Lily Tung Crystal for Theater Mu.
Where: Jungle Theater, 2951 Lyndale Av. S., Mpls.
When: 7:30 p.m. Tue.-Sat., 2 p.m. Sun. Ends July 31.
Tickets: $45 suggested. Pay-as-you-can. 612-822-7063 or jungletheater.org
Protocol: Masks required and proof of vaccination or negative COVID-19 test.