ABOUT THE SHOW
How did the daughter of a provincial governor and the daughter of a buffalo-riding gangster become BFFs? The Friendship Play (also known as Hmong-Lao/Lao-Hmong Friendship Play) is a comedy-turned accidental musical about playwrights, foodies, and real-life BFFs May Lee-Yang (a Hmong refugee) and Saymoukda Duangphouxay Vongsay (a Lao refugee). Set to the backdrop of karaoke music and Little House on the Prairie fantasies, Lee-Yang and Vongsay hack their way through stories about refugee life, American pop culture, and empowering their brethren through the Hot Asian Man project.
"We began the journey to create The Friendship Play because we realized that though our communities share many similarities—we come from Laos, lived as refugees in Thailand, and even have some shared food and language—there is a huge disconnect between our communities. As 2015 marked the 40-year anniversary of the Hmong and Lao migration to Minnesota, it made sense to connect our stories with that of our communities.”
--May Lee-Yang, co-creator of The Friendship Play
“We are amazing. Our friendship is awesome. We deserve an audience.”
--Saymoukda Vongsay, co-creator of The Friendship Play
ABOUT LAZY HMONG WOMAN PRODUCTIONS
Lazy Hmong Woman Productions’ aim is to create change by providing space and tools to nurture Hmong women’s and girls’ voices through storytelling and theater and increase and diversify the number of Hmong Minnesotans who access the arts. Our work is grounded in giving marginalized voices the opportunities to tell their own story, in their words, on their own terms. Additionally, our projects are catalysts to create cross-cultural conversations.
Each new production is an opportunity to think about: how do we make theater authentically inclusive? How do we make theater that is physically, financially, and culturally accessible? How do we develop audiences within communities that have had little exposure to theater? How do we use theater as a vehicle to talk about hard issues within and beyond the play?