“I’ve been wanting to tell this story on stage ever since I completed my motorcycle trip in 2014. Throughout my journey, I wrote a travel blog (in French) that became popular. This made me realize that I had a good story worth telling.”
Responder: Flora Le, writer and producer
Name of Show: Sadec 1956: A Love Story
1. Why should people see your show?
On the surface, my show appears to be about a motorcycle road trip through Vietnam. But it doesn’t take long for audience members to realize that the show is also about universal themes such as love, loss and family.
My creative process is about turning my own painful life experiences into beautiful stories of resilience, forgiveness, personal transcendence, and love. If I can inspire just one audience member to do the same – to find beauty, to make something beautiful out of their trauma – my job as a storyteller is done.
2. What about festivals intrigues you? Any why the Atlanta Fringe?
I played the violin for 15 years, starting at the age of three years old. A significant part of my life as a child was spent playing in music ensembles, and spending evenings and weekends at rehearsals and concerts. I played in countless concerts, musicals and other productions growing up.
Ever since I quit playing music in college, I’ve struggled to find opportunities for “group flow.” After a 20-years hiatus, I am back to performance arts, now with storytelling. I am looking forward to meeting fellow artists, enjoying the vibrant backstage energy, sharing the stage with other brave souls, and celebrating our respective successes.
3. What inspired you to create this?
I’ve been wanting to tell this story on stage ever since I completed my motorcycle trip in 2014. Throughout my journey, I wrote a travel blog (in French) that became popular. I had shared the address of the blog with about a dozen friends and family at the time. The blog grew quickly, and soon I had a few hundred readers. The popularity of my blog made me realize that I had a good story worth telling.
Eight years later, I decided to get serious about this project. On my request, my military husband took a stable job in DC and I promised him to use this time to focus on my writing. And I did. I must admit that writing this show was a painstaking creative process. It took a long time and it took a village, but it’s finally here.
4. This year ain’t normal and there’s no sense pretending it is. How has Covid affected what you’re doing for this festival?
COVID undeniably helped me complete the research portion of this project. When the pandemic started, I was single and living alone in a 500 sq feet apartment in Washington DC. I suffered greatly from the social isolation, which I channeled into finishing the translation of my father’s voluminous correspondence from the 1960s.
After my father passed away, I found a leather bag that contained his correspondence with Hien, the woman he promised to marry after completing his engineering degree in Canada. The bag contained hundreds of old handwritten letters, all in Vietnamese. I could tell from the stamps that they had been written in the 1960s. Something about the way they had been kept intact all these years told me that they were precious to my dad.
It took me five years and a team of thirteen Vietnamese to translate the voluminous correspondence my father and Hien exchanged between 1965 and 1972. There were over 600 letters, amounting to well over 1,000 pages. Their content tells a story of love, longing and loss. Thanks to the pandemic, I was able to complete this enormous translation project in 2020.
You can find out more about the translation project on my website: www.sadec1965.com.
[Above: Flora on her journey in Vietnam]
5. What have you learned from working on your show so far?
Where to start? I’ve learned that it takes a village to write a solo show and that in order to succeed, I needed to surround myself with people who have done this before. Since November 2021, I’ve been working weekly with my amazing artistic director Kathleen Akerley. Kathleen is an actor, director, playwright, and teacher in the Washington, D.C. area and in Chicago. She is the Artistic Director of Longacre Lea, a company that “specializes in mounting physical productions of cerebral works.” She is a mature creative and fantastic director who, throughout the entire writing process, was the light that showed me the way forward.
I also learned that it matters to have a life partner that understands the meanderings of the creative process. My husband is a novelist and having his unconditional support throughout this journey was absolutely critical. He heard countless versions of the show, and he had the tough job of telling me that it sucked sometimes. I am forever grateful for his honesty and his unwavering support.
I also learned a lot about creative writing. I am trained as a lawyer and I write for a living, but I had never invested myself in a creative project like Sadec. I learned a lot about story structure, character development, action writing and dialogue.
Finally, I learned that as an artist, promoting your work is as important as producing good work. They go hand in hand. I’m learning tremendously about social media marketing and copywriting at the moment.
6. There’s a mysterious stranger in the back row of your show, wearing a big ol’ N95 mask and a baseball cap and there’s something weirdly familiar about them, and then they come up afterwards to tell you they loved your show. In your WILDEST DREAMS, who is this mysterious stranger? (Bonus points if your mysterious stranger is an Atlanta celeb.)
Without a doubt, Simon McBurney, the English actor, playwright, and theatrical director. He wrote and performed the extraordinary solo show “The Encounter” (it’s available online on Vimeo if you want to watch the best solo show ever produced!). He is a creative genius and a talented solo performer.
Now, I would also love it if a strong and successful woman actress came to my show and enjoyed it. I’m always looking for strong female role models in the world. Julia Roberts was an idol of mine when I was a young girl with her movie Pretty Woman.
7. Fringes are the place to really push the boundaries so we gotta ask: are you inviting your family to this show are “Hey, maybe sit this one out you guys…”
I would certainly invite all my family, friends, coworkers and neighbors to my show! But unfortunately, they are split between Quebec and Washington, DC.
Although I don’t have family in the Atlanta area, I do have friends, and friends of friends. More importantly, I plan to do a vigorous local marketing campaign using Instagram and Facebook ads, in addition to reaching out to all the media outlets you provided and some specialized groups such as motorcycle riders and Vietnamese diaspora associations.
8. We’ve asked this question every year for the past ten years or so but it hits different this year: Will your show change the world?
Oh no. Changing the world is overrated. Ask me instead whether my show will change one life. To that I answer: yes.
As I mentioned earlier, my creative process is to turn pain into beauty. I use my own painful life experiences to create beautiful stories of resilience, forgiveness, personal transcendence, and love. I believe that the answer to pain is to transcend it, to turn it into stories filled with meaning and beauty. If I can inspire just one audience member to do the same – to find beauty, to make something beautiful out of their trauma – my job as a storyteller is done.
9. Zoom meetings: dress up head to toe or Donald Duck it?
Dress up to the toe! I’m an old fashioned kinda gal.
10. We’re making an excellent Fringey Feelings playlist. Describe your show in two or three songs we can add to keep the jams flowing.
Free – Rudimental
Marvin Gayes – What’s Going On
The Sound of Silence – Simon and Garfunkel
Sounds incredible, right? Gonna need to nab those tickets, right? Click here to reserve your seats today!
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