Snakes of Kampuchea: a Trilogy of Plays About Cambodia

Drama. Southeast Asia Studies. SNAKES OF KAMPUCHEA is a symbolic trilogy of plays about Cambodia. In the first play, Snakes of Kampuchea, a forest near a farming village teems with nature spirits, retaining a harmony, until the vicious Khmer Rouge take over, "the crocodile cannot control the waters of the lake," and refugees from the genocide flee to the West. In Tual Kan's Journey a single Cambodian mother in San Francisco's Tenderloin wrestles with flashbacks, her rebellious daughter, and the magical nature of her pre-refugee village life in this symbolic play of grief, goddesses, birds and a magic fish. In Return to Angkor a young Cambodian American woman returns to her ancestral village to search for her long separated sister, and makes a vow about the individual responsibility of shared history and collective memory, capping the trilogy.