Performing Pain-Taking and Ghostly Remembering in Vietnam

Abstract

Cô Định and cô Xuân, two women veterans in Ho Chi Minh City, recount their memories of torture during the Vietnamese-American war. Their remembering requires a performance-centered exploration of the Vietnamese women's tradition of “pain-taking,” as well as their haunting return to the Con Dao prisons as veteran-tourists.

Drought and Rain:re-creations in Vietnamese, cross-border heritage

“…Ea Sola's practice helps recast 'preservation' as sustaining traditions. Within the field of performance studies, much recent work on re-performance has focused on remakes of aesthetic performances (Chalmers 2008;Morgan 2010;Schechner 2010;Schneider 2011), historical re-enactments (Schneider 2011), re-telling memory narratives (Pollock 2005;Eisner 2012) or aesthetic performances that engage everyday activities (Stucky 1993;Morgan 2010). However, not enough attention has been given to the hybridity within re-performance.…”