MAPACA

Mid-Atlantic Popular &
American Culture Association

Large block letters spelling out the word “VIETNAM” dominate the stage, towering over the actors in The Inexplicable Redemption of Agent G. The stage design, by Nick Francone, immediately clues the audience in to the setting of Qui Nguyen’s play while also intentionally failing to render it in a realistic fashion.

Agent G premiered Off-Off-Broadway at Incubator Arts Project in March 2011, produced by the Vampire Cowboys Theatre Company which Nguyen co-founded and for which he serves as co-artistic director. Robert Ross Parker, the other co-artistic director of the company, directed and the play made the move to Off-Broadway a year later, opening at the Beckett Theater @ Theater Row in February 2012.

Labeled by Nguyen as the third and final installment of his Gook Story Trilogy, the play combines satire, action-adventure, and martial arts choreography as it attempts to tell the true-life tale of Nguyen’s cousin Hung who fled Vietnam in 1988 and now returns to the country to confront his past. Parallel to this story is Nguyen’s own struggle to write it, with an African-American actor (William Jackson Harper Off-Off-Broadway and Temar Underwood Off-Broadway) cast in the role of the Asian-American playwright, who continually comments on the play in progress and is often confronted by his characters regarding the way he represents things.

In this essay, I examine the pop culture aesthetic of the Vampire Cowboys, noting the ways a globalized Hollywood culture impacts theatrical production and the construction of urban space – both real and imagined. I also interrogate the way the playwright and director ironically comment upon their exploitation of various ethnic stereotypes and show how Asia can be represented by failing to depict it accurately.