Stage Q&A: Vi Tran talks about his upbringing and how he raised his own Son

Vi Tran is ready to tell his family’s story. His new play, in which he appears as himself and his father, recounts his family’s flight from wartorn Vietnam through Khmer Rouge–ruled Cambodia in the early ’80s through settlement in a new country. At 34 — the same age as his father when that journey began — this skilled actor, musician and writer has found his own way.

The Pitch: What brought you to KC?

Tran: I came to KC during grad school to act in a show at the Unicorn and fell in love with the city.

You tell your family’s emigration story in The Butcher’s Son, your new play. What was the impetus for telling the story onstage, as opposed to telling it through another medium?

Ever since I was a teen, my family has been pressing me to write our memoir. I’d told them no because I felt too young to take on such a challenge, but I put a pin in their request. For the past 15 years, I’ve been doing it in “actionable chunks,” writing it a song at a time, a poem at a time or a short story at a time.

I’d originally planned a companion album to Vi Tran Band’s American Heroine, a sort of dual love letter to the two sides of my heritage: my American upbringing and my Vietnamese heritage. My fiancée, Mackenzie Goodwin [who’s directing The Butcher’s Son], suggested merging the two ideas into one project: a live performance memoir using all those autobiographical vignettes and the Vietnamese refugee concept album.

How old were you when you arrived in the United States, and what was it like to land in a brand-new culture?

Fortunately, at 3 years old, I arrived at a young enough age for me to assimilate pretty quickly into American culture. Being raised as a refugee kid in Garden City, Kansas, wasn’t without its moments of culture shock, though.

You’re professionally active in both theater and music. How do you separate and combine the two interests?

To be a working artist, you have to diversify your revenue streams and opportunities and strategize as the artist-entrepreneur, small-business owner you are. I self-identify as a storyteller over anything else, and theater and music just fall under that umbrella. Stepping back from the business side of things to the actual art practice, I love using different mediums to inform and inspire more work: A poem might serve as the seed for song lyrics, a song the basis for a short story, and so on — even a doodle can inspire a play.

What lit the theater spark?

I spent most of my adolescence chasing perfect grades in pursuit of law school or med school at the Ivy League school of my choice. Then, in high school, disaster struck: I lost my 4.0. With my academic hopes supposedly dashed, I figured, “Hey, since my life is over now anyway, I might as well just do what I want.” So I auditioned for a play and started a band with some kids from my church and fell headlong in love with performing.

Where did you train as an actor? as a musician?

I received my bachelor’s in theater and English and my master’s in directing at Kansas State University. My musical training began in earnest in the Aggieville bar district of Manhattan, Kansas, and then countless piano bars, clubs and bars in the KC metro area.

What drew you into theater and into music?

I was an awkward kid. I was shy and introverted, but most people didn’t realize that because I had a big mouth. Performing taught me how to interact with others. It’s funny that learning how to put on the mask of a character eventually taught me how to be comfortable in my own skin. Nowadays, because I have an outlet onstage, I’m much more at ease with just relaxing or being alone offstage.

What’s the hardest thing you’ve worked on?

Metropolitan Ensemble Theatre’s production of M. Butterfly. I played a Chinese spy who was masquerading as a woman in the Peking Opera. The role requires an actor who can convincingly play a woman, sing Italian opera, and perform Peking opera and fight choreography. On top of that, MET was able to bring in the show’s original, Tony Award–winning choreographer, Jamie Guan. He coached us on material that usually takes eight years of training in a mere 10-day intensive workshop. It was brutally difficult and an amazing experience.

You also had to disrobe in that show, which doesn’t seem like an easy thing to do.

Disrobing might seem difficult or discomforting as a person, but it’s one of the least challenging things in terms of acting. My first experience with onstage nudity was my very first professional production, Take Me Out, at the Unicorn. We were baseball players, and there was a locker-room shower scene. The thing is, a theater cast is exactly like a locker room. You build that trust and camaraderie with your teammates onstage and develop the relationships between your respective characters and pinpoint thematically why the nudity is important from there.

In M. Butterfly, my teammates had poured their hearts and souls into this story, and Robert Gibby Brand, who was onstage with me every night in that scene, had laid his character’s soul bare. At that point, he has spiritually disrobed. So any discomfort you might have at that point is trumped by your loyalty to your teammate. You honor your teammate and the work itself by doing what the story requires, whether that’s disrobing or singing a song or nailing a monologue. It’s just part of the proc­ess. You’re one piece in a collaborative work of art and you honor everyone’s hard work by doing your best to do your job.

Who’s your inspiration?

My family is my inspiration. The Butcher’s Son is about our refugee journey and the hardships they endured so that I might be able to choose my own path in life. The performance memoir is my love letter to them and to families everywhere.

When will we see you next?

The Vi Tran Band will be playing selections from the Garden State soundtrack after the special 35 mm viewing of the film at Alamo Drafthouse on August 21.