I made these:
A Perfect Bowl of Pho
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book & lyrics by Nam Nguyen · music by Wilfred Moeschter
A Perfect Bowl of Pho is a one-act musical comedy about the development of the Vietnamese diaspora’s foods and Nam’s extremely meta efforts to make a semi-coherent show about them.
Pho began life as the Victoria College Drama Society’s submission to the 2017 University of Toronto Drama Festival where it won Best Production, then developed further through presentations by the Paprika Festival and fu-GEN Theatre. It was the 2022 Toronto Fringe Festival’s best-selling and highest-rated show (4/4 stars), subsequently being named one of the Toronto Star’s top theatre picks of the year.
The script is available in print or as an e-book through Playwrights Canada Press, or your local independent bookstore. The footnotes are pretty good, if I do say so myself.
One to produce when the Asians need jobs and Miss Saigon ain’t in town.
CAEZUS
🏛️
lyrics by Nam Nguyen · music by Maksym Chupov-Ryabtsev
CAEZUS presents the days leading up to the assassination of Julius Caesar as an industrial hip-hop concert, re-fashioning Rome’s inner circle into the larger-than-life rap titans of today.
After a developmental workshop presentation by the Victoria College Drama Society, CAEZUS won the 2018 U of T Spotlight Playwriting Competition, was a finalist for the 2020 Robert Beardsley Award, and came in 2nd place for the 2023 Adams Prize for Musical Theatre.
CAEZUS ran at the 2023 Toronto Fringe Festival, receiving a 4-star (of 5) review from Glenn Sumi.
Pay me & Maks to write more.
feat. Yasmine Shelton of Basset
Red Tide
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book & lyrics by Nam Nguyen · music by Wilfred Moeschter
Red Tide begins in April 2016, as fishermen in central Vietnam wake up to the disturbing sight of 115 tons of fish carcasses washed up along 200 kilometres of their shores. This terrible environmental disaster, the worst in the nation’s history, spawns one of its largest ever protest movements. Tensions are high between the nominally communist government, eager foreign investors, and the people of Vietnam — but everyone is hoping to get it all sorted before the American President visits next month.
Originally commissioned by Sheridan College (Tania Senewiratne, Associate Dean, Visual & Performing Arts) as part of First Drafts 2024.
We’re still plunking along on this one.