audience

Just had a chat with David Nguyen (Cuong is his stage name) as part of my thesis work. The non part of my thesis conversation concerned Australian mainstream and Vietnamese community audiences. When designing theatre about the Vietnamese community how does the work get interpreted? Dave asked some interesting questions to pose like whether the stories are universal enough to reach both audiences and that meanings will be ascribed differently by each audience. This would affect the outcome of the piece. Children of the Dragon is mostly in English. The stories in it are ones that would be familiar to the Vietnamese community I think almost to the point of cliche. But I don't know how an Australian audience unfamiliar with the Viet community and its issues would view it. I think anyone who sees the show would already be a little bit familiar of common perceptions of it anyway. The overarching myth is a great device that way. He does think about the Vietnamese audience more than the other artists I have interviewed so far. I don't think of audience in my novel writing but community theatre I think you have to.