Kronos Quartet Brings MY LAI to BAM Next Wave Festival

Kronos Quartet, tenor Rinde Eckert, and Vietnamese musician Van-Ahn Vo are bringing Jonathan Berger's acclaimed monodrama My Lai to BAM's 2017 Next Wave Festival for the work's East Coast premiere. Four performances will take place in the BAM Harvey Theater, Wednesday, September 27 through Saturday, September 30 (7:30 pm). The libretto by Harriett Scott Chessman is a character study of Army Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson Jr., who tried to intervene during the infamous Vietnam War massacre at My Lai in 1968, in which American soldiers slaughtered more than 500 Vietnamese citizens, nearly all of them women, children, and the elderly. Vân-Áhn Võ complements the timbres of Kronos with three Vietnamese instruments: dan bau (single-string box zither), dan tranh(16-string board zither), and t'rung (a visually striking helix-shaped xylophone with bamboo rods). The direction and set design are by Mark DeChiazza and Eckert, with video by DeChiazza and lighting by Brian H. Scott.

Rather than focusing on the soldiers who perpetrated the slaughter, My Lai centers on Thompson, a helicopter pilot who tried to stop the carnage, even threatening to open fire on his own troops. Initially, the Army tried to cover up the massacre and discredit Thompson, but his testimony before Congress (for which he was initially villified) helped to turn public opinion against the war.

As portrayed by Eckert, Thompson is seen in a hospital room not long before his death from cancer at 62. Thompson's present and past merge as he recalls the traumatic events of the day. Periodically, he is taunted by an unseen game show emcee who forces him to defend his actions. Says Berger, "the consequences of Thompson's naïve, idealistic attempt to stop the carnage are pieced together in an effort to seek closure and resolution."

My Lai's concert premiere took place at Stanford University, where Berger teaches composition and conducts research on cognition. Joshua Kosman of the San Francisco Chronicle called the Stanford Live presentation "fierce and often harrowing" and praised its "eloquence and sensitivity...Tenor Rinde Eckert, in one of his trademark displays of unbridled vocal power, made Thompson a vivid and poignant character; the music...underscored the drama with unerring clarity.

"The combination of string quartet and traditional Vietnamese instruments - which could all too easily have registered as a multicultural cliche - instead created a potent metaphor for the clashes of the war... For the quartet, Berger's writing alternated between bursts of dense, frenzied activity and slow, hymn-like harmonies of aching sweetness. Võ, meanwhile, plied an array of plucked and hammered instruments...with exquisite precision and care. The Combined effect was hauntingly beautiful."

My Lai was commissioned by the Harris Theater in Chicago, where it made its stage debut in January 2016. John von Rhein of the Chicago Tribune described it as "gripping...Considering the horrifying real-life atrocity that inspired My Lai...the one thing that most impressed me was the work's overall restraint... The half-spoken, half-sung vocal writing moved in sometimes jagged, expressionistic intervals, the character's recollections peppered with obscenities common to GI-speak, especially in the heat of battle. Chessman's memory play mixes poetry, slang, and hurt with fierce brilliance."

Prior to BAM, My Lai will be staged at the Singapore International Festival of the Arts (Aug./Sept.); afterwards, it will go on to the Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA, Cal Performances at UC Berkeley, and Hancher Auditorium at the University of Iowa. These performances mark the 50 year anniversary of the event, which took place in March 1968.

Tickets for My Lai are available at bam.org.