Plays Written by Kalean Ung:
LETTERS FROM HOME
Synopsis:
Letters from Home (1F) – Kalean Ung’s office is slowly being inhabited by ghosts of her family’s past. With grace and humor, she re-examines her own identity through the eyes of her father’s adventures. She calls into being family members that live in letters sent during the Cambodian genocide perpetrated by the Khmer Rouge. These stories are embodied and interwoven with projections, Chinary’s original compositions, and artifacts that enshrine the people and places of this collective history. Journey with Kalean as she unearths the myths and mysteries of her family’s past as a ritual for intergenerational healing. Created in collaboration by Kalean Ung, her father Chinary Ung, and director Marina McClure, Letters From Home is a multimedia, theatrical experience that invites audiences to reflect on their own place within family histories, and to tap into a shared humanity found through suffering and resilience.
Bio:
Playwright and performer Kalean Ung (she/her) is an award-winning Cambodian-American multi-disciplinary theater artist whose professional career ranges from Shakespeare to experimental theatre to contemporary opera and solo performance. She has performed at The Kirk Douglas Theatre, Disney Hall, REDCAT, The Getty Villa, The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, Boston Court Pasadena, The Hammer Museum, The Actors’ Gang, among others, collaborating with critically-acclaimed theatre and opera companies including Critical Mass Performance Group, The Industry, The LA Philharmonic, Rogue Artists Ensemble, Independent Shakespeare Company, Four Larks Theatre, and CalArts’s Center for New Performance. Kalean’s voice acting can be heard as the lead in the English version of Denis Do’s award-winning, animated feature about the Cambodian genocide, FUNAN.
Her solo play Letters From Home (LFH) will be performed at Merrimack Repertory Theatre in 2023. LFH has had performances at Independent Shakespeare Company, UC San Diego, Cambodia Town Film Festival, Willamette University, LA Mission College, UC Irvine, as well as a four-camera live-stream adaptation that was workshopped at Boston Court Pasadena. In addition to these residences, she co-curated a companion exhibit called “Music, Letters, Home: An Exhibition celebrating the Journey of Composer Chinary Ung and Actor Kalean Ung” at The Orange County & Southeast Asian Archive Center. LFH has received support from the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, CalArts, and MAP Fund. Kalean was just awarded the competitive California Arts Council Established Artist Fellowship for her artistic work spanning the last ten years.
Kalean teaches in the Theatre School at California Institute of the Arts. She received her Master of Fine Arts in Acting from California Institute of the Arts and her Bachelor of Music in Vocal Performance from the University of California at Santa Cruz.
Website: www.kaleanung.com