Live Reading, One Night Only

Chance Theater and On The Radar (OTR) performers present a live stream reading of, Colonialism is Terrible, But Pho is Delicious.

Just like a live in-person event, this special presentation will not be available after its one-time-only performance so sign-up and watch February 13.

The Show –
Dustin Chinn’s Colonialism is Terrible, But Pho is Delicious took its inspiration from two viral incidents around cultural appropriation and food. [Chef Tyler Akin did a how-to video for Bon Appetit, “PSA: This is How You Should Be Eating Pho,” and Dan Pashman of The Sporkful suggested you could improve bibimbap using a bundt pan.] Chinn says he “followed the rabbit hole” and wrote Colonialism; what he dubs “a triptych about the ownership and authorship of food following the journey of Vietnamese noodle soup.”

This dark comedy spans centuries, continents, and cultures in its three-part vignette structure. Beginning in 1880s Hanoi, the capital city of 19th-century French Indochina, where a Vietnamese cook finds herself in the kitchen of aristocratic French settlers. Then 1999, a century later, in Ho Chi Minh City, where American diners get their first taste of the local cuisine. Then finally, a present-day, gentrifying Brooklyn, where the simmering argument around culture, ownership, and authenticity come to a roaring boil