Linda Uthoff, the Manhattan High School Thespians and Kansas State University Theater hosted “The Butcher’s Son,” a refugee story and musical performance memoir by playwright, songwriter, actor and producer Vi Nhan Tran, was performed last Saturday at the Black Box Theater at MHS west campus.

“When I was a teengager and I started showing a spark of writing ability in my English classes, my mom said ‘you have to tell our story … you have to write a book about our story’ and I told her ‘no … I’m 14 I will screw it up,’” Tran said. “And I just kept living life and grew up and when I reached a certain level of maturity I said, ‘I think I’m ready now to tell the story and be the voice for my family.’”

The play is an autobiographical performance memoir. It is Vi Tran’s family story from their escape from Vietnam, their capture in Cambodia and our eventual resettlement in southwestern Kansas.

“It’s a play in particular about my family story,” Tran said, “but other than that I wanted to write a play about how family stories are passed down, how we sit together during holidays around the dinner table and we share stories and how this family stories then become family lore and family legends.”

The play was written in honor of Vi Tran’s parents, because of all of the sacrifices they made to give their family better opportunities and to shine more light onto how it actually was to be a Vietnamese citizen during the Vietnam war.

“It removes us from being nameless faces in newspaper photos,” Tran said. “It removes us from being statistics in a textbook, so it puts a real name and a real face to the refugee journey.”

Vi Tran’s company is touring around Kansas, afterwards they are taking it back to Tran’s former hometown Garden City.

“It’s a refugee story but is also an all-American tale,” Tran said. “The writing and music will move you and it will make you want to call your mother father or sister afterwards.”