I've been close friends with Bryan Thao Worra ever since we worked together at Hawthorne over three years ago. By the end of my first day on the job, we were cirbbing Star Wars lines to each other; it was "buddy-ness" at first sight. You could say we grokked each other, and we would know exactly what that meant. And yet we haven't discussed much in the way of his Laotian heritage, opting instead for intricate arguments such as whether Hellboy 2 remained faithful to the source material. Who needs to be burdened with personal details when you can both agree on the irony that Heath Ledger's performance in The Dark Knight might very well be the defining portrayal of the Joker, in spite of the fact that the story never appeared in comic/graphic novel form?
That's what friendship is all about, right?
So when one of my closest friends started getting accolades for his involvement in the Legacies of War exhibit (Strib, City Pages, TC Daily Planet, Southwest Journal, and Asian-American Press, just to name a few), I took him up on an offer to see an exclusive preview of the "Refugee Nation" performance. The play, interspersed with video clips of the carpet bombing of Laos, is both meaningful to those with direct experience with the subject matter, and accessible to newbies such as myself. It begins with the traditional Laotian greeting of "Sabai dee," which means...
