AsiaLIFE

Seamlessly merging ancient Cambodian lullabies and Khmer Rouge propaganda songs with elements of western rock, Where Elephants Weep looks set to be an international hit. AsiaLIFE met with the composer and producer to discuss this exciting new work.

After a sell-out premiere in Lowell, Massachusetts, new rock opera Where Elephants Weep opens this month in Phnom Penh. “The opera is a way to do cultural preservation, cultural development and is also something new,” says Him Sophy, the opera’s composer and a professor of music at the Royal University of Fine Arts and the Royal Academy of Cambodia. “Nobody ever did an opera like this before.”

Commissioned by Cambodia Living Arts (CLA), the opera meets the organisation’s goal to produce new works, explains executive producer John Burt. “Western cultural influences have moved in so quickly and become so dominant,” says the 25-year producer and director of theatre-based projects for community development. “My question to younger Cambodian artists is how do you find the marriage between your own cultural roots and the dominant incoming western influences? Those influences are here to stay, so how do we find a way to dance together?”

Cambodian West Side Story?

Rock and roll was chosen as the western component for the story, a modern reworking of the classic Khmer romantic tragedy Tum Teuv, often called the Romeo and Juliet of Cambodia. The homecoming of a Khmer American – loosely based on CLA’s founder Arn Chorn-Pond – Where Elephants Weep is a universal tale of love and loss. Sam, a refugee from the Khmer Rouge’s brutal misrule, was raised in the U.S. in 1980s but returns to Cambodia to be ordained as a monk. Committed to finding his roots in his native culture, he unexpectedly falls in love with Bopha, a Cambodian pop star.

Singers from the Philippines, South Korea and Japan appear alongside Khmer performers. The entire ensemble and chorus are Cambodian. “One of the reasons we decided we had to have an international cast is … because this is ultimately a story for every nation, every man, every woman, everybody,” says John. “Also, Sophy wrote such sophisticated music, with such a western musical influence in terms of range and the demand for theatrical and musical training combined, that we decided to cast the principle roles internationally.”

Fusing Contemporary and Traditional

But it is the music that will really astound listeners. “We wanted the music to be symbolic of life’s journey,” John explains. “It’s very much about a man without a country. He doesn’t really belong in the U.S. … and he doesn’t belong in Cambodia because he left and he’s been westernised. Sophy’s music very much reflects that tension … the two cultural forms – the western rock and roll and ancient Khmer – are like two warring families.”

“This is a new kind of contemporary sound that is rooted in the tradition,” John adds. “People can more easily listen to and access it because the composer understands the root of the musical form. The sound of ancient Cambodia is woven into every thread of the music.”

Conflict is at the centre of the work, with both the play and the music a series of resolutions, leading closer to the dialectical harmony of the last scene. The two parts of the orchestra are separated, with one at either end of the stage, though the music is one, much to the audience’s surprise. Tentative flute flourishes interweave with increasingly compulsive drums to reach a riotous, clashing crescendo.

Not a shortage of traditional Khmer musicians, but rather contemporary musicians was a problem initially, according to John, though the discovery of a young pop-rock ensemble able to play Him Sophy’s music soon completed the orchestra. Including a rock band, traditional Cambodian ensembles and a string quartet, the sound is unique and unforgettable, blending state-of-the-art synthesizers and electric guitars with folk instruments dating back to twelfth-century Cambodia.

Him Sophy says the performance is vastly different to domestic singing theatre. “This production is more professional, or we can say more advanced or progressive because traditional forms are just repetitions. But this is a new creation with a new technique of performance,” he adds. “It’s completely different because we have stepped forward from the past. Of course we never forget the past, but we have to look to the future.”

Setting the Stage

Finding a venue was a “major challenge,” says John, but his hardship may eventually be Cambodia’s gain. The Chenla Theatre had no backstage or wings area. Modifications necessitated the removal of the front seven rows of seats, lowering capacity by 55 seats to 416. John says it was a necessary sacrifice to accommodate a larger set.

With no national theatre, Where Elephants Weep should help cement Chenla’s burgeoning reputation as a theatre of performing arts, John continues. “It’s very important for Phnom Penh’s development as a ‘new metropolis’ to have many different kinds of performing venues,” he confides. “There are already small community-based theatres like Sovanna Phum. There are the large state theatres, like the Chatomuk, but there’s nowhere that allows for large-scale theatrical events – anything that needs to be lit and have multiple accesses; i.e. backstage, side-wings. Essentially, we’re building what we need.”

For both men, sharing such an exceptional new work is reward enough in itself, although Him Sophy says it will help contemporise Cambodian arts. “In Cambodia, nobody knows the word ‘opera’,” he says. “We have singing theatre but that’s not opera. Now I have brought the form of opera to Cambodia but we try to do it in our own style – a Khmer Rock Opera. I hope it’s not just for Cambodian people but for everybody.”

John Burt is even more universal in his scope of optimism. “My dream,” he says, “is that the arts can build bridges between cultural differences.”


Where Elephants Weep will play at the Chenla Theatre, cnr. of Mao Tse Tung & Monireth blvds., from Nov. 28 to 30 and  Dec. 5 to Dec. 7.