Culture Show
Culture show is one of the biggest VSA events of the year. It consists of singing, dancing, and acting embedded within Vietnamese culture. It’s directed and produced all by VSA at UCD, and participants are all VSA members!
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Past Culture Shows
2016: "Meet the Hồ’s: Hạnh Phúc Trong Tay"
VSA @ UCD presents its 34th Annual Culture Show, Meet the Hồ’s: Hạnh Phúc Trong Tay. This year's show centers around a very dysfunctional family: a very romantic father and mother, a wannabe Gordon Ramsay, a lesbian coffee shoppe owner and a cranky grandfather trying to keep the family together. Through their trials and tribulations, they discover life doesn’t turn out how you expect it so go after what makes you happy now.
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2022: "The Lost Lantern"
This year's Culture Show tells a tale of a Vietnamese-American and their adventure to rescue the families in the city of Hoi An. In the midst of their Lantern Festival, an evil ancestor threatens to take away the love and tradition of the Vietnamese people. Embark on a journey together as our duo and spirit partner up to learn more about their identity and the importance of tradition.
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2025: Where the Mountains Meet the Waves
Lac Long Quan, Dragon King of the Mighty Sea, and Au Co, Queen of the Immortal Mountain Fairies, fall in love and start a family that would grow up to lead the Vietnamese people, our ancestors.
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2018: "The Wall of Silence"
This year’s culture show revolves around Quang, who, through journals, reveals to his son that his untimely death was actually a suicide. Throughout his life, Quang suffered from depression and PTSD. The show explores the effects of the stigmatization of mental illness in Vietnamese American communities, and invokes discussion about, “The Wall of Silence.”
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2023: "The Blooming Lotus"
Mai is a Vietnamese-American whose family is traditionally Vietnamese. They grow up being immersed in Vietnamese culture only to be thrown into American society once they start elementary. Suddenly in an Americanized setting, they feel lost, confused, and insecure. They are challenged by not knowing which side they belong to (Vietnamese or American) and they struggle with identity from childhood to teens. They start to give in to the pressure of “fitting-in” and begin to forget their Vietnamese side. Once high school starts they also start getting pressure from parents about the grades and the future. It all builds up internally to the point where they have to face their true identity until they bloom into who they really are, a balance of both.
2021: "Thousand Miles of Love - Tình Yêu Vạn Dặm
Tristan is a Vietnamese American who only identifies as so because his parents are Vietnamese. He does not know the language, history, and customs of his ethnicity. However, Vy has recently immigrated to the U.S. and is still adapting to the country. As a native Vietnamese, she values culture and her eastern identity. Wanting to remain close to her nativeness, she distances herself from American culture, preventing herself from assimilating to western practices. Embark on a journey of love, conflict, and exploration to see what being Vietnamese means to the both of them...
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2024: "The Eternal Flames"
Kaylyn is a Vietnamese-American who has been dating her boyfriend Vinh for about a year and is going to visit his family in Vietnam over the summer. She ventures off with him to go meet his family and finds out the boyfriend’s family is very well-off. She struggles to be accepted by his family because she is poor and American. The story focuses on the struggle between these two characters and conflict within the family.
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