Creator

Vichet Chum

Khmer American playwright and young adult novelist based in New York.

Vichet Chum is a Cambodian American playwright, actor and young adult novelist based in New York, the author of the play Bald Sisters and the novel Kween.[1][2] His plays often explore Khmer identity and queerness.[3]

Life and training

Chum grew up in Carrollton, Texas, near Dallas, and wrote poems on his school binder as he grew up.[1][4] He holds a BFA from the University of Evansville and an MFA in acting from Brown University and Trinity Repertory Company.[1][5] He lives in New York City.[2]

Plays

In his third year of graduate school Chum wrote KNYUM, a solo play about his parents' legacy, the Khmer Rouge and inherited history. He kept developing it after moving to New York to work as an actor.[6] He performed it at Merrimack Repertory Theatre in Lowell, Massachusetts, in 2018, and it received a special citation from the Massachusetts House of Representatives that year.[6][1] He has called that performance the moment he committed to writing plays.[6]

Bald Sisters follows two Cambodian siblings as they face the legacy of their late mother and the war and genocide that made her a refugee in the United States.[2] It received the 2021 Edgerton Foundation New Play Award and premiered at Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago in December 2022, running through January 15, 2023. It was his first major production.[1][5][2] High School Play: A Nostalgia Fest premiered at the Alley Theatre in Houston in the 2022 to 2023 season.[7][5]

Merrimack Repertory Theatre commissioned the play Kween in 2020, and Chum held virtual workshops of it during the COVID-19 pandemic.[4][6] It centers on Soma, a queer Cambodian American teenager and spoken-word artist in Lowell. Its world premiere ran at Merrimack Repertory Theatre from February 25 to March 1, 2026.[4] Chum has said he wants to show the full range of Cambodian American life, including queer identity, coming of age and everyday experience.[4]

His plays have been workshopped or produced at theaters including Steppenwolf, the Alley Theatre, Roundabout Theatre Company, Ars Nova, Page 73, Cleveland Play House, the Magic Theater, People's Light, Seattle Children's Theatre, Fault Line Theatre and the New Harmony Project.[1] He has written commissions for Audible, Steppenwolf Theatre, People's Light, Seattle Children's Theatre, Merrimack Repertory Theatre and Cleveland Play House.[1][8] As of 2023 he was also writing plays for Audible and Steppenwolf and adapting Kween for the stage.[3]

Kween

Chum adapted the play into his first young adult novel, Kween, published by Quill Tree Books, an imprint of HarperCollins, on October 3, 2023.[9][6] Set in Lowell, it follows Soma as she enters her school's spoken-word contest while her father is deported to Cambodia and her mother goes there to help him settle.[9][6] Chum has said the book deals with deportation as a complicated issue for 1.5-generation Cambodians, and that it acknowledges the Khmer Rouge years while focusing on carrying their legacy forward.[6] Chum characterizes his plays, by contrast, as "very adult."[3]

Service and recognition

Chum is an associate artist at Merrimack Repertory Theatre, an Underground Resident at Roundabout Theatre Company and a Usual Suspect at New York Theatre Workshop.[2][1] He serves on the board of the New Harmony Project and on the steering committee of the Asian American Performers Action Coalition (AAPAC), and he is a curator for Space on Ryder Farm.[1][9] From 2021 to 2022 he was a member of the Artistic Advisors Circle at Seattle Children's Theatre.[7] His past writers' groups include the Resident Working Farm Group at Space on Ryder Farm (2019 to 2020), the Interstate 73 Writer's Group at Page 73 (2020) and the Ars Nova Play Group (2020).[7]

  • Princess Grace Award in Playwriting with New Dramatists (2018 to 2019)[2]
  • Special citation from the Massachusetts House of Representatives, for KNYUM (2018)[1]
  • Laurents/Hatcher Award (2021)[1]
  • Edgerton Foundation New Play Award, for Bald Sisters (2021)[1]
  • Lucille Bulger Service Award (2023)[1]
  • Sun Valley Writers' Conference Fellow[1]

Works


See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 1.12 1.13 Vichet Chum, official site
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 American Theatre, The Subtext: How Vichet Chum Measures Success (December 22, 2022)
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 The New York Times, How a Playwright and Novelist Spends His Sundays (December 9, 2023)
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 WBUR, A new play centers a queer Cambodian American teen in Lowell (February 24, 2026)
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 Theatre Journal, Towards Empathy: A Conversation with Vichet Chum (September 2023)
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 6.6 JoySauce, Vichet Chum: 'To be a Cambodian is to be a multitude of things' (October 3, 2023)
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 Seattle Children's Theatre, Artistic Advisors Circle
  8. ↑ Fault Line Theatre, Vichet Chum
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 Pollard Memorial Library, Local Author Spotlight: Vichet Chum (April 9, 2024)
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This page was last edited on 26 September 2026, at 23:42.