Vietnamese Student Association Drama Fest

A Stage, a Song, and a Conical Hat: UH Mānoa’s Vietnamese Program Will Make History

By the IPLL Public Relations Staff: Ahron Natividad, Marrick Davalos, and Laurence Joven Gabriel Ranjo 

On the morning of May 2, 2026, something will happen for the first time in the history of the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa’s Department of Indo-Pacific Languages and Literatures. Students of Vietnamese will step onto a stage, face an audience, and perform — in a language they have studied, struggled with, and practiced; in a culture that for some of them is an inheritance, and for others, chosen belonging.

The Vietnamese Drama Fest 2026, to be held from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. in the Architecture Auditorium, will be the inaugural festival of its kind at IPLL. It will not rely on spectacle. There will be no elaborate machinery, no imported theatrics. There will be students, scripts they have written themselves, and the risk that comes with speaking in another tongue before those who know its subtleties better than they do.

The festival is being organized by Dr. Jennie Tran, Vietnamese Program Coordinator and Instructor at IPLL, in collaboration with the Vietnamese Student Association at UH Mānoa. The vision is clear: to move Vietnamese beyond the grammar drill and into lived expression; to let performance accomplish what textbooks cannot — to make language breathe in public.

Students from all levels of the program will participate. Beginners will bring their newly learned tones and greetings into the open air of performance. Advanced students will navigate the layered textures of idiom, humor, and cultural memory. Each group will write and stage original skits in Vietnamese, drawing from themes that demand more than vocabulary. They will need context. They will need to listen. They will need to understand what a Vietnamese story sounds like when it is told from within.

One of the anticipated highlights will be a traditional conical hat dance. The nón lá will rise and turn beneath the auditorium lights — at once ancient and immediate. A simple object, shaped by sun and rain, will travel symbolically across the Pacific and find its place in Honolulu. In that movement is history: migration, diaspora, continuity.

A panel of judges — Vietnamese language instructors and members of the local Vietnamese community — will evaluate the performances for creativity, language use, and teamwork. Awards will be given. Yet the competition will not be the heart of the matter. What will matter is that students will have written something into being, rehearsed it into confidence, and offered it to the public.

The composition of the participants gives the festival its deeper resonance. Many who will take the stage are heritage learners. Vietnamese, for them, is not merely an academic subject. It is a grandmother’s cadence, a household argument, a lullaby half-remembered. It is sound before syntax. To perform it in an academic setting is not simply to demonstrate proficiency. It is to acknowledge lineage.

Alongside them will stand non-heritage learners — students who have chosen to enter the tonal architecture of Vietnamese from the outside. Their labor is different but no less serious: to earn through study what others received by birth; to step carefully into a culture not their own and learn its gestures with respect. On that stage, inheritance and intention will meet. Not as opposition. As shared work.

When the performances conclude, the gathering will move into a quieter second act. A Vietnamese lunch will be served. Conversations will lengthen. Photographs will be taken. Laughter will loosen what nerves have held tight. These moments, often dismissed as incidental, are in fact where the life of a language program becomes visible. Community does not emerge from curriculum alone. It emerges from presence.

In the longer arc of IPLL’s history, the Vietnamese Drama Fest 2026 will mark a beginning. It will affirm that Vietnamese at UH Mānoa is not confined to classroom recitation. It has a stage. It has witnesses. It has a community that extends beyond the university walls.

On Saturday morning, students will step into the light carrying more than scripts. They will carry effort, memory, uncertainty, and pride. They will test their voices against the air and the audience. They will risk mispronunciation. They will risk silence. And in doing so, they will refuse erasure.

Language survives because someone dares to speak it.

On that stage, they will dare.

And that, too, will be a form of witnessing.