Fortunate Daughter

The secret to keeping your family happy is ... keeping your other family secret. A one-dyke show about the difference between coming out and coming home.

Thao’s Vietnamese parents keep pushing her to marry – a man. Her other family – her Queer activist friends, coworkers, and community – wants her to come out. Thao doesn't want to do either! But the pressure builds from both sides and she is forced to make a decision.

Credits & Info

Written & performed by Thao P. Nguyen
Produced by Meanie Productions

Directed by Martha Rynberg
Originally directed by W. Kamau Bell
Developed in the Solo Performance Workshop

Full-length solo comedy
Approximately 75 minutes w/o intermission

SF Weekly Article - "Coming Out, Coming Home"

Coming Out, Coming Home
Fortunate Daughter Recommended
By Lily Janiak, SF Weekly Entertainment Writer
October 3, 2012

Fresh from an acclaimed run at the New York Fringe Festival, Thao Nguyen’s solo show, Fortunate Daughter, is about her revealing her homosexuality to her parents without “coming out.” The coming-out narrative, she says, “is based on a lot of Western values,” like individualism and the primacy of verbal communication, as well as a proclivity for binary thinking, none of which mesh with Nguyen’s background and worldview. Her character doesn’t come out; she “comes home,” partner in tow. For gays in many non-Western cultures, Nguyen says, if “you just keep on bringing that person home, it gives your family a chance to build a relationship with this person. Eventually they just figure it out.” In this show, Nguyen’s home includes a jokester dad who, when his humor fails, “he fails hard,” and a mother who once solved her daughter’s grade school social problems by sending her to lunch at school with five extra Happy Meals, one for each of her bullies. Nguyen’s family is from Vietnam, which just hosted its first ever Pride Parade this August. In her family, homophobia is also subsiding, but “slowly.” “I’m not hiding my life from them at all,” she says. “I’m just not saying the words.”

Photo by Elizabeth Griffin

Fortunate Daughter is named one of the
top ten Bay Area plays of 2013
by KQED Year in the Arts!

KQED calls Nguyen's play "hilarious"
and "beautifully constructed."
The show is the only solo show
listed on the top ten list!