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This story comes to you from MPR News through a partnership with Sahan Journal.
Katie Ka Vang’s first musical is about something personal to her: cancer.
She was diagnosed in 2011, relapsed twice and went through two bone marrow transplants.
“What I do as an artist is, you know, we try to really try to understand the things that we go through in life through art. And so I really set out to try to write about my cancer experience.”
She has written plays for years but was struggling with how to write about her cancer experience. Then she attended a workshop reading of a friend’s musical theater piece and it inspired her.
“I really infuse my lived experiences into all of my writings, in addition to things that I’ve seen within my community, things I’ve really witnessed other people go through. All of that really gets incorporated into my writing.”
Theater Mu, which focuses on Asian-American arts, commissioned Vang in 2019 to write what became the musical “Again.”…
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