On the Town at the APLIC-I Conference
Miss Saigon
By Jean C. Sack, Hopkins Population Center

Miss Saigon was the Wednesday evening Broadway musical selected by a dozen APLIC-affiliated theater-lovers after the adjournment of the APLIC-I conference. Ironically, that evening was also the beginning of a similar historic event -- the Nato bombing of Serbian forces entering Kosovo. Underlying plots of both the flights over former Yugoslavia and the war in Vietnam demonstrate that war always severely impacts the innocent as well as the soldiers involved, with the suffering and evacuation of civilians. For population and reproductive health librarians, Miss Saigon was thematically central to our work. Love in time of war, unprotected sex, a child out of wedlock, prostitution and decisions about fatherhood as well as displaced populations and international travel were depicted on stage. The evocative settings of bars, streets and hovels, embassy walls, bamboo curtains, Bangkok hotel rooms, lighting and dramatic sound effects, along with lovely cultural touches in costuming, sensual and military movements, and musical strains certainly made the evening a memorable one.

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Last updated 04/25/01