‘The Rice Cooker’s Journey’

The Denison Fringe Festival presents “The Rice Cooker’s Journey,” an original play written by Denison juniors Megan Lovely and Ryan Seibert.

“The Rice Cooker’s Journey” tells the story of Narorn Seibert nee Keo, a Laotian refugee from Cambodia who arrived with her family in Long Beach, Calif. on July 12, 1976, in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, the United States’ Cambodian Incursion, and during the rise of the Khmer Rouge. Her mother’s rice cooker was one of two possessions that her family brought with them to America, and continued to nourish them in times of celebration and despair.

In this one-woman show, the character of Narorn welcomes the audience into her home for rice and stories, inviting the audience to join in her search for a reconciliation of two worlds. Following the performance, there will be a 15-minute talkback with Narorn Seibert nee Keo herself and the production team.

When a small group of theatre artists programmed some alternative work on the periphery of the inaugural Edinburgh Festival in Scotland in 1947, they ignited the “fringe festival” movement, fostering exciting, non-traditional, and limits-expanding theatre around the world. The Denison Fringe will include a series of diverse original performances by students and faculty, guests, and student organizations and celebrate the theatre-making of Denisonians. It also will include, on Saturday, April 28, a staged reading of George S. Kaufman & Marc Connelly’s “Beggar on Horseback,” the first play produced on the Ace Morgan stage, in 1956, as we say good-bye to our home of more than sixty years.