Threads

Tonya Jone Miller tells a story about a girl who, by merely being enrolled in studies of Asian history and languages, falls in love with the subject and, following her heart, travels to far away Vietnam to teach English. There she connects with the people, especially with a disabled orphan boy who she wants to adopt and take with her to America. In the meantime, many complications arise: the war ravaging the country is taking its toll, Americans (civilians) are leaving the country, Vietnamese people are trying desperately to leave with them in order to at least save their children, and there are bodies alive and dead lying along the streets. Plus, Tonya is nine months pregnant and about to give a birth to her child in the Saigon airport.  She lives through this chaos and reaches the USA, where she is reunited with her brother just in time to see him in the hospital dying of leukemia.   

The story is very touching, but told without passion. There is a lack of  connection with the character. It is more than clear that the actress never lived through the kind of hell she describes., so naturally, cannot understand its devastation. The only scenes where she comes to life are the one in the airport when she thinks that she is giving birth to her child, and the one when her brother is dying. There, she fully connects with the story and shows what a good actress she might be once she fully understands the problem. Her story telling lacks natural flow, especially the phrase endings which sound unfinished.

Tonya Jone Miller includes too many details and events in the story. The focus of the narrative is lost, and with it, the atmosphere that is so essential for this kind of theatre.

By: Tonya Jone Miller

Threads plays in Academic Hall.