{"id":168669,"date":"2026-04-17T16:33:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-17T16:33:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/168669\/"},"modified":"2026-04-17T16:33:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-17T16:33:08","slug":"new-south-philly-play-sengs-salon-highlights-laotian-community","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/168669\/","title":{"rendered":"New South Philly play \u2018Seng\u2019s Salon\u2019 highlights Laotian community"},"content":{"rendered":"

Love Philly? So do we. Let\u2019s be friends.\u00a0Sign up for the Billy Penn newsletter today<\/a>.<\/p>\n

About two years ago, playwright Saymoukda Duangphouxay Vongsay<\/a> was in a sort-of stage and nowhere near writing \u201cSeng\u2019s Hair Salon\u201d<\/a> now being produced by InterAct Theatre Co.<\/a> at its Drake theater April 17 through May 10.<\/p>\n

Commissioned by InterAct to pen a play about Philadelphia\u2019s Southeast Asian community, Vongsay sort-of had an idea for a plot. But not much of one, except that somehow it would involve a ghost.<\/p>\n

Nothing, she knew, would truly jell until she found some place in Philadelphia that spoke to her heart as a setting for the play.<\/p>\n

The staff at InterAct Theatre Co. did its best to help. As part of its Philly Cycle<\/a> series of plays centering on underrepresented groups in the city, the theater company partnered with Laos in the House,<\/a> VietLead,<\/a> and the Cambodian Association of Greater Philadelphia.<\/a> Representatives from each group squired Vongsay around \u2014 to temples, to community centers, to businesses.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

It was all good, and Vongsay, who is Laotian, was learning about Philadelphia\u2019s vibrant Southeast Asian community, about 60,000 strong according to some estimates.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen one morning, I went to the hair salon,\u201d Vongsay said. \u201cI was supposed to stay for 30 minutes and I stayed there for an hour, sitting there and watching Grandma Seng and her daughter, whose name is also Seng.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was an Auntie from the community getting her hair permed. They were bantering and telling dirty jokes, and they were also talking about their grandchildren.<\/p>\n

\u201cI looked around the salon,\u201d she said. \u201cIt felt like I had been there before.\u201d<\/p>\n

And, by the time she walked out, she knew. \u201cThis is it! This is it!\u201d<\/p>\n

Seng\u2019s Salon<\/a> is a real place, in the heart of the Southeast Asian community at Seventh and Ritner streets in South Philadelphia.<\/p>\n

\u201cI took a bunch of pictures so I could go home and dream and imagine,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd that\u2019s what I did.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the play, a world premiere, three generations of Laotians offer salon services at Seng\u2019s Salon. Almost the same as in real life.<\/p>\n

Sengthong Sananikone, who came to Philadelphia following the war in Vietnam and opened the salon in 1986, is now retired. It was purely a coincidence that she was visiting from Florida the day Vongsay fell in love with the beauty parlor. Her daughter, Sengdao \u201cSandy\u201d Sananikone, now runs the shop with the assistance of her son, Derick Sananikone, who was the person who brought Vongsay to his family\u2019s business.<\/p>\n

\u201cI volunteer with Laos in the House and was working with InterAct to help bring this play to life,\u201d he said. His job was to introduce Vongsay to the Laotian community, and he wanted her to see his family\u2019s business.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been there since 1986,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s one of the foundations of the Southeast Asian community. Seventh Street in South Philly \u2013 it\u2019s a business corridor now. The salon was one of the first businesses to open along the corridor.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe see all walks of life \u2013 Cambodian, Vietnamese, Laotian,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019ve seen parents bring their kids. There\u2019s a real huge sense of community at the salon. [Vongsay] was open ears, open eyes, witnessing, and taking it all in.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSeng\u2019s Hair Salon\u201d is the second of three plays in the Philly Cycle, an initiative set in motion several years ago by InterAct. \u201cIt arose from a few different impulses,\u201d said Seth Rozin,<\/a> InterAct\u2019s founder and artistic director.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe first was whenever we have done a play that centered a Philadelphia story or issue, we\u2019ve sold them well and we\u2019ve engaged the community in a palpable way,\u201d he said. Therefore, \u201cwhy wait for those plays to come our way? Why not incentivize those plays\u201d by commissioning playwrights to create them?<\/p>\n

And then, sometimes, he said, Philadelphia plays tend to have predictable themes \u2013 sports, history, or crime. \u201cWe were exploring narratives that don\u2019t get discussed.\u201d<\/p>\n

The first play, \u201cOn My Deen,<\/a>\u201cproduced last season, centered on Philadelphia\u2019s African American Muslim community, and told the story of a couple navigating both faith and love.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had good attendance by the Black Muslim community,\u201d Rozin said.<\/p>\n

While developing the play, he learned that members of the community \u201cdon\u2019t go to the theater because most of the time the play would have something in it that would be considered problematic \u2014 profanity, intimacy before marriage. So, they just assumed that they wouldn\u2019t go to the theater in general.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThey felt seen and heard,\u201d Rozin said. \u201cNot only did they feel that they could see a play, but they also were seen as regular people who happened to believe something different.\u201d<\/p>\n

Part of the Philly Cycle process, Rozin explained, involves teaming the playwright with community groups so the playwright can capture the essence of Philadelphia and its communities.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the things that is in the play that is fascinating to me is something I didn\u2019t know,\u201d Rozin said. \u201cAfter this huge wave of refugees came in the mid-70s, many young men, only men, died in their sleep having no other medical conditions. Something took their lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vongsay began her life as a refugee.<\/p>\n

Her parents fled Laos as the war in Vietnam was drawing to a close. She was born in a Thai refugee camp and came to the United States when she was four. The family moved to St. Paul, Minnesota, which is where Vongsay now lives.<\/p>\n

One thing Vongsay didn\u2019t want to write was a play where the Southeast Asian characters were suffering. \u201cI\u2019m tired of trauma porn,\u201d she said. \u201cWe\u2019re always painted in need of help. I could focus on the now and the present and looking into the future.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSeng\u2019s Hair Salon\u201d<\/a>, April 17-May 10, InterAct Theatre Co.,<\/a> The Drake, 302 S. Hicks St. Phila., 215-568-8079. InterAct offers post-show talkbacks after many performances. Playwright Vongsay will appear following the April 25 matinee. Representatives from community partners and Seng\u2019s Hair Salon will speak after weekend matinees, along with the actors and choreographer Jungwoong Kim. Rozin leads audience discussions April 29, 30, and May 6 and May 7.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Love Philly? So do we. Let\u2019s be friends.\u00a0Sign up for the Billy Penn newsletter today. About two years…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":168670,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[4877,75934,12970,69,71,70,75935,3220,7866],"class_list":{"0":"post-168669","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-interact-theater-company","10":"tag-laos","11":"tag-philadelphia","12":"tag-philadelphia-headlines","13":"tag-philadelphia-news","14":"tag-philly-cylce","15":"tag-south-philly","16":"tag-theatre"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=168669"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168669\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/168670"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=168669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=168669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=168669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}