This article is featured in the 2026 Winter Carnival Issue.
On Wednesday, “The World is Not Silent” — a three-person, trilingual play incorporating English, Vietnamese and both American and Vietnamese sign language — opened at Northern Stage in White River Junction, Vt., with performances through Feb. 22.
The second production of the semi-autobiographical work by the Vietnamese refugee playwright Don Nguyen, it follows the first-generation Vietnamese American character Don as he learns sign language to communicate with his father Dao, who is losing his hearing. Dao is named after Nguyen’s real father.
Sarah Wansley, the BOLD Artistic Director at Northern Stage, said she and the company were drawn to the play because of how “culturally specific” — particularly to the Vietnamese immigrant and refugee experience — it is.
At the same time, she said they were drawn to the play’s exploration of “really universal,” cross-cultural themes concerning immigration, such as cultural and linguistic assimilation, and intergenerational connection.
“There’s also so much in the play about communicating between the generations that I think no matter what culture your family is from, you will connect to,” she added.
Nguyen said the play was conceived as the result of a commission to “write another sign language play” after having written one “many years ago.”
When taking acting classes in college with a gymnast background, Nguyen said he was first drawn to the physicality of sign language but did not learn it until writing that first play — at which point he had no personal connection to signing.
By contrast, he said that when the opportunity for this second commission arose, “I remember thinking, ‘Okay, my father is actually starting to lose his hearing — and so I just kind of made up this quick story.’”
Still, despite the ease of inspiration, he said it was “the hardest play [he’s] ever written in [his] entire life.”
“I think because it’s so personal to me,” he said.
Nguyen said that after initially trying to distance the characters Don and Dao from himself and his father, he found that “all the elements just kind of started to come together” when he narrowed the gap between fiction and autobiography.
For instance, he said that unlike in earlier drafts, making Don’s character an amateur astrophotographer like he is in real life — a meditative hobby he picked up in 2016 inspired by his childhood stargazing in Nebraska — gave the character the life it needed.
Nguyen explained that another foundational part of Don’s character is how he “grew up basically not really speaking much Vietnamese.” Nguyen said the language barrier is a direct reflection of his personal experience and makes the play’s multilingual aspect particularly meaningful to him.
“Growing up, my dad — being a refugee and an immigrant in a new country — he basically was like, ‘You must learn English because it’s gonna get you somewhere in this country,’ and so he never really spoke [Vietnamese] to me,” Nguyen said.
“And I kind of understood why, and I appreciate why he was doing that, but I really felt like I was missing a huge part of my culture,” he continued.
At the same time, however, Nguyen said he reflected on his own ambivalence toward learning his native language as a result of an internalized feeling of the need to “conform.”
“As a Vietnamese artist, someone who grew up in Nebraska who kind of [also] shunned learning Vietnamese because for me, I was like, ‘I need to conform and be like other people,’” Nguyen said. “I found it a great joy to get to actually hear Vietnamese spoken out loud on stage with other Vietnamese actors.”
That said, he and Wansley said his “100% Vietnamese” casting requirement necessitated a more concentrated search effort given the “small population of Vietnamese-American actors,” according to Wansley.
“You can, as an actor, kind of fake languages,” Nguyen said. “But Vietnamese is such a tonal language that if you don’t hit the right tones, you can tell it’s not authentic.”
To make the play’s trilingual aspect accessible to English-speaking audiences, the set will include three projectors “kind of map[ped] together into one giant screen” featuring closed-caption subtitles, according to the projection designer and programmer Dylan Carter. About a quarter of the dialogue is subtitled, Wansley said, noting that this marks the most subtitle usage for a Northern Stage production to date.
However, Carter explained that not every non-English moment of the show will be captioned — thus giving the audience an analogous experience of the communication challenges between Don and Dao.
“In certain moments we’ll let the actors do what they’re doing and let the language kind of speak for itself,” Carter said. “We’re asking the audience to kind of take that journey with us and to lean in, which I think is really exciting.”
Carter added that besides serving the design function of helping indicate “time and place,” the projectors will also display some pre-recorded footage edited to resemble YouTube videos streamed by the characters Don and Linh.
For Don’s astrophotography YouTube channel in particular, Carter said they will be incorporating some of the playwright’s “real photos.” According to Carter, the show’s astrophotography element also serves as a vehicle for some “philosophical” abstract storytelling in the show, such as through Don’s meditations about space-time.
Wansley said that in a “thrill[ing]” turn of events, Nguyen’s agent informed Northern Stage that he wanted to continue working on the play. As a result, he has been present at Northern Stage starting from the first rehearsals and will be through opening night, which is unusual for a second production.
Emphasizing that “a lot of plays will never get a second production,” Nguyen said he saw this one as “a great opportunity to revisit the play.” Besides answering questions about the script, he said he has been “tweak[ing]” it to make it as artistically strong and technically feasible as possible for this production.
As for audience reception, Nguyen said he believes “the show has something for everyone.”
Besides the obvious resonance of the Vietnamese language with any Vietnamese-speaking audience members and the sign language with any Deaf audience members, he said that any “nerds” will appreciate the astrophotography aspect. As for more general audiences, he added that “there’s also ping-pong.”
On a more, or less, serious note, Wansley said the play is also “very funny.”
“I just really enjoyed a story that’s looking at an immigrant experience in these times that are so challenging for so many immigrants, … [and] to also see a really heartwarming story that is approaching it with humor,” Wansley said.
Carter said he hopes audiences will also be inspired to think more critically about fostering connection with others in this digital “age of connectivity.”
“I think something that’s really interesting about sign language … is there are things that you can see that are body language indicators that come up in sign language that you don't have to understand the language to understand what they’re saying,” Carter said.
“But you have to be willing to take that step of watching and listening and engaging with somebody in a way that’s outside your comfort zone,” he added.
As for Northern Stage, Wansley said she hopes that this culturally specific, linguistically rich play will mark not just a one-off feature for the company, but a springboard for further exploration of other cultures and languages in future offerings.
“I hope that this is not the last time Northern Stage does a play that is trilingual,” she said.
Avery Lin ’27 is an arts editor and writer from New York City. She studies Comparative Literature, including French and Classical Greek, at Dartmouth and also writes for Spare Rib Magazine.
