The stories in the production making its world premiere at St. Paul’s Park Square Theatre are homegrown — fresh and authentic.

“Face to Face: Hmong Women’s Experiences” grew out of interviews last year with residents of St. Paul’s Hmong community. Stories from five women were chosen and woven into a script by Twin Cities theater artist Katie Ka Vang and Sara Zatz, associate director of New York-based Ping Chong + Company. The women who shared their true stories are in the production. None of them are professional actors, Vang says.

But it’s not a storytelling event, Zatz explains. It’s theatrical. Working remotely, she and Vang put together a piece that moves chronologically, mixing the stories and experiences with historical context. All of the women featured in the production are first-generation Hmong-American, ranging in age from 23 to 35, and they all “basically grew up here,” Vang says. “They all identify with St. Paul.”

Through their stories, the cast addresses topics including mental health and depression, family violence, disabilities, sexual assault and loneliness in the shared immigrant experience. The story looks at family dynamics for these first-generation women who balanced the expectations of home and school in areas such as extracurricular school activities, which parents and grandparents didn’t understand, Vang said.

But these are American stories, not just Hmong-American stories, she adds. “We’re not so ‘other.’ ” Vang was born in California, but moved to the Twin Cities in 1999. Her work has been developed and produced locally at Theater Mu, Pillsbury House, Walker Art Center and Theatre Unbound. She’s worked in the arts community as a storyteller, performing artist and playwright. She’s working on a new musical for Theater Mu that will debut at the Asian-American theater company’s “New Eyes” festival in April.

Ping Chong was founded in 1975 to help communities tell their stories. This production is part of Ping’s “Undesirable Elements” series, which started in 1992 to work with local communities on oral history theater. Ping has had a long relationship with Illusion Theatre in Minneapolis, Zatz says, creating an “Undesirable Elements” production in 1994 that toured for 10 years. Another “Undesirable” production was created in 2006. Zatz has been with Ping Chong full time since 2002.

Recent “Undesirable” productions have explored refugee experiences, Native American identity and the experiences of survivors of sexual abuse. The productions follow a “stylistic form,” Zatz says. It’s not quite a template, but there are guidelines.

Former Park Square artistic director Flordelino Lagundino invited Ping Chong + Company to bring the process to St. Paul. Vang says Lagundino, who was at Park Square for a year before his position was eliminated in January, was surprised St. Paul had not told more Hmong stories.

The co-playwrights, who are also co-directing “Face to Face,” hope the show draws a mixture of Hmong audience and Park Square regulars. Hmong theatergoers will hear their own stories, Vang says, maybe for the first time and maybe in Park Square for the first time.

Though the performers have no professional theater training, one is a spoken-word artist and two do traditional Hmong dance. And everyone has some acting experience, perhaps back in high school or college.

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Three metro arts groups each get $50,000 COVID-19 relief grants Zatz says that “Face to Face” focuses on heavy issues, but telling an awful story from 1997 can be positive when the audience sees that the storyteller in front of them survived and rose above it. “It’s hopeful and powerful testimony,” she says.

“Face to Face” also has humor, music and poetry.

“It’s not all doom and gloom” Vang says. “It’s a look at what gives us hope.”

Park Square Theatre presents “Face to Face: Hmong Women’s Experiences”