“I have always considered myself a social practice playwright,” said Minnesota-based writer-activist Saymoukda Duangphouxay Vongsay. “I cannot develop work without engaging community.”

It should be no surprise, then, that Vongsay, when commissioned to write one of the three plays in InterAct Theatre Company’s Philly Cycle, dove headfirst into the local Philadelphia community to develop her play Seng’s Hair Salon, premiering at InterAct April 17-May 10.

And it’s no surprise that her play sprang directly from her experiences in the community. Working in partnership with the organizations VietLead, Laos in the House, and the Cambodian Association of Greater Philadelphia, Vongsay conversed over meals and visited local businesses and nonprofits. On one visit, she was invited to a hair salon run by a grandmother, her daughter, and her daughter’s son.

“I’m sitting in the chair, and it’s only supposed to be a half hour meeting,” Vongsay recalled. “But I end up staying for like an hour and had a call from the next site saying, ‘Are you coming?’ I was so engrossed with this family, just loving their dynamic, loving that this is three generations of beauticians. They all have their different ideas of what the business can be and what the business has meant to people in the community.”

The resulting play, director Chongren Fan said, mixes day-to-day salon life with a literal manifestation of unaddressed trauma. The salon, she continued, feels “like a microcosm of community—a place where Southeast Asian immigrants can be themselves, speak freely, and exist without the pressure of a white gaze. It expands the idea of family beyond just blood.”

“The play also shows how organizing really happens,” Fan said, “through stories gathered one by one, through relationships, through refusing ‘community silence,’ and through the realization that a salon can be a civic space—not just a business.”