Diaspora: Chantria Tram Carries Khmer-Krom Voices to Canadian Stages and Screens
Actress, writer and producer based in Toronto, Chantria Tram has spent some fifteen years building a body of work that explores, with humour and vulnerability, what it means to grow up between two cultures. From her solo show "Someone Between" to roles in series streaming on Apple TV+ and HBO Max, by way of a collective memory project with the Khmer-Krom community, her path traces the portrait of an artist for whom the stage is also a space for reconciliation.
From Mary to Chantria: a search for identity
Chantria Tram is of Khmer-Krom descent, an ethnic Khmer minority originally from the Mekong Delta, now part of southern Vietnam but historically Cambodian territory. She arrived in Canada as a child with her family and, in an interview with the Cambodian Alliance for the Arts, recalls inventing herself an English name, "Mary," to better fit into her new surroundings. It was at a Cambodian New Year celebration at a temple in Ontario, surrounded by other young Khmer-Krom who shared a similar experience, that she says she reconnected with her roots and began to close what she describes as a kind of identity crisis. Drawn to theatre since childhood — she grew up watching her mother perform — she chose to make it her career and trained in drama at Concordia University in Montreal.
Someone Between, an intimate journey
It was at Concordia, nearly fifteen years ago, that she began the project that would become her artistic signature: "Someone Between," a semi-autobiographical solo show in which she examines, with humour and empathy, the tensions between tradition and modernity, family and individuality, past and future. The play was first staged at Le Monument National in Montreal, before touring Canadian stages for several years, from the Centaur Theatre to the Hamilton Fringe Festival and on to Toronto's Summerworks Performance Festival. "Because it's a semi-autobiographical piece, I really had to dig within myself to find answers to questions I had never dared ask myself," she told the Cambodian Alliance for the Arts, also describing the difficulty of playing her own parents on stage. "It was, and still is, a healing process." Critics took note: View Magazine called it "a personal story, well told, with compassion, empathy, and commitment," while Raise the Hammer praised how Chantria Tram "plays both roles masterfully, in part through change of voice… and very subtle but very effective choreography."
From intimate stages to North American screens
Alongside her work as a writer, Chantria Tram has built an on-screen acting career that has taken her to the sets of several major North American productions: Murderbot on Apple TV+, SkyMed on Paramount+ and CBC, Titans on HBO Max, and The Expanse on Amazon Prime. She has also appeared in Deadly Estate and Workin' Moms. On stage, she joined the cast of Three Women of Swatow at Toronto's Tarragon Theatre, one of the country's most respected venues for contemporary work.
Voices of the 1.5 Generation: passing on memory
In 2011 and 2012, Chantria Tram led a project of an entirely different kind: "Voices of the 1.5 Generation," an artist residency run in partnership with Concordia University and Montreal's Khmer community, with support from the Canada Council for the Arts. Drawing on oral history interviews gathered by the Cambodian Working Group of the Montreal Life Stories Project, she spent three months facilitating workshops bringing together young Khmer people born or raised from an early age in Canada, invited to explore how stories are passed down between a generation marked by severe human rights violations and their children, who are in turn redefining their own identities. The project, co-produced with filmmaker Paul Tom, resulted in a staged presentation and a short documentary, and was featured as part of Montreal's "We Are Here" programme as well as at the international conference "Imagining Cambodia," hosted by Southern Illinois University.
Tiger Child, a new project in development
Chantria Tram is now developing an original series, Tiger Child, which she co-wrote. The project was named a finalist on the Coverfly RED List, which recognises some of the best unproduced scripts submitted to the platform each year — an encouraging sign for this new creation.
A commitment to community
A member of ACTRA, Canada's union for performers in film, television and voice work, as well as of CEAE, Chantria Tram also serves as Treasurer of Nightwood Theatre, a Toronto company dedicated to feminist theatre, and chairs the Khmer-Krom Youth Development Centre of Ontario, an organisation dedicated to the province's Khmer-Krom youth. It's a commitment that extends, beyond the stage, the same work of memory and transmission at the heart of her art.
Official website: chantriatram.ca
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