'Lady Gaga of Vietnam' finds a home in Pittsburgh

She is known as the “Lady Gaga of Vietnam.”

Her name is Mai Khoi (pronounced “my coy”) and she is a successful Vietnamese pop star turned activist who was forced to leave her home country after being harassed and silenced by the Vietnamese government.

The 38-year-old Khoi has found refuge in Pittsburgh, arriving last November and becoming the second scholar in residence at the University of Pittsburgh through the Scholars at Risk program. The program partners with an initiative of the Institute of International Education called the Artist Protection Fund.

The fund supports threatened artists by placing them in safe countries for a full year, where they can continue their work and plan for their futures. Khoi is also supported by the Pittsburgh-based International Free Expression Project and the City of Asylum on the North Side, where she and her husband have found their Pittsburgh home.

Here, she can freely express herself through her unique brand of performance art.

“I am so lucky to have the Artist Protection Fund fellowship here in Pittsburgh so I am able to collaborate with amazing artists,” said Khoi. “I love this city already. I want to stay here forever.”

Khoi grew up poor in Vietnam but longed to create music, writing her first song at the age of 7. She had natural talent but worked hard at her craft.

For 10 years, Khoi was a superstar in Vietnam and had a substantial international following. Her versatile voice and signature look, punctuated by pink hair and sequined outfits, brought her packed houses at nightclubs and other venues in Vietnam and elsewhere. She won awards and had devoted fans.

Khoi also had the backing of Vietnam’s one-party socialist government, led by the ruling Communist Party. It even used one of her songs to promote the country. As long as she was singing innocuous songs that the government approved of, she prospered. She made enough money to help her parents and brother buy houses.

But toeing the line is not in her DNA.

When she was a child, Khoi’s father — a music teacher who taught her how to play the piano — was jailed for a year in a “re-education camp.” He was charged with making fun of former Prime Minister Ho Chi Minh and wearing bell-bottom pants, banned by the government for being too American.

Eventually, all the money, awards and accolades could not placate Mai Khoi. She didn’t like the way women were being treated and the way others were being oppressed in her country. She felt she had to speak out and write the kind of songs that expressed her frustration with the state of things in Vietnam. And when she did, she knew she was risking everything. But it didn’t matter.

“I couldn’t stand working under the system anymore. I am an artist and I felt insulted every time they censored my songs or my performance,” said Khoi. “In Vietnam, before you can perform in public, you have to perform your program and provide all of the content to the censors who come from the culture department.

“You have to ask for their permission and it’s very difficult to get the permission. They censor your songs, the lyrics, they censor the way you dress, they censor everything. I couldn’t stand it. As an artist I need to be free to express my opinion, my feelings, my emotions. So, I decided I will do it.”

Khoi began speaking out against Vietnam’s censorship. Her original music and lyrics started focusing on women’s rights and LGBTQ rights. With bucking the system came a backlash. When she applied to run as an independent candidate in 2016 for a seat on the National Assembly of Vietnam, she was removed from the ballot.

Not long after that, her concerts were being raided by police. She said she and her husband were evicted from their Hanoi apartment.

During his 2016 visit to Vietnam, President Barack Obama met with a small group of Vietnamese human rights advocates, including Mai Khoi. She was thrilled about the meeting but disappointed by what Obama had to say.

“When President Obama came to the meeting, everyone could see the sadness in his eyes. We were talking about issues happening in Vietnam, the travel ban, the election laws, the right of assembly, freedom of expression,” said Khoi. “Obama told us, ‘Just be patient.’ ”

It was not what Khoi and the others wanted to hear.

“I (told) him he could use his leverage. The U.S. has leverage to influence the Vietnamese government, to force them to respect human rights by including those conditions in any trade agreement. But he said ‘Just be patient.’ ”

Khoi ended up mocking Obama in a song she wrote titled “Just Be Patient,” which she performs as part of a 45-minute video, a one-woman show called “Bad Activist.” Khoi collaborated with director Cynthia Croot, head of performance and associate professor in Pitt’s Department of Theatre Arts, who helped develop the script. Pianist and Pitt Ph.D. candidate Mark Micchelli provided accompaniment and master’s student Keith Reimink directed the movement of four cameras and edited the production.

Croot called Khoi an inspiration.

“Her investment in her work, the strength and clarity of her voice, the poetry and urgency in her songs…I felt that in each rehearsal I learned something new about her,” Croot said.

Khoi hopes to expand “Bad Activist” to a full-length feature film. The full 45-minute version of her one-woman show can be viewed on the “Pitt Arts” page of YouTube.