Episode #170: Acting Against Injustice (Bonus Shorts)
May Wynn Maung’s understanding of Myanmar is grounded in a maxim that her father, an Army officer, used to repeat: “Even if the water bottle is leaking, it doesn’t matter, you have to fill it up again” In other words, no matter how ineffectual a task is, you still have to do it if ordered.
May Wynn’s father joined the army when it was still being led by the famous General Aung San. In those early days, it was an anti-colonialist militia fighting for the country’s independence. Her father became one of the leaders of a parachute troop, and the family followed him from airport to airport as he moved around the country. After the 1962 military coup, he was told to retire and serve in a government ministry. He wasn’t very happy about this, but in line with the above maxim, followed his orders dutifully.
In 1974, May Wynn was a student at Rangoon University, when a protest formed over General Ne Win’s refusal to allow a state burial for UN Secretary General, U Thant, a Burmese national. May Wynn witnessed the turmoil erupting around campus and spilling over into the city, in what many would later call a prelude to the larger 1988 protests. As for how it impacted her at the time, she recalls simply, “That's when my feelings of doubt about our military government started.”
May became a well-known Burmese actress, and she tells her story as to how she got into the field. Her father had a friend who knew a director who was looking for an actress for a project he was working on, and asked her to come for an audition. They first met at Shwedagon Pagoda, and then she then did some auditioning, and was chosen for that part, and soon found herself playing the lead actress in feature movies. (There was no color film available at the time in the country, so everything was shot in black and white until the 1990s.) Over the course of her illustrious career, May Wynn starred in over 60 movies, and even won the Myanmar Academy Award for her role in the 1980 film, Kyi Pyar.
Although May Wynn was making movies that contained very little in the way of political or even social commentary, military censorship was always around the corner—a fact that Kenneth Wong also spoke about at length during his podcast interview. For example, May Winn says, “You cannot wear certain clothes, not very low-neck blouses, or even big buttons. The censorship won't allow those things, or bell bottoms and that kind of stuff.” She remembers one unfortunate actress who was banned from the screen for two years as a punishment for not following the dress code at a single event. It also impacted her personally on more than one occasion. She tells the story of a movie she starred in whose plot centered around a road trip in a car that kept breaking down. The censors were so unhappy that the film portrayed any semblance of real-life problems that they kept cutting away scenes until the movie ultimately lost its coherence. “We cannot do anything about it,” she says sadly about her sense of powerlessness, “because we are under the law. So we had to walk the way they wanted us to.”
And things would only tighten further. She tells how at one point in the late 1990s, the military drafted a letter stipulating that anyone involved in filmmaking had to promise not to express any political statements of any kind. Eerily similar to the McCarthy era during the Red Scare in 1950s Hollywood, those who refused to sign were banned from the industry.
Even so, it still never occurred to May Wynn to speak out against this infringement on her freedom, as she was still steeped in her father’s maxim. “To tell you the truth, at that time, my mind was not that independent and strong, like it is right now. I was just following the directions from the director. I was just doing my job and did whatever they asked me.” Though she was unhappy about it, she didn’t know how to express her feelings.
May Wynn felt many of her peers were in a similar boat of not being very happy with the military interference, yet feeling unable to do anything about it. “I can understand their fear, so I won't blame them. I hear them, and I hear their feelings. But now, I'm more independent, and I can express my feelings here [in America].” Indeed, May Wynn attributes her move to the United States as enabling her to finally find her voice and speak out for basic rights and freedoms. Finally, she had broken free of her father’s maxim that had, until then, so bound her life.
This is certainly the spirit that has animated her following the 2021 military coup. “After seeing all the things in Myanmar, I felt that we need to speak out. We cannot stay quiet!” In addition to her advocacy and fundraising, May Wynn stars in “A Sunny Day,” a musical written by her husband, Thet Win. “The musical is based on the coup and the events of the spring revolution,” she says. “It highlights how the coup transformed people and the country, and the theme of the musical is national unity. So we open with unity, and we end with hope for the future.” The play has been performed in various venues across California, and they are looking to take it on the road to other cities as well.
May Wynn has not stopped her Buddhist meditation practice, even with her move to the United States. While she used to practice Vipassanā in the Mogok tradition in Myanmar, she now follows the teachings of Mrauk U Sayadaw, who regularly visits the US to teach courses to the Burmese diaspora. Looking back on the crisis in Myanmar, she stresses how critical it is that more monastics become involved with the democracy movement. She has been disheartened to find that some revered monks have been imparting Buddhist wisdom in what she sees as a rather manipulative way that, in essence, is encouraging people to passively accept the military authority. Because some of these monks are rumored to have reached some state of enlightenment, laypeople are very hesitant to criticize such statements.
As for herself, there is no question where her loyalties lie: towards the ongoing democracy movement. “A lot of [Burmese] people are in hardship,” she says. “They don't have their jobs, no income, they don't know what to do or how to eat! So that's why we try to help them as much as possible in any way we can. That's how we got involved in these things.”