Chit Thu Wai
Chit Thu Wai (Burmese: ချစ်သုဝေ; born 10 August 1984) is a Burmese actress, singer and medical doctor.[1][2] She has achieved fame and success as an actress and singer.[3][4]
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3f/Chit_Thu_Wai_2015.jpg/220px-Chit_Thu_Wai_2015.jpg)
In 2015, she represented Myanmar at the United Nations General Assembly as a Hand-washing Ambassador.[5][6][7] She has initiated a hygiene awareness programs, promoting disease prevention through hand-washing with soap since 2006. A core supporter of the National League for Democracy, she actively participated in the election campaign in November 2015.[8] Chit Thu Wai was listed in The Myanmar Times' "Top 10 Actors" in 2019.[9]
Early life and education
Chit Thu Wai was born on 10 August 1984 in Yangon, Myanmar to parent Zaw Win and his wife De De. Her father Zaw Win, is a music producer and founder of the Metal Zone Studio.[10] She is the youngest daughter of two siblings, having an elder sister, Chit Su Wai, a singer. She attended high school at Basic Education High School No. 3 Mingalar Taung Nyunt and graduated from University of Medicine 2, Yangon with a degree in M.B.B.S.[11]
She is a practicing Roman Catholic.[11] She was interested in singing since childhood, the love of music was seeded in her when her father sent her to a Sunday school.[12][11]
Music career
She began her music career in 2000 as a singer in performing at the Thingyan music concerts.[11] The same year, she launched her debut album "Tho...Phay Phay Nae May May" (To...Father and Mother) which was a duet album with her sister Chit Su Wai. In 2006, she released her second duet album "Ta Shite Mat Mat" together with her sister. She has become popular due to "Takal So Yin" song from the group album "Yuu Aung Chit Mi Thu".[13] Since then, she gained the first recognition from her fans and she engaged in shooting commercial advertisements, stage performances, and many concerts at various locations throughout Myanmar.[13] At the same time, she also sang a lot of songs, cooperating and sang together with local artists. In 2008, she participated in group album "10 Seconds". One of the songs from that album, "A Phyu Yaung Lay Par" song which became widely popular in local and has been one of the all-time hit in her career.[13]
In 2010, she released her debut solo album "Tain Twe Nay Tae Ayet" (Where The Cloud Lies) which spawned more huge hits. Many music industry records have followed since then. The song "Tain Twe Nay Tae Ayet" was the hit song of the album. Her first solo album was more successful than her two duet albums – which made everyone to start recognising her as Chit Thu Wai.[13]
In January 2013, she released an album "Mee Eain Ka Byar" which was a duet album with her partner Lynn Lynn.[14] The follow-up video album on 5 March 2015. Her second solo album "Promise" was released on 14 February 2019.[15][16]
Acting career
She made her acting debut with a leading role in the film Nay Ta Chan La Ta Chan (Half Moon Half Sun) alongside Sai Sai Kham Leng, Ye Lay. The film was directed by Zaw Ko Ko and released in 2006.[13]
In 2007, she took on her first big-screen leading role in the film Nge Thu Moh Ma Thi Bar (Don't Know Because I Am Young) alongside Lu Min which screened in Myanmar cinemas in 2008. The film is based on Ma Sandar's novel Don't Know Because I Am Young and nominated for many awards at the 2008 Myanmar Academy Award.[13]
In 2011, she starred in her second big-screen film A Htar Thi Nae Nhint Khar Chit where she played the leading role with Nay Toe, Min Maw Kun, and Wutt Hmone Shwe Yi which screened in Myanmar cinemas in 2012. Later, she starred in big-screen films Thike Ka Lar Tal Sakar Ma Pyaw Buu and Tay Tay Lay Pal Lar A Kyi Kyi Lar, played the female lead. From 2006 to present, she has acted in 5 big-screen films and over 100 direct-to-video films.[17]
In 2013, she starred as Mary in the stage musical Jesus of Nazareth: The Musical.[18]
Brand ambassadorships
Chit Thu Wai was appointed as a brand ambassador of Lifebuoy, a soap product of Unilever. On 27 November 2017, she started working as a brand ambassador for Nestlé's Barley milk product.[19]
Humanitarian and social work
She is a Myanmar representative in Vietnam for ASEAN, an ambassador for UNICEF, a monthly donor for ‘Children Our Future’ as well as supports two medical students in Myanmar for their expenses. She also works as an education Ambassador in Myanmar and supports FED, an education program for children of immigrant workers in Myanmar.
In 2012, she became a member of Myanmar's Consumer Protection Association.[20] In 2013, she was appointed as an ambassador for the Myanmar Disabled People's Organization. Also in 2013, she was appointed as a women's ambassador, along with Rebecca Win for Myanmar to raise awareness for gender equality and women's rights.[21]
Chit Thu Wai has initiated a hygiene awareness program, promoting disease prevention through hand-washing with soap. In 2015, she attended to the United Nations General Assembly as a Hand-washing Ambassador from Myanmar to raise awareness of handwashing with soap to help reduce child and newborn mortality. At these events, she did galvanise support for the inclusion of handwashing as a hygiene indicator in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and spread the message about the importance of hand washing. Among the events at the UNGA week, the highlight of Chit Thu Wai's role is her attendance and speech at the Unilever Hygiene and Nutrition Luncheon on 27 September.[22][23]
She delivered aid in the form of clothing, food, medical supplies and educational materials to the many IDPs at the Wan Wa and Haipa displacement camps, as well as offering moral support and occasional medical advice as needed. The International Red Cross and UN organizations including the World Food Program and UNICEF were also on hand, independent of Chit Thu Wai, to offer humanitarian assistance.[24]
Chit Thu Wai and Lynn Lynn have founded KhitThit Foundation for the celebration of their twin daughters’ birthday on 19 February 2019.[25] The purpose of the foundation is to support under 5-year-old children who have congenital heart defects in medical care.[26] She is an education ambassador for Myanmar.
Political activities
Following the 2021 Myanmar coup d'état, Chit Thu Wai was active in the anti-coup movement both in person at rallies and through social media. She joined the "We Want Justice" three-finger salute movement. The movement was launched on social media, and many celebrities have joined the movement.[27][28]
On 6 April 2021, warrants for her arrest were issued under section 505 (a) of the Myanmar Penal Code by the State Administration Council for speaking out against the military coup. Along with several other celebrities, she was charged with calling for participation in the Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM) and damaging the state's ability to govern, with supporting the Committee Representing Pyidaungsu Hluttaw, and with generally inciting the people to disturb the peace and stability of the nation.[29][30]
On 17 February 2022, her homes and business property were confiscated by the military council.[31]
Personal life
Chit Thu Wai married to singer Lynn Lynn, on 30 January 2014.[32] They have twin daughters May Myanmar Thit and May Myanmar Khit, born in 2017.[33]
Filmography
Film (Cinema)
- Nge Thu Moh Ma Thi Bar (ငယ်သူမို့မသိပါ) (2008)[34]
- A Htar A Thit Nae Hna Khar Chit Mal (အထာသိနဲ့နှစ်ခါချစ်) (2012) – Moe Thazin
- Chit San Eain 2028 (2015) – Thet Lyar
- Father's School (အဖေ့ကျောင်း, 2016)[35][36]
- Thike Ka Lar Tal Sakar Ma Pyaw Buu (သိုက်ကလာတယ် စကားမပြောဘူး, 2017)
- Tay Tay Lay Pal Lar A Kyi Kyi Lar (သေးသေးလေးပဲလား အကြီးကြီးလား)
- The Beginning (short, 2022)
- The Way (short, 2023)
- Broken Dreams: Stories from the Myanmar Coup (segment "Dark Tangle", 2023)
Film
This list is incomplete; you can help by adding missing items. (May 2019) |
Over 100 films, including:
- Nay Ta Chan La Ta Chan (နေတစ်ခြမ်းလတစ်ခြမ်း) (2006)
Television
Theatre
- Jesus of Nazareth: The Musical (2013)[18][37]
Discography
Solo albums
- Tain Twe Nay Tae Ayet (တိမ်တွေနေတဲ့အရပ်) (2010)[2]
- Promise (ကတိ) (2019)
Duet albums
- Tho...Phay Phay Nae May May (သို့...ဖေဖေနဲ့မေမေ) (2000)
- Ta Shite Mat Mat (တရှိုက်မတ်မတ်) (2006)
- Mee Eain Ka Byar (မီးအိမ်ကဗျာ) (2014)
References
- ^ Irani, Del (18 October 2013). "Myanmar actress Chit Thu Wai". Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
- ^ a b "Chit Thu Wai". MTV Exit. 2013. Retrieved 17 February 2014.
- ^ "Myanmar actress to join UN week". The Nation (Thailand). 25 September 2015.
- ^ "Chit Thu Wai interview". Special Broadcasting Service (in Burmese). No. 17 February 2014.
- ^ "ကုလညီလာခံ ပထမဆုံး မြန်မာကိုယ်စားပြု အထူးသံ ချစ်သုဝေ တက်ရောက်". Voice of America (in Burmese). 26 September 2015.
- ^ "ချစ်သုဝေ ကုလညီလာခံတက်". Voice of America (in Burmese). 26 September 2015.
- ^ "Soap maker says hand washing key to reducing infant mortality". Global New Light Of Myanmar. 16 May 2015. Archived from the original on 29 May 2019.
{{cite news}}
: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link) - ^ Lwin Mar Htun (25 March 2013). "Festival of art by disabled set to be held in October". Myanmar Times. Retrieved 17 February 2014.
- ^ "Top 10 : Actors". The Myanmar Times. 9 August 2019. Archived from the original on 16 April 2021. Retrieved 17 August 2019.
- ^ Thu, Mhan (19 January 2019). "မြေးဖြစ်သူ ခေတ်နဲ့ သစ်တို့ရဲ့ မွေးနေ့အတွက် "အနှစ်" ပန်းချီပြပွဲ လုပ်မယ့် ဘိုးဘိုး ဦးဇော်ဝင်း". The Irrawaddy.
- ^ a b c d "5 Things you don't know about Chit Thu Wai". LUSH Magazine Myanmar. 18 February 2019.
- ^ "Interview with Theresa Chit Thu Wai, Myanmar Catholic Vocalist and Actress". Radio Veritas Asia. 2014. Archived from the original on 17 February 2014. Retrieved 17 February 2014.
- ^ a b c d e f Myat, Ei Ei (12 March 2019). "သီချင်းတွေ ဆိုနေရရင်ကို ပျော်နေတာဆိုတဲ့ ချစ်သုဝေ". Duwun (in Burmese).
- ^ Thet, Khin Swe (1 April 2019). "သီချင်းဆိုရင်း သင်္ကြန်ကို ဖြတ်သန်းမယ့် ချစ်သုဝေ". 7Day News (in Burmese).
- ^ "Chit Thu Wai's Music Album "Promise"". Yangon Life. 12 February 2019.
- ^ "ချစ်သုဝေ၏ ဒုတိယမြောက် တစ်ကိုယ်တော်အယ်လ်ဘမ် 'Promise' အား ဖေဖော်ဝါရီ ၁၄ ရက်တွင် ထွက်ရှိမည်ဖြစ်ကာ ပရိသတ်များနှင့်တွေ့ဆုံရန်စီစဉ်". Eleven Media Group (in Burmese). 9 February 2019.
- ^ "ရှမ်းပြည်နယ်ရှိ စစ်ရှောင်ဒုက္ခသည်များအတွက် ချစ်သုဝေ ကိုယ်တိုင် သွားရောက်လှူဒါန်း". Mizzima (in Burmese). 2 December 2015.
- ^ a b Diamond, Catherine (October 2017). "Drenched in Victory, Facing Drought: Staging Transitions in Myanmar's Performing Arts". Asian Theatre Journal. 34 (3). University of Hawaii Press: 358, 360. Retrieved 20 January 2024.
Though Buddhist-Muslim tensions are only beginning to find theatrical expression, the country's small Catholic community surprisingly came to the fore, appropriating no less than the National Theatre for its debut performance in 2013.
- ^ Phyo, Nay Min (30 November 2017). "မုယောနို့ရည်Brand Ambassador အဖြစ် အိန္ဒြာကျော်ဇင်နှင့် ချစ်သုဝေ ခန့်အပ်". The Myanmar Times (in Burmese).
- ^ Yamon Phu Thit (6 August 2012). "Activists to form Consumer Protection Association". Myanmar Times. Archived from the original on 22 February 2014. Retrieved 17 February 2014.
- ^ "Women leaders to receive awards this week". The Myanmar Times. 27 October 2013.
- ^ Min, Ya (15 September 2015). "ကုလညီလာခံတွင် လက်ဆေးခြင်းအကျိုးကျေးဇူးကို ချစ်သုေ၀ ပြောကြားမည်". 7Day News (in Burmese).
- ^ May Sandy (11 July 2011). "Celebrities make charity a new tradition". Myanmar Times. Archived from the original on 22 February 2014. Retrieved 17 February 2014.
- ^ "Actress Chit Thu Wai, Aid Bring Ray of Sunshine to Shan State IDPs". The Irrawaddy. 4 December 2015.
- ^ Thu, Mhan (18 January 2019). "မိသားစု သမိုင်းဖြစ်မယ့် "ခေတ်သစ်"ဖောင်ဒေးရှင်းကို အလေးထားတဲ့ လင်းလင်းနဲ့ ချစ်သုဝေ". The Irrawaddy (in Burmese).
- ^ "KhitThit Foundation by May Myanmar Khit & May Myanmar Thit". Yangon Life. No. 13 February 2019.
- ^ "တရားမျှတမှု We Want Justice ကန်ပိန်းတွင် အနုပညာရှင်များပါဝင် ဆန္ဒထုတ်ဖော် (ဓာတ်ပုံ)". DVB (in Burmese). 4 February 2021.
- ^ "ရုပ်ရှင်၊ ဂီတ၊ စာပေ၊ သဘင်အနုပညာရှင်များက We Want Justice လက်သုံးချောင်းထောင်ပြီး လှုပ်ရှားမှုတွင်ပါဝင်". Eleven Media Group (in Burmese). 6 February 2021.
- ^ "ရုပ်ရှင်သရုပ်ဆောင် ချစ်သုဝေ၊ အဆိုတော် အေသင်ချိုဆွေအပါအဝင် နောက်ထပ် အယောက် ၂၀ ကို အမှုဖွင့်". DVB (in Burmese). 6 April 2021.
- ^ "Myanmar actor arrested as junta hunts 120 celebrities". Daily Monitor. 8 April 2021.
- ^ "ရန်ကုန်ရှိ ပန်ဆယ်လို၏ နေအိမ်ကို စစ်ကောင်စီ ချိပ်ပိတ်". Mizzima Myanmar News and Insight. Retrieved 30 December 2022.
- ^ Oung, Terrell (17 February 2014). "Chit Thu Wai interview". SBS Burmese. Retrieved 17 February 2014.
- ^ Nyan, Zwe (20 January 2017). "အမြွှာသမီးနှစ်ဦးဓာတ်ပုံတွေကို ပရိသတ်ထံ မျှဝေတဲ့ ချစ်သုဝေ". 7Day News (in Burmese).
- ^ Aye Sapay Phyu (2 March 2009). "Comedy the only viable genre, says local director". Myanmar Times. Archived from the original on 22 February 2014. Retrieved 17 February 2014.
- ^ "Migrant workers". DW. Deutsche Welle. 29 May 2012. Retrieved 20 January 2024.
Zarganar called on Burmese film director, Min Htin Ko Ko Gyi, to oversee the film's production, and brought in leading Burmese actors Ye Deight and Chit Thu Wai.
- ^ ထက်ဦးဝေ (29 July 2016). "ရွှေပြောင်းမြန်မာအလုပ်သမားတွေရဲ့ဘဝကို ပုံဖော်ထားတဲ့ "အဖေ့ကျောင်း"". The Irrawaddy (in Burmese). Irrawaddy Publishing Group. Retrieved 20 January 2024.
- ^ Michael, David (19 February 2015). Jesus of Nazareth, The Musical, Yangon, Myanmar. YouTube. Google LLC. Retrieved 20 January 2024.
External links
- Chit Thu Wai on Facebook