THIS APRIL, I appeared on Woven Voices’ podcast Migreatives. I was conversing with UK-based actors and theatre makers Nadia Cavelle, Zachary Fall, and Ben Weaver-Hincks.

In this episode of Migreatives, I shared bits about my personal life and my writing: my childhood in the Philippines under Ferdinand Marcos’s dictatorship and the martial law regime, writing during the post-EDSA 1986 People Power Revolution, and the return of fascism in the archipelago in 2016 when Duterte came to power. I was writing in theatre, writing my novels, and publishing essays online and on other media platforms.

This is the first time I’ve been into a podcast (the form is new to me) and the first time also for me to publicly speak about my experiences in the UK (I did not reveal all to protect some people who were with me and still living in the Philippines surviving the pandemic and the regime) writing under the fascist Duterte regime and my life here in the UK.

One thing that I learned in life as a Filipino playwright writing in Duterte Philippines is not just to speak truth to power but to speak truth to power at the very moment when it is already necessary to confront a fascist evil regime.

You can listen to the podcast episode by clicking the image below. Trigger warning: there were parts of our conversation where we talked about the extra-judicial killings in the Philippines between 2016-2018 under the Duterte government and then the violence of the para-military group Ilaga (in tandem with the Philippine Army) that massacred Muslim Moros in Southern Philippines during the Marcos regime the ’70s.