Trans actors Aldrin Bula and Istifen Baklang Kanal of Baklang Kanal. UP Repertory Company’s Gio Potes directed the piece for Pantheons: Sculpture at St Paul’s Cathedral, c.1796-1916
St. Paul Cathedral in London and the Department of Art History at York University commissioned me to write a piece as an ‘artist response’ to the monument of Granville Gower Loch for Pantheons: Sculpture at St Paul’s Cathedral, c.1796-1916. I was expected to write about 700 to 1000-word piece but I’ve decided to make it extra and wrote a dramatic monologue playing around with the popular social media form of beauty vlogging. Why Handsome Single Guys Die in Burma is my first attempt on stage to engage the British colonial history and empire.
When I submitted the script fabulous folks from York University decided to why not perform it with actors! And so I tagged along theatremaker friends from Manila to develop and perform the script.
You can read the script, watch the video, and read about the Loch and the project here.
This is the monument of the Scottish colonial soldier Granville Gowe Loch inside St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. Loch died in battle in Burma at the turn of the 20th century. St. Paul’s Cathedral and the Department of History of Art, York University invited 50 artists, writers, and academics across to ‘respond’ to monuments inside the Cathedral.
Okay, here’s more! Weeks after the release of Why Handsome Single Guys Die in Burma, influencer and popular vlogger Martin Rules reinterpreted the piece for her popular YouTube Channel Philippine True Crime Stories.
In this episode of Migreatives I shared bits about my personal life and my writing: my childhood in the Philippines under the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos and the Martial Law regime, writing during post-EDSA 1986 People Power Revolution, and up to the return of fascism in the archipelago in 2016 when Duterte came to power and I was both writing in theatre, writing my novels, and my publishing essays online and in 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 to 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 70’s.
Click this image to listen to the podcast episode.
I will be one of the playwrights for Colchester-based company Theatre Témoin project with the Mercury Theatre this first quarter of 2021.
NHS Yarns is “a collaborative project bringing artists and frontline first responders together to create rich, nuanced, and revelatory pieces of storytelling in partnership with The Mercury Theatre.” When I read their job posting last October I hurriedly submitted my application as the project is closer to what I was currently working then with Kanlungan Filipino Consortium and with Migrants Rights Network and affiliated migrant organisation’s: research on the experience of Filipino and other migrant workers working for the NHS.
Ailin Connant, Theatre Témoin’s Artistic Director interviewed me last December and they released the results within two weeks.
Since December I was reading about Theatre Témoin’s previous works and their aesthetics as a theatre company. One thing that excites me though is Theatre Témoin’s themes (and the processes!) of their works in past were almost the same with my practice back in the Philippines.
I am looking forward for exciting theatre pieces that will come out from this engagement and to learn something new from Theatre Témoin.
Miss Philippines as a full-length play tells the story of a slum community in Manila struggling to mount a gay beauty pageant in the middle of Duterte’s ‘War on Drugs’
Victoria Gigante (left) and Vivienne Mesias essayed the roles of Mimi and Madame Stella, respetively.
Yes, Miss Philippines is stil running!
For those who are asking, the short play running in the festival is the opening scene of longer play-in-progress. This is actually my newest full-lengt piece on stage since 2015 when I wrote Mas Mabigat ang Liwanag sa Kalungkutan (Light Falls Heavier in Sorrow).
Just a teaser on what the full-length Miss Philippines looks like.
The play revolves around a story of a slum community in Manila in Duterte Philippines where only women are left to survive since their husbands, sons, lovers, and gay male friends are either killed through extra-judicial killing, fled, jailed, or missing (forced disappearance) in the bloody government campaign against illegal drugs since 2016.
In the full-lenght play, all the characters are women from different ages and backgrounds: a grandmother who survived the war in Mindanao during the Marcos Martial Law regime, a Filipina domestic helper who just returned from abroad, a nurse waiting for her flight to London, transgender women, a mother, a former Communist rebel turned street vendor, a lesbian journalism student, and a Muslim woman. All these women have three things in common: poverty, the absence of men in their lives because of state violence and persecution, and the various ways of coping with loss.
Mimi and Madame Stella are just the two in the ensemble of women struggling to mount a gay beauty pageant in the middle of the fascist Duterte regime’s ‘War on Drugs’ in the Philippines.
Miss Philippines is a play in three acts exploring the themes of loss, violence, beauty, and the power of collective resistance to a patriarchal fascist regime in the present Philippines. Under the Duterte government, extra-judicial killings of suspected drug pushers, users, human rights activists, indigenous peoples, progressive cultural workers, and members of the media are rampant and being normalized.
In a pageant-crazed Philippines, beauty contests are important cultural markers. Duterte‘s popularity is still unchallenged in the archipelago. His supporters call him Tatay Digong—‘tatay’ literally translates as ‘father’ in the Filipino language. The killings that he orders are seen as punishment of the ‘tatay’ to discipline his ‘children’. The violence and the culture of impunity in the Philippines is framed on a power structure that is definitely patriarchal.
Madame Stella to Mimi: tough love between two Filipino women who refuse to make the fascist Duterte regime successful even just for a night.
The opening scene of Miss Philippines is still running in New Earth Theatre’s New Stories Short Plays Festival, a festival of 17 short plays .
Miss Philippines is one of the four plays under development commissioned under New Earth’s Professional Writers Program. Are you excited to meet the rest of the women of Calle Real?
The public presentation of a scene from my play-in-progress currently under development from Yellow Earth Theatre Company will performed by London-based actors Victoria Gigante (Mimi) and Vivienne Robles Lacson (Madamme Stella). Andrea Ling will direct the play.
Miss Philippines is my first play written entirely in English and the first production of work for stage since 2018 when Ang Mga Maharlika (The Aristocrats) and Mas Mabigat ang Liwagan sa Kalungkutan (Lights Falls Heavier in Sorrow) were performed in September in Manila that year.
Poster of the 2017 production of Ang Mga Maharlika. Designed by Manila-based artist Rombutan, the poster depicting Imelda Marcos, Ferdinand Marcos and his American mistress Dovie Beams. Performed by the UP Repertory Company and directed by Manuel Mesina III
This is the poster of the last production of my play before I left the country in 2019. UP Repertory Company performed Ang Mga Maharlika (The Aristocrats) in September that year ; it premiered on the same year at the Fringe Manila.
The poster was designed by Manila-based artist Rombutan. It was revised several times after it was released to the public to promote the performances. It was banned on Facebook, the actors and the production (including me) received countless death threats and intimidation from the supporters and loyalists of the Marcoses and of course, Duterte. Ang Mga Maharlika was supposed to be toured in several venues that year but the production decided to cancel the shows.
Ang Mga Maharlika retells the story of the scandal of the former dictator Ferdinand Marcos and his mistress, the American actress Dovie Beams.
I wrote and finished the play in 2010 in a quaint cafe in Cebu City called Kukuk’s Nest owned by actress and writer Maria Victoria Beltran. The play was based on Beams’s biography written by exiled journalist Hermie Rotea; the book was banned by Imelda Marcos in the Philippines. I found and eventually bought the hardcover copy of the book used as a display in Kukuk’s Nest along with other trade books. It was stolen from my table inside the faculty room of the School of Languages, Humanities, and Social Sciences at the Mapua University where I used to teach. Beltran, last April, was taken by the regime’s police authorities without warrant for her criticisms to government’s inaction to the pandemic.
I am posting this here for posterity. Freedom of expression and the freedom to dissent are long dead in the Philippines. Duterte and his fascist regime’s Anti-Terror Bill is awaiting for his signature to formalize and ‘legalize’ the death of freedom of expression in the country.
This is my first theatre-related activity in the United Kingdom and probably my first since the last production of my play Ang Mga Maharlika in 2017 when I was still in Manila. It was already a hiatus for someone like me who keep a scorecards of new plays written and produced in a year.
Before I left for London in 2018 I was supposed to write an adaption of Gogol’s The Government Inspector for a Manila-based theatre company, but for some reasons the project did not push through and there came the problems back home and I have to stay here in the country. I really missed the theatre – both writing a new play or being in the production as a playwright. Getting accepted in this program is a real rebound.
Writing plays always inspire me to be creative and productive in my other creative endeavors such as writing a novel or a short story.
Last February, I submitted my application to the second iteration of Yellow Earth’s Professional Writers’ Program. Luckily, my project proposal for a new play (in English, full-length) got accepted. I’d like to finish my new play while I am in this program – or, at least the scene treatments and pitch while attending the first phase of project until June.
What makes me more excited is I am part of cohort of professional theatre and film artists based in the United Kingdom. I will definitely get a lot of new perspective on their practices that could help me navigate the industry and continue writing plays while I am here living in this country indefinitely.
Yellow Earth Theatre Company is a London-based theatre company that provides workshops, conducts researches, and full production and promotion of works by British East Asians in the United Kingdom.
Rogelio Braga 