Barangay to Broadway: Filipino American Theater History

By Walter Ang

Barangay to Broadway: Filipino American Theater History follows the events, groups, and individuals that have comprised Filipino American theater from 1898 to 2016.

Milestones and highlights include performers of the 1900s and 1910s, immigrant community productions of the 1920s and 1930s, all the way to the Broadway perfor

• Language: English
• Publisher: Walter Ang
• Release date: Sep 13, 2018
• ISBN: 9780999686522

Book preview

BARANGAY TO

BROADWAY

Filipino American

Theater History

WALTER ANG

Copyright © 2018 by Walter Ang

All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in reviews and articles, no part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any manner without written permission from the publisher.

All reasonable efforts have been made to obtain permissions where required. Any omissions and errors of attribution are unintentional and, if notified in writing to the publisher, can be corrected in future printings.

Published in 2018 by Walter Ang

Erie, Pennsylvania, United States of America

[e-mail]

Hardcover ISBN:      978-0-9996865-0-8

Paperback ISBN:      978-0-9996865-1-5

Ebook ISBN:      978-0-9996865-2-2

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018901888

Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Names: Ang, Walter Ong, author.

Title: Barangay to Broadway : Filipino American theater history / Walter Ang.

Description: Includes bibliographical references and index. |

Erie, PA : Walter Ang, 2018.

Identifiers: ISBN 978-0-9996865-0-8 (hardcover) |

ISBN 978-0-9996865-1-5 (pbk.) |

ISBN 978-0-9996865-2-2 (ebook) |

        LCCN 2018901888

Subjects: LCSH Filipino American theater. |

Filipino Americans in the performing arts. |

Asian American theater—History. |

        BISAC PERFORMING ARTS / Theater / History & Criticism |

        SOCIAL SCIENCE / Ethnic Studies / Asian American Studies

Classification: LCC PN2270.F54 .A54 2018 |

        DDC 792.08995073—dc23

Contents

Introduction

1 Entertainment (1900s–1950s)

Exotica and education (1900s–1910s)

Conflict onstage

New system

Igorot shows tour the US

Vaudeville to bodabil

Laborers and performers (1920s–1930s)

Entertaining

Filipino American laborers onstage

Influences and consequences (1940s–1950s)

Filipino veterans onstage

American theater educators

English-language theater

America onstage

Babes on Broadway

2 Epiphanies (1960s–1970s)

Identity and awakenings

Filipino American and Asian American theater groups

Studying and establishing

East West Players in Los Angeles

Ating Tao in San Francisco

Dulaan ng mga Tao in Seattle

Endeavors in Hawaii

Grand Guignol in the Philippines

Philippine Educational Theatre Arts League in New York

Sining Bayan in Berkeley

Northwest Asian American Theatre in Seattle

Asian American Theater Company in San Francisco

Turned upside down

Pan Asian Repertory Theatre in New York

Philippine Martial Law onstage

Pilipino Cultural Night

3 Establish (1980s–1990s)

Establishing more Filipino American theater groups

Filipino American theater educators

Writing plays

Spreading seeds

National Asian American Theatre Company in New York

Teatro ng Tanan in San Francisco

Ma-Yi Theater Company in New York

Backstage disciplines

CIRCA-Pintig in Chicago

The Filipino connection of Miss Saigon

Playwrights’ Arena in Los Angeles

Writing more plays

Staging stories

Campo Santo in San Francisco

Creating characters

Endeavors in Washington, DC

Bindlestiff Studio in San Francisco

4 Engage (2000s–2010s)

Developing and guiding

San Dionisio sa America in Los Angeles

Educating more students

Continuing against the odds

Coming together

Nurturing new works

Staging more stories

More playwrights

Directing and leading

Philippines onstage

Silver anniversaries

Continuing engagement

Acknowledgments

References, readings, resources

Index

About the author

Introduction

Before the Philippines was colonized by Spain, natives of the archipelago termed their community-settlements as barangay (pronounced buh-rung-guy). Today, the term is still used to designate districts. Broadway, the theater district-industry in New York City, is a global icon for American theater. Aside from describing geography and communities, as used in this book’s title, the terms barangay and Broadway serve to symbolize the Philippines and the United States of America, and the parts of their theater histories that are linked.

Though the Philippines had pre-colonial performance traditions and went on to adapt Western forms of theater from its Spanish colonizers, the trajectory of its theater development was sharply affected by American influence. The fabric of American theater, on the other hand, has always been enriched by foreign influence. It has been and continues to be woven with the participation of Filipinos—visiting, immigrant (by choice or circumstance), and US-born.

In less than 50 years after the US colonized the Philippines, at least one actor of Filipino heritage would already debut on a Broadway stage in a feature role. Throughout the US, there are many more stories of Filipino American theater before and after that milestone.

This book attempts to gather events and persons that have comprised Filipino American theater from 1898 to 2016: the performers of the 1900s and 1910s; the immigrant community productions of the 1920s and 1930s; the Broadway performers of the 1950s; the artists who were part of the seminal Filipino American theater groups and pioneering Asian American theater companies of the 1960s and 1970s; the Filipino American theater companies that were founded in the 1980s and 1990s; and the emerging theater makers of the 2000s and 2010s.

While the main vein of this book follows the different Filipino American theater groups that have been established throughout the decades, interviews with various theater makers provide insights to the pulse—both tribulations and triumphs—of their passion and vocation.

Their stories provide snapshots of the different barangay-communities that have been nurtured in, by, through, because of Filipino American theater—with barangay broadly drawn as the Filipino American community as a whole and intimately colored with sketches of individuals who have come together for the communities where they live, work, learn, teach, love, and perform.

*

The genesis for this book was sparked when, as part of my journalism coverage of Filipino American theater, occasional searches for historical background information on individuals and groups yielded few readily-available resources.

Inspiration struck. From books such as Doreen Fernandez’s Palabas: Essays on Philippine Theater History, Lucy Mae San Pablo Burns’ Puro Arte: Filipinos on the Stages of Empire, and Esther Kim Lee’s A History of Asian American Theatre. And also from my previous research and writing work (as one of many contributors) for the Theater Volume of the forthcoming second edition of the Encyclopedia of Philippine Art (under editor-in-chief Nicanor Tiongson; published by the Cultural Center of the Philippines).

The strands of information found from these works further stoked my interest into a pressing drive to search for even more strands and to braid them together.

The result uses details and interviews—with theater makers such as directors, playwrights, designers, and actors—culled from my previously published articles in the newspaper Philippine Daily Inquirer and its online site Inquirer.net, combined with additional research and new interviews. My apologies for any shortcomings and inaccuracies.

Hopefully, this endeavor to provide an overview of its histories—while by no means a complete or definitive aggregation—will prove useful and fill an earnest step toward more and better documentation, journalism, reviews, research, studies, analyses, criticism, historiography, interpretations, and, ultimately, appreciation and enjoyment of Filipino American theater.

*

The Filipino word, spelling, and pronunciation for Filipino is Pilipino. Filipino is used as gender-neutral in this book. In common use, some Filipino nouns are gendered, including Filipina/o, Pilipina/o, Pinay/oy (colloquial; from the last two syllables of Filipina/o appended by the letter Y) and manang/ong (an honorific for elders).

Filipino is based mostly on Tagalog, one of the most widely used out of more than a hundred languages in the Philippines. Organization names and production titles in Filipino are in Tagalog, unless noted otherwise. Aside from a few Filipino organizations and productions that have official English translations, most translations in this book are mine.

1

Entertainment

(1900s–1950s)

Exotica and education (1900s–1910s)

After three centuries as a Spanish colony, the Philippines declared its independence on June 12, 1898 with Emilio Aguinaldo as its first president.

The United States of America had declared war against Spain a few months earlier in April and the two countries had been battling it out in Cuba, another of Spain’s colonies, and off the shores of Manila.

On August 13, the Philippines got a taste of theater that featured American players. The one-day performance of the Battle of Manila featured the Spanish armada fighting against and surrendering to the US squadron. The mock battle had been negotiated by the Spanish to avoid surrendering to the new Philippine government, thus preserving Spain’s dignity.

American presence in the Philippines became the topic of theater productions in the US. Registered for copyright that year were Hilton Coon’s Under the American Flag, described as a Spanish American drama in four acts with Irish American and Spanish characters set in a garrison in Manila. There were also plays about the US squadron’s earlier successful battle (led by Commodore George Dewey) against the Spanish armada in May such as Budd Randolph’s Dewey in Manila and John Fraser’s Dewey, the hero of Manila, an original naval drama in four acts.1

Meanwhile, the US had already begun having its share of Filipino performers. From June to October at the Trans-Mississippi and International Exposition in Omaha, Nebraska that year, there were various men and women at the Philippine Village located at the exposition’s Streets of All Nations, illustrating their customs, songs, language, habitations, avocations, etc.2 And as the exposition drew to a close, a contingent of 16 wild Filipino Manila warriors arrived on October 26 to exhibit their war implements, customs, and dances.3

Spain lost its war with the US and, upon the signing of the Treaty of Paris on December 10, relinquished Cuba and ceded its colonies Puerto Rico and Guam. With both countries ignoring the Philippines’ declaration of independence, the deal included the archipelago. The Philippine government’s resistance against American forces escalated into the Philippine-American War—or the Philippine insurrection, as US documents described it—starting on February 4, 1899.

The same fair organizers from Omaha went on to open the Greater America Exposition in 1899 (July–October) and recruited 35 Filipino performers. Theatrical press agent Pony Moore traveled to the Philippines to escort the contingent of all kinds of actors where the entire lot are musicians, which included a woman who does a magical act, an acrobat, and a harp soloist. Upon arriving in the US, he also recruited 18 of their ship’s Filipino crew to perform at the fair.

The fair organizers had designed a Philippine Village with native huts, tropical plants, a lake, and even water buffalo. Throughout each day, the troupe dressed in white coats and trousers, sang American patriotic songs, danced American-style waltzes, and acted out what would have been their daily routines to unimpressed fairgoers who did not find them exotic enough.4

Aguinaldo was captured by American forces on March 23, 1901. US president William McKinley appointed William Howard Taft as the Philippines’ governor, establishing the American colonial government. Moore returned to Manila that year to recruit 100 Filipinos, this time for the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York (May–November). In an 11-acre enclosure, they performed daily routines such as washing clothes, riding a water buffalo, and holding cockfights.5

Conflict onstage

Prior to Spanish colonization, the natives (comprised of different ethnolinguistic groups) of the islands that would become known as the Philippines had their own performance forms and traditions such as songs and dances embedded in rituals, ceremonies, and other customs. Under Spanish rule, Filipinos eventually began using and localizing theater forms and genres from Spain such as prose or verse plays called drama.

There was also the sarsuwela (previous spellings include sarswela and sarsuela), a type of musical theater adapted from the Spanish zarzuela (itself adapted from Italian operettas), with stories usually featuring lovers of different social status overcoming odds for a happy ending.

In November 1901, the American colonial government passed the Sedition Act in the Philippines, making any form of advocating for independence a crime. Nonetheless, Filipino theater makers staged works that contained messages against American occupation for which they were raided, arrested, tried, and imprisoned. Filipino theater scholars would later describe these playwrights’ allegorical works as drama simbolico [symbolic drama] or drama politikal [political drama].

Examples include Juan Abad’s Tanikalang Guinto [Golden Chain] in 1902 and Aurelio Tolentino’s Kahapon, Ngayon at Bukas [Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow] in 1904, among others. Characters had names such as Dalita [Misery] and Karangalan [Honor], props included flags with revolutionary emblems, and costumes were color-coded so that actors could form representations of the Philippine flag, which was prohibited from being publicly displayed.

Arthur Stanley Riggs (1879–1952) served in the US Naval Auxiliary Force during the war and lived in the Philippines from 1902 to 1904. He followed the seditious plays, as they were later collectively labeled, watching performances and attending court sessions. In 1905, he wrote the book Filipino Drama, which details the productions he had witnessed and includes English translations of six plays.

In the years leading up to and during its occupation by America, the Philippines became the subject matter or setting for theater productions in the US, such as Charles Blaney’s romance adventure Across the Pacific (1900), about an American soldier who joins the Philippine-American War; and Clyde Fitch’s play, Her Own Way (1903), where an American woman’s beau is deployed to the Philippines to fight against insurrections.

George Ade’s comic opera Sultan of Sulu (1902) is about American soldiers interrupting a Filipino sultan’s search for a new spouse. Ade disagreed with US colonization of the Philippines and wrote his opera to mock the proceedings and legislations. Sultan was staged in Chicago, Boston, and New York, and toured large cities for three years, establishing Ade’s reputation as a musical comedy writer.6

The 1907 musical comedy Shoo Fly Regiment, by African Americans Bob Cole (book) and John Rosamond Johnson (music), is about how a black soldier’s relationship with his fiancee is interrupted when he volunteers to fight in the Philippine-American War. The show’s cast of characters includes A Filipino spy (unnamed) and Grizelle, a Filipino dancer. It includes songs such as On the Gay Luneta, referencing Luneta Park in Manila, and Down in the Philippines. The production toured several states, which included a run in New York City at the Grand Opera House and Bijou Theater.

In 1915, Jerome Kern (music), Harry Smith (lyrics), and Guy Bolton (book) created the musical comedy 90 in the Shade, where an American woman who travels to the Philippines to meet her fiance (who is working there) ends up with two additional suitors, one American and the other, an educated Filipino named Mozi.

The