Mothers' Day

I don't know how to begin this properly or say this perfectly, but then again, one of the most important messages you've tried to impart to me is to do things without regard to trivial matters such as perfection...

Mom, you've been by my side whether I've been in the bleakest or the brightest of times, glad to offer your advice and experience whenever I've wanted it and, more often than not, I'm afraid, when I didn't want it but still needed it.

You've helped me grow tremendously, no small feat considering that I've watched you grow as a person (albeit with less awareness as I was a little kid), as well. You learned and became keenly attuned to the negative traditions plaguing both sides of my family tree, including many of the values with which you grew up, and, like Batman's spinal column on Bane's knee, you soundly broke them. You instituted a much newer, much healthier paradigm into our family that continues to hold, and demonstrated how to properly defy familial authority - the most daunting authority up against one can stand - when said authority was backward, manipulative, oppressive and decrepit.

You saw that there was a bridge leading to Hell, so you picked up the sledgehammer on your own, destroyed it, and built another one leading in a better direction in its wake. For you, for Dad, for my brother, for me, and for any future humans that will be able to count you as a forebear, you made a damn difficult but damn wise choice.

You have taught me more about civil disobedience through your loud-speaking actions than Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Cesar Chavez, or Aung San Suu Kyi ever could.

You taught me more about the true ethos of punk, heavy metal, and rock 'n roll more than Metallica or the Clash ever could.

When I sing and dance, I do for both of us. Mom, despite our many disagreements and frustrations of the past and certainly into the future, the phrase "I love you" is too concise for what I have to say. I hope the above will suffice.

Happy Mothers' Day, everyone!

If You See My Reflection in the Snow-Covered Hills....

I remember a little anecdote that Francis told us from one of our first two performances: an elderly lady in a wheelchair got sick of all the screaming, obscenities, and sexual innuendo (which she, as a paraplegic, could no longer enjoy), and requested to be wheeled out. And who else but Francis, the very man who wrote which that she refused to enjoy, ended up wheeling her out, amidst her complaints about how terrible the show was? I remember dear Mr. Tanglao-Aguas telling us all in the cast about his response to her geriatric ramblings (if you haven't noticed already, I have a very strong distaste for the World War II generation), in which he stated, "Sorry, I wrote it for the younger generation!" That quote has since stayed in my head as I've contemplated some of the themes of the play, such as rebellion, changing how the family works from inside, corrupt authority, internal angst, colonialism, and anxiety for the future. Heck, with the conversation on the Tiyanak as a possible prenatal suicide at the beginning of the play, one might throw in 'finding self-purpose' and good ol' 'Selbstmord' to the mix of ideas!

I don't think there's ever a teenager who does not think now and again, 'man, what were my parents thinking bringing me into a world like this? I never asked to be born!' I've certainly thought that way, as well. My family's background has not been perfect. My father was repeatedly beat up, harassed, and threatened by his older brother. On one occasion, my asshole of an uncle picked up my father's dachshund, Fritz, and simply threw him (it was a miracle that he got up after hitting the ground). Throughout all of these terrible childhood experiences, my grandparents pretended not to notice and dismissed my uncle as 'not meaning to do such a thing.' My mother wanted a relationship from her father (who had Autism but was never diagnosed or treated) and was willing to, in my opinion, sacrifice parts of her true personality to win conditional love. After many years of therapy and constant changing, she still feels that the realization of just how much her parents did was wrong and hurtful, and trying to change that to prevent it being passed on to me and my younger brother is of the same pain as being forced to cut off her own arm.

That is not to say that my mother wishes she hadn't had me or my brother, since she decided to leave the workforce in order to have kids, but that life can be very painful, even when not living under the brutal government of a military dictatorship but instead under the hypocritical eyes of one's elders in a very southern, Arkansas-based family that claimed to be patriotic and freedom-loving by blowing up Germans and Japanese in the Second World War when they would not listen to the complaints and problems of their own children: my parents and my aunt (my mother's sister).

I definitely felt inspired (or at least some semblance of ideas began swirling in my head) as we worked on this play together and I found the significance of each line that was questioning of the generation that came before. I am not promising to write my own 'Purple,' by all means, but I can definitely see how I could find some material in my own family history for a hip-hopera (or, in my own sense of taste, a 'metallical comedy') of my own device. But, with the way I 'efficiently' accomplish things right now, it's going to take a longer time than just during the mid to late-nineties (as it was for Francis) for me to churn out something for the public.

I guess until that happens, I might as well take Momma's advice and write something down, so that I can no longer be afraid of it, as I am that I may carry on the poison that I saw in my grandparents and the remnants of it left in my parents to my potential children...sigh....the cycle repeats itself...

Okay, I might as well shut up and stop groveling about how I'm not consistent in writing these things when they're part of a class grade. After all, the other students in Asian-American Theatre were lucky to have even written two entries by the time 'When the Purple Settles' was finished, as well....

Now that the play's five shows have finished their run in William and Mary's oh-so-illustrious Phi Beta Kappa Theatre, it is much harder to write about things that have happened during the rehearsals. Mea culpa. I guess I'll write anything I can think of, since I need six more entries to fulfill the quota of one blog entry a week...

First thing that stands out in my mind was the problem in the middle of the rehearsals with lateness. It's an uncomfortable subject, since I make a habit out of being ten minutes late to wherever I need to be, and as the show's practice days progressed, the tolerance for the other individuals and myself who chronically arrived post 7 p.m. to practice lines diminished severely. After getting warnings from Francis about potential dismissal from the rest of the performance, I noticed we all arrived on time. As much as I hate the use of warnings like that and feel constant dread of making any sort of mistake around a person who makes such an ultimatum, I have to note that it worked in making practice more efficient. I did not like the warning, because I am a nervous person by nature (although I hide it the best I can) and do not want any further 'threats' against me. In fact, when Francis said that he was to fire two people when we showed up to one of the rehearsals on a particular February evening, I was terrified that I would be one of them.

I have a hunch that I botch up much more stuff than usual when I become conscious of my desire to not cause any sort of disruption... Kind of the antithesis of what "Purple" was all about, eh? I mean, I lost one of the military helmets and never found it again....I still feel really bad about that...

Mga Tiyanak

Here I am again, after two and a half months, I'm back and in another class with Francis! This time, it's a class which doubles as a workshop for his own Palanca Award-winning play, 'When the Purple Settles,' which deals with issues of race, ethnicity, colonialism, dictatorship, feminism, and parent-child conflicts in the midst of the "Conjugal Dictatorship" of Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos during the late sixties and the early seventies. It's certainly not light opera. If you are coming to see the show, make sure that you brush up on your history of the Philippines, or you will be lost beyond reason as for what's going on during the show.

Okay, now, what do I write? I feel quite low on ideas, and being a perfectionist, it is very agonizing to start doing anything due to fear as far as how the finished project will look. Actually, if I were in Francis's shoes, I know I would be terribly worried about how to best express what I wish for the audience to see onstage. So far, we've had enough time to work out what will fit or not into the performance, and we have adjusted accordingly.

Still, even as the class is required to be off-book for a week now, and technical rehearsals begin next week, I wonder how all the scenes, which we have rehearsed in little blocks, will flow together. On top of that, the play is supposed to be a hip-hopera...a constant chorus of beats and rhythms, colloquial slang, emotion, and protest rolled up into a tough little streetwise package made for the people by the people. The Purple Posse has certainly been practicing hip-hop dance steps for at least a full solid week, but it is still a mystery to me how we are going to wrap and rap everything together into the performance that Francis and everyone else hope to create. Time will tell, I guess.

Oh, and I have an assignment for the workshop, in-class part of the course, which involves researching Marcosian rule and torture tactics. Crude, but certainly interesting. My only hope is that my penchant for starting and turning things in late will not happen now. I can only hope, all the while working on the project when I have the time this weekend. I'm just glad that I have two days of no practice in order to work on that...

End of an Era, Beginning of a Blog...Huh Boy....

Well, the name's Luke Pickett, for everybody in the Monday-Wednesday banjar in Francis's William and Mary 'Intro to Classical Asian Performance' class, and I have just begun to write the blog that should have been started months ago! JOY!!!! Yeah, well, great timing, eh? The last performance is done, and now I start. Well, time to stop groveling...

I'd like to say that the performance at the middle school on Monday was very great, indeed, considering the mishaps and the sense of urgency that occurred before we even got to the auditorium. That, by the way, gives me a sense of guilt, since I wasn't even there for the preparation to go. To make a long story short, a talk with a professor of mine over the topic of a paper for one of my classes went on waaaaaaaaaaaaay too long, and when I noticed that it was 3:10, I began to panic. I think my normal reaction to making mistakes like being late is to 'run and hide,' and to pretend they don't exist. I was so worried about showing up late and being labeled irresponsible for not getting ready in time that I almost convinced myself to avoid any shame by not showing up at all....

Apparently, I had enough of a moral compass to 'test the waters' for how the other members of the banjar would think of me, so I called the Anderson twins to see how everything was going. They told me to get over to PBK as soon as possible, which I did, although I was cringing inside to even think about how late and unprepared I was. By the time I entered PBK, nobody was inside, it was 3:30, and Jeni and Amanda offered to give me a ride to the school. I hopped in after meeting them out in front of the building, asked them what to do about the costume preparation that I had missed, and was relieved to see by Amanda's full monkey costume that nobody had to wear the eyeliner. At least one thing was written off the list!

Getting into the auditorium while Francis was in the middle of his speech, I realized that I had no monkey costume to wear. A few curse words later, Mohammed offered me his robes, saying "Your part is more important than mine. Take this." I obliged, gratefully, although I felt a tremendous amount of guilt inside for bumming his costume.

Suddenly, as if to prove that a god exists, Eddie Hong came in through the back, carrying an extra monkey suit that he still claims he "had a hunch that he needed to bring." In what seemed to be happening all at once, Mohammed got his monkey uniform back, Francis called us all to the stage to start performing, and to my greatest relief knowing that I was not the latest person to arrive at the school, several other actors came through the door, fresh from driving all the way from the College.

What can I say now? The performance was just as we had planned (it was only the preparation that tore our hair out, I guess...), the costumes were great, 'sir-tit-pung-tit' didn't speed up...much, and the audience got involved! I think it was a great day for the performance, not due to the performance itself, but for the close ties of the banjar that I felt. The Anderson sisters, despite their need to get to the airport in time for their flight to Chicago, got me to the performance and were even kind enough to drive me back to PBK after the show to look for my lost jacket, and then back again to the school, where I finally found it and rejoiced. Mohammed gave me his costume when I was empty-handed, and Eddie came in the nick of time to supply Mo with a new one, and Francis's mother was kind enough to drive me (as well as Kalyani and Ravali) back to campus. In short, my ass was saved on Monday by no less than five people, and I have yet to come up with any idea to repay them in deed as part of this great banjar.

Great work, everybody. We did it!

Luke