Raising the Curtain on Filipino American Theater’s Past
/Here is an excerpt from my book, Barangay to Broadway: Filipino American Theater History that shows how immediately and vigorously theater was folded into the fray.
When it comes to building a body of work on Filipino American history, and specifically theater history, there is still much to uncover, analyze and posit. Hopefully, more Fil-Ams will join the fun of learning, searching, and inquiring about our own rich and vast histories.
Barangay to Broadway: Filipino American Theater History
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 mock Battle of Manila, with the Spanish surrendering to the US forces. 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."
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." 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.
Sheet music cover for The Shoo-Fly Regiment.
Spain lost its war with the US and, upon the signing of the Treaty of Paris on December 10, 1898 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 Omaha fair organizers 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.
Throughout each day at the fair’s Philippine Village, the troupe sang American patriotic songs, danced American-style waltzes, and acted out what would have been their daily routines.
Aguinaldo was captured by American forces on March 23, 1901, and 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.
Conflict onstage
Prior to Spanish colonization the natives, composed 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.
Poster for Sultan of Sulu.
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.
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 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 by Filipino theater scholars, 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 fight in the Philippines.
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.
The 1907 musical comedy Shoo Fly Regiment by African American 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.
In 1915, Jerome Kern (music), Harry Smith (lyrics), and Guy Bolto (book) created the musical comedy 90 in the Shadewhere 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 Filipino characters in Sultan of Sulu (the Sultan and his spouses), Shoo Fly Regiment (the spy and Grizelle), and 90 in the Shade (Mozi) were not played by Filipino actors.
There are also other plays, operettas, and burlesques with "Manila" or "Philippines" in their titles or descriptions that are listed—more than 20 entries—in the publication "Dramatic Compositions Copyrighted in the United States, 1870 to 1916."
New system
The colonial government established a new education system in the Philippines that used English as the language of instruction.
90 in the Shade photo keysheet from New York Public Library.
The education system introduced drama forms in English, though the first playwright in English to be taught was not an American. In 1904, David Barrows, the general superintendent for education, included William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar and The Merchant of Venice in the curriculum for high school juniors.
Shakespeare was not entirely unfamiliar to Filipinos as there was already GD Roke’s Ang Sintang Dalisay ni Julieta at Romeo (The Pure Love of Julieta and Romeo), a 1901 Tagalog metrical poem adaptation of "Romeo and . This mandate, however, would have created wider exposure to the Bard’s works in his original tongue.
By 1915, the first play in English by Filipinos would be written: Jesusa Araullo and Lino Castillejo’s A Modern Filipina. The plot features an independent young woman who plays along with her suitor’s faked tree-fall injury—his attempt to appeal to her sympathies—since she liked him anyway.
References cited in the book are not included in this excerpt. Barangay to Broadway: Filipino American History is available in hardcover, paperback and ebook formats on Amazon.com.
Walter Ang
Walter Ang is the author of Barangay to Broadway: Filipino American Theater History. When he is not writing about Fil-Am theater, he delves into astrology and yoga. Visit http://amazon.com/author/walterang
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