Here Lies Grief
Reflections on what true Filipino/x representation should look like after watching Here Lies Love on Broadway.
I’m sipping a buko pandan latte as I reflect on my experience watching Here Lies Love in early August, and like this latte, the concept is novel and looks good on an IG story, but when you shake things up and take a sip you realize the lasa (flavor) isn’t there and the concept doesn’t quite work. I prefer tea, so let’s take a collective sip and get into this tsismis…
Here Lies Love is an immersive disco musical that centers the story of Imelda Marcos with a mix of fact (correspondence letters, timeline, etc.) and fiction (the love triangle between Marcos and Aquino) that originally had a successful run 10 years ago at the Public Theater before making its way to Broadway. I didn’t see it at the Public but heard good things, so I was pretty excited to see it with my partner. For context, both of us are first-generation Filipino-Americans whose families immigrated to America in the 80s around the time of the Marcos regime, and are actively on the journey of decolonizing through arts and academia.
It is because of this context that we took our time to work through the tension of wanting to even support a musical that centers the Marcos family given the way history is literally repeating itself with Imelda’s son as the current president of the Philippines. At the time, I didn’t see any critical reviews from peers I respect in the Filipino/x community, so we decided why not take in the experience for ourselves with a discerning eye. What we saw was unsettling, right from the beginning when the dance instructor/DJ forced the crowd into a line dance (cringe lol) all the way to the assassination gunshot that went off without a trigger warning. The show went through some early controversy for not having a live orchestra in the pit, and although there were some musicians eventually incorporated into the show, they initially used the excuse of wanting to highlight Filipinos love of karaoke. Filipinos are more than a monolith of line dancing and karaoke. We have a rich musical history, and I would have loved to have seen traditional instruments such as the kulintang (gong) and rondalla (guitar ensemble) incorporated into the show, especially in the first act highlighting Imelda’s early life in Leyte.
And don’t get me wrong, the all-Filipino cast is AMAZINGLY talented and we love to see it, but what does it mean to have cast be brown but the script, music, and choreography all be created by white folks? To me it’s giving cultural appropriation. Another example to illustrate this is the choreography. I have a background in dance, and the choreographer is Annie B. Parsons. Imelda was famous for being a lover of all things beautiful, including dance. She was a patron of the arts and used traditional Bayanihan dancers to be ambassadors of Filipino culture to the world. That is an example of settler colonialism, which is a topic for another discussion… BUT I was at least expecting that love of cultural dance to translate to the musical. The movement direction was surprisingly western and minimal. The one dance that had traditional movement elements of what appeared to be Palangay, a pre-colonial “fingernail” dance from the Tausug peoples, was done by dancers who were dressed up like Santo Ninos. It felt a little sacrilegious and weirdly out of context. I don’t think Santo Nino would have much appreciated that.
I know that the creators of Here Lies Love emphasized that the musical isn’t pro-Marcos, and the ending was a powerful example of that, but the way that the last act was presented and the fact that the whole musical centered Imelda gave me an impression that the audience should be sympathetic to the consequence of her actions. The best part of the musical was the ending, not to be trite, which centered the People Power Revolution; and if the musical wanted to have a bigger impact of raising consciousness on how history repeats itself, then the whole last act should have been about the people, highlighting the continued fight for liberation then and now. There is SO much potential to tell a nuanced story with the right direction to steer this talented cast, but musical plays it safe and is clearly told from a white lens. They may mean well (don’t they always…) and do well to fill seats as a commercial success, albeit as an off-brand Evita, but I’m hoping for bigger and better things. My hope is that a truly all-Filipino team from the top down gets to uplift an empowering story that highlights our values of kapwa, shared inner-self, and resilience like that of Larry Itliong.
This is of course all my opinion as a someone who was born and raised in New York to immigrant parents as part of the Filipino diaspora. I do appreciate that this experience lit me up to research more about the Marcos regime and start writing substack articles I’m passionate about like this one. My intention is to have this article and platform start a dialogue about what good representation looks like. Don’t just take my word for it, like the pink and purple colorway of the show aligns with the third eye and crown chakra colors, I encourage you to see it for yourselves with an open mind and trust in your pakikiramdam, intuition or inner-knowing.
And if you have seen it, I’d love to hear your thoughts and be in kapwa with you.
Til next time, ingat (take care).
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The observation that you had about a Filipino history and brown cast members, being reflected back through the creative expression (lyrics, choreography, etc) of white folks reminded me of a line from Octavia E. Butler's Fledgling, where Shori, upon waking up and not knowing exactly who or what she is, starts doing research about where she could have come from and it becomes obvious to her that these words were being written about her people, but not by her people.
I wonder, too, if you've heard of Jessica Hagedorn's Dogeaters. It's a novel set around that same Marcos time period, and I believe she did turn it into a play. I've read the novel and I much more trust her narrative.
Such an honor to experience this life with you 😘