Manny Pacquiao wins the title of World Light Welterweight Champion and is selected by Time Magazine as one of the 100 Most Influential People in the world. Kalamansi, a small, tart, lime-lemon-orange-type fruit indigenous to the Philippines and a staple of Filipino food and drink has started it’s ascent as one of this year’s fine dining ingredients du jour – Chef Curtis Duffy at the Peninsula Hotel Chicago’s five-star Avenues restaurant pairs it with king crab and steelhead roe and sends foodies into paroxysms of ecstasy. Then, on Sunday, at the closing ceremonies of the Cannes Film Festival, arguably the most important cinema event in the world, Brillante Mendoza cemented his growing reputation as one of the future bright lights of world cinema by winning Best Director at the Festival for another divisive film, Kinatay (The Execution of P), his second time out at the Main Competition, beating out heavyweights such as Quentin Tarantino, Ang Lee, Pedro Almodovar, Alain Resnais, Jane Campion, and Lars von Trier, in a dream-team competition slate that film pundits had dubbed the auteur’s festival. So is everything Filipino the new black??? Seriously though I am very very proud of Mendoza’s win, the first for a Filipino director, despite the fact that the most internationally-renowned Filipino director of all time, the late Lino Brocka, also competed for the Palme D’Or twice in the 1980s (for Jaguar and Bayan Ko). From all accounts, Mendoza’s win was the one that caught everyone by surprise (and was allegedly booed by some attendees at the closing ceremony), since Kinatay, an unflinchingly violent tale about the abduction, rape, murder, and dismemberment of a prostitute by a gang of corrupt Manila policemen had been universally reviled at the Festival. Roger Ebert called it the “worst film ever shown at the Cannes Film Festival”, even worse than The Brown Bunny, which he had previously, and famously, pronounced as the worst ever, causing the notorious media war with it’s director Vincent Gallo. Variety called it “unpleasant” and “banal”. I remember seeing Mendoza back in 2005 at the Chicago International Film Festival, nervously and inarticulately leading a talkback after the screening of one of his first features, The Masseur, which I found then (and still do) to be derivative and exploitative. He has made quite a name for himself since then, though, winning major festival acclaim in Cannes and Toronto for his subsequent features, Tirador (SlingShot) and Foster Child. Last year’s Cannes main competition entry Serbis, a jawdroppingly outrageous story of a family running a theater which functioned as a meeting place for underage male hustlers and their gay johns, complete with explicit gay and straight sex, a boil on a lead character’s ass being popped in extreme close-up, and a goat chase through the theater, equally repulsed and delighted cineastes. I personally really, really liked it, and found it to be a mature, socially-conscious, intricately-structured work. I can’t wait to see Kinatay, which, with it’s Cannes win, will probably be highly visible this year in the film festival circuit and in art film theaters across the country, and really, why should I give a rat’s ass to what Roger Ebert thinks, right? But, more importantly, as a Filipino and an arts and culture lover, I really would like to celebrate Brillante Mendoza – he has loudly and deservedly claimed his own exalted place in contemporary world cinema, but he has also, almost single-handedly, demonstrated the talent, imagination, sophisticated vision that Filipino artists have, and has made the world sit up and take notice of the Philippines once again. The country has an abundance of talent and a rich history of artistic innovation, sometimes overlooked by a world which has devoted its Philippine-related headlines only to failed coup d’ etats, Imelda Marcos histrionics, or governmental graft and corruption. It’s about time to change all of that. Here’s a list of 2009 Cannes Film Festival winner, led by the Palme D’Or for Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon. Photo: Oh my, Mendoza receiving his prize from Terry Gilliam! Faint and fall with a thud.
After years of Oscar-watching, soothsaying, trend-spotting, kvetching, and celebrating, I FINALLY know someone who is up for an Academy Award. And in a major acting category at that. Here’s a heartfelt, awe-inspired congratulations to Michael Shannon, A Red Orchid Theater founder/ensemble member, for his nomination in this year’s Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role category, for his terrific, film-stopping performance as Kathy Bates’ mentally unstable son in Revolutionary Road. I’ve been volunteering with A Red Orchid Theater over the years through the Arts and Business Council of Chicago and it’s a Chicago theater company that is very close to my heart. With Mike’s nomination and soon-to-be widespread name recognition, I am equally thrilled for Red Orchid since it was on their stage that Mike brought a lot of indelible performances to life such as the lead role in the original production of Tracy Letts’ Bug, as well as his first directorial effort, Ionesco’s Hunger and Thirst. Although Mike is now an Academy Award-nominated movie star, I still think of him as a Chicago theater actor through and through, so his Oscar nomination is also fantastic for the city’s theatrical community. Very, very cool!
Tags: Academy Awards, Red Orchid Theater
I remember the very first play I went to. I was ten years old, and it was Annie, staged by Manila’s pre-eminent English language theater group, Repertory Philippines, and it starred an eight year old Lea Salonga, pride of the Philippines and future Tony winner (for Miss Saigon). I remember being awestruck through it, as well as inspired and uplifted. I remember keeping the show program for years, a habit that I continue to have to this day, just to keep on reminding me of the magical experience of that evening. My mom brought me and my brother Judd to see it, because she loved musicals and live performance. I fell in love with the theater that night, and it has been a full-time love affair ever since. My mom also loved looking at paintings and sculptures, and one of my most vivid memories is the two of us silently walking, inspired and immersed, among the Philippines’ national artist Juan Luna’s works in the National Museum in Manila, and staring open-mouthed at the splendor of his most famous work, the Spolarium. Every year that my mom came to visit me in Chicago from Manila, we would have the MCA or the Art Institute AND a musical on the agenda (one year, we gushed all over Chita Rivera, when she was doing The Visit at the Goodman, and we told her we also both saw her in Kiss of the Spider Woman in New York oh so many moons ago). Passion for the arts isn’t acquired overnight, it’s nurtured, cultivated, deepened over the years of continuous exposure to theater, or film, or art, or music, opera, literature. It’s built upon a sense of intellectual curiosity, an open-mindedness to new experiences and to soak them in like a sponge, an ability to reflect and construct and deconstruct honed continuously and regularly. I owe a lot of who I am today to my mom who was tireless in shaping her son’s life with new, interesting, different experiences; who encouraged interest, curiosity, and endless questions. My mom passed away more than two years ago at 66 years old. She never saw this blog come into being, but I think she’ll be pleased and tickled pink with it - she was always convinced that I could write exceptionally well, and was so proud all those years ago when I contributed feature articles to the Philippine Daily Inquirer as a lark, and when I wrote plays in high school and college that actually got staged and won awards. Today, the day I turn forty, is a day for reflection and gratitude. Thanks Mama!
I am taking a break today from the arts and culture focus of From the Ledge to irrevocably, unequivocally express how proud and hopeful I am, as an immigrant, as a gay person, as a person of color, as someone in the 40 and below demographic, as a citizen of the world, as a Chicagoan, that Barack Obama will be the 44th President of the United States of America. It’s a difficult, anxious, chaotic world we’re living in today, but with President-elect Obama, I sincerely, truly, feel that we have the inspiration and the confirmation that there is a very real opportunity for America, and the world, to change for the better. That’s not hyperbole, that’s heartfelt emotion.
I think it is so apt that my 135th blog post, written twelve months to the day of From the Ledge’s unveiling to the world, was about Kafka on the Shore, since Murakami wrote a beautiful, sensitive, impactful sentence that Frank Galati wisely preserves in the play: “In dreams begin responsibilities.” Having a blog was a dream that lay unrealized for many, many years, as I wandered through the busyness of life, as I second-guessed myself, lost confidence, found excuses not to write about what I’m passionate about. It really was not “do I have something to say?” since I thought I did, and I had a responsibility to articulate and share it, but “is anyone willing to listen?“. I really do feel that a blog can only be as good as its readers – it’s a channel for personal expression, yes, but it should also be an avenue for conversation and provocation. It has been quite a year for me and for From the Ledge, with more than 12,500 hits, coming from people not only in Chicago, or the United States, or the Philippines, where the critical mass of my friends and family are, but from places far and wide such as Germany, Brazil, India, Japan, Belarus, and Norway. It was a year of strongly advocating for Chicago’s talent and artistic life: for August: Osage County and Steppenwolf Theater, for Sean Graney and the Hypocrites, for Keith Huff, for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s MusicNow series, for the Chicago Opera Theater, for the Court Theater, TUTA, Strange Tree Group, the Gene Siskel Film Center, the Chicago International Film Festival, Art Chicago, and the Grant Park summer music Festival- all of them essential and irreplaceable. But it was also a year to reflect and challenge: on the lack of artistic appreciation among my demographic group, on disconcerting hints of Chicago arts parochialism, on the responsibilities of bloggers and blog commenters, on the tension between playwrights’ and directors’ artistic visions. Most importantly, it was a year of making connections and starting conversations, both on the blog, and via email, of discovering readers, of listening to other people’s points of view, of taking feedback seriously. A big thank you to everyone, and here’s to another year of delightful dialogue.
In October of 1998, I just marked my first year of living in Chicago, having moved from Minneapolis and grad school during the summer of 1997. On October 7, 1998, Matthew Shephard, an openly-gay University of Wyoming student, was robbed, heinously beaten, and left for dead tied to a fencepost in the outskirts of Laramie, Wyoming by two men who despised Matthew’s homosexuality. It was, and still is, a watershed event for my generation of gay people – we, too, in consonance with Matthew, were brutalized by the frighteningly deep, inexplicable, unconscionable hatred that caused his death. It’s been ten years, but I have to wonder, how much really has changed? Sure, there’s been a lot of “mainstreaming” of gay culture, there’s a lot of “it’s hip to be gay” (or it’s hip to know a gay person) in urban communities such as Chicago, but…. No hate crimes legislation has been signed into law. In February of this year, in Ventura County, California, a 15 year old gay teenager was shot inside his high school’s computer lab by the straight classmate he had a crush on. It’s been ten years, and the circumstances and impact of Matthew’s death seemed to be fading into the soft gauze of memory. So it felt so right, so necessary, that About Face Theater, Chicago’s pre-eminent gay and lesbian theater, staged a one-night only reading of Moises Kauffman and the Tectonic Theater Project’s The Laramie Project, which dramatized the Matthew Shepard case using interviews conducted with the stunned community of Laramie, Wyoming, last Monday night, to remember the 10th year anniversary of Matthew’s death. It was a privilege for me to attend. I really have to commend new Artistic Director Bonnie Metzgar, who, with the Taylor Mac season-opener and this reading, has infused so much vigor, energy, and yes, much-needed relevance back into About Face in the short time she’s been in Chicago. The Laramie Project reading was a tremendous accomplishment. She got Leigh Fondakowski of the Tectonic Theater Project, one of the co-creators, to direct the reading. She assembled a jaw-dropping Chicago-based cast: Kelly Simpkins, another co-creator of The Laramie Project, who is now actively performing in Chicago; Tony Award-winner Deanna Dunagan; About Face co-founder Kyle Hall; Chicago acting titans such as John Judd, Steppenwolf ensemble member Ora Jones, and Lookingglass Theater Producing Artistic Director Philip R. Smith; rising stars such as Patrick Andrews; and members of the About Face Youth Theater. And with these talents working beautifully together, she made the reading one of the highlights of this Chicago theater-going year. Despite how many times you see the play or the HBO movie, The Laramie Project continues to be powerful, emotionally walloping stuff, taking you through a rollercoaster of grief, vehement anger, helplessness, and consolation in community. There were a lot of sniffling and teary eyes in the theater last night, and I hope many of them were remembering Matthew and rediscovering themselves. The Laramie Project is ultimately about community and seeing Chicago’s theater community, artists and audiences alike, coalescing to honor Matthew’s memory, and what it stands for in gay experience, was touching.
Tags: About Face Theater
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