Watching a play blossom

The cast of "Long Season" | Photos by Joel H. Garcia

Last Oct. 3, I was invited to watch a dramatic reading of the unproduced musical “Long Season” by American-based Singaporean playwright Chay Yew (book and lyrics), composer Miguel Urbino (music), and director Victor Lirio. Held at the Maybank Performing Arts Theater, it was an invite-only affair with the theater filled with theater practitioners, a few critics, and avid theater-goers.

It felt like an actual preview of a show. On stage, a row of chairs flanked the center stage, which had several music stands in two rows. At stage right, a piano was the only musical accompaniment.

“These actors were not just interpreters,” Victor Lirio explains. “We were relying on their cultural knowledge and not just their instincts.” | Photos by Joel H. Garcia

The story of a Filipino migrant worker

The show is part of the continuing research and development of the play. It was a one-night-only performance, but the reading in itself was already a marvel of a show. The 14-player cast sang in harmony, and the piano accompaniment—with musical direction by Rony Fortich—created a bigness of sound that showed off the musical’s epic scale. I could imagine some songs in full orchestration and, in my head, it was fabulous.

“Long Season” is about a Filipino migrant worker who takes a boat to Alaska to work in a canning factory in the early 1900s. There, he discovers the harsh conditions of the job and the discrimination felt by the Filipinos from their American employers (who are never seen nor heard from).

Instead, their voice is that of the manager—another Filipino—who carries out their exploitative practices so that he and his wife can benefit from his position. Eventually, the hero of the story, despite finding love with the wife of the manager, starts a union to try and improve the working conditions of the immigrants.

Even as a reading, you could hear and imagine the immensity of the play.

Big in scope and scale

The musical is big in scope and scale. Even as a reading, you could hear and imagine the immensity of this play. Many of the scenes happen in the cannery, with big machines, and the potential for spectacle is ingrained within the story.

Urbino’s score leans more toward classic musical territory—reminding me of Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty’s “Ragtime,” as well as the themes of discrimination and protest and its historical setting. I also get the bigness of Maury Yeston’s “Titanic.”

I have to reiterate—even with just a piano and its cast, it already sounds epic. What more if it had a full orchestra?

After the performance, I spoke with Lirio and gave him my praise. When I told him it had that classic sound, relating it to “Ragtime,” I was shocked when he said that this musical is over 15 years old.

I knew that plays took time to develop abroad. But I was not aware that there are plays that are shelved—never to see the light of the stage. I asked if this happens in the West often. “Yeah, because the economics and financing of theater is very, very complicated,” he answers.

“The generation of those with wealth who cared about culture has passed on, and the ones who inherited the wealth just cared about the profits.”

Plans for a revival

Currently, Lirio is working on the continuing development of “Long Season” to help it get produced. He says that the reason for this show was to “further develop it. To prepare it for an eventual production, perhaps.”

Considering its long history, he adds that, “the real motivation for this is this: This has been developed sa ibang bansa. It was developed in New York and Boston, and it was played by Filipino Americans, and many of them have never been here.”

“If you notice even the diversity of age, Goryo is supposed to be 14, and we have Manong Hermel and Manong Lito as much older. When Chay [Yew] and I spoke last November, I thought it behooves the further development of it to be brought here,” he adds. “I wanted to hear it from the Filipinos. And that’s actually a big, big part of the scope—to authenticate the culture.”

Some of the performers used a heavy Filipino accent, and others would integrate Filipino phrases into their dialogue.

“Iba ang tunog”

The play is predominantly in English, as the Filipinos who moved to Alaska were practicing the language—and this was the early 1900s, while we were colonized by the Americans. So it makes sense.

But some of the performers used a heavy Filipino accent, and others would integrate Filipino phrases into their dialogue. Lirio felt he had to bring it here because he wanted the local actors’ lived experience to weave into the material to see how it works.

“These actors were not just interpreters,” he shares. “We were relying on their cultural knowledge and not just their instincts. The brief of this R&D was I wanted to hear ‘yong tunog at tinig ng mga Pilipino. Iba kasi eh. Even hearing this ensemble singing those big songs—iba ang tunog. It’s so authentic.”

A repudiation of the American dream

As I’m learning more and more about decolonization, I look at the play as a repudiation of the American dream and how it has, in my opinion, corrupted the characters in “Long Season” to forget their Filipino-ness and the Asian mentality of community and family. Under the oppression of capitalism, they forget their sense of “kapwa” and take a more individualistic stance.

But it is only when they come together that they feel like a community of Filipinos.

I share this sentiment with Lirio, who says it’s one way of looking at it. He counters with, “I look at it as, ‘I deserve what everyone else deserves. The opportunities that they have should also be accessible to me.’”

And here, I’m presented with the Filipino immigrant and the second-generation Filipino immigrant approach. The play, for Lirio, “is driven by ambition, by perseverance, by demanding equal opportunities.” Through that, the characters discover what that price is. For Lirio, it is “the cost to have that dream realized.”

I really do hope this gets produced soon.