Telling Stories Beyond the Margins with Filipino American Playwright and Anthropologist Hortense Gerardo
Show Description (also the podcast Intro):
Hello and welcome to the BOSFilipinos podcast. I’m your host, Trish Fontanilla.
Each episode, we celebrate Filipino and Filipino American culture, identity, and community in Greater Boston.
Today's guest is Filipino American playwright and anthropologist Hortense Gerardo.
In this episode, she talks about growing up Filipino American in Ohio and how anthropology shapes her writing. We also dive into this year's theme for Filipino American History Month, and Hortense previews her October projects around Greater Boston. I'm so excited for you all to get to know her. Enjoy!
Stay in touch:
BOSFilipinos - IG: @bosfilipinos, Email: info@bosfilipinos.com
Hortense Gerardo - https://www.hortensegerardo.com/
Also mentioned on the pod:
Boston Asian American Film Festival- https://baaff.org/
Hortense's upcoming show at the AAPC Fest: https://aapcboston.wixsite.com/mysite/playfest-7
Trish Fontanilla: Welcome to the podcast, Hortense.
Hortense Gerardo: Thank you so much, Trish. I'm so happy to be here.
Trish: Awesome. And I know you're coming to us from not Boston, which is okay for us. [laughter]
Hortense: [laughter] Thank you. To clarify, even though I'm not in Boston, I'm about to head up to Boston. I'm currently in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. Yes. Very proud to be here at the moment. So I am Massachusetts-bound.
Trish: So we were talking before the podcast started, and you told me that you're ninety-nine point six percent Filipino.
Hortense: Oh, yeah. I found out, you know, there had been lore in my family that somehow we had some European ancestry. That was the big lore that some priests jumped the wall or something like that. My brother had done the DNA testing, I think twenty-three, and me, and he said, we are so pure Filipino, it's ridiculous. It's like ninety-nine point six percent with zero point four percent coming from Madagascar. So I think I'm very closely related to the lemurs. [laughter]
Trish: I think so too. I think you need to go to Disney and Pixar and get some royalties. Okay, so you're ninety-nine point six percent. So you were born here, but then you lived in the Philippines, right?
Hortense: Okay, so I was actually born in Nashville, Tennessee. My parents were medical residents at Vanderbilt University. I'm very proud to say that my mom was one of the first chief resident women of color at Vanderbilt University. It is, I was very impressed to learn that. And she was very impressed to let us know that. So I was born in Nashville, and then my parents’ work visa ran out, you know. It was a five-year work visa. They finished their residency training. We went back to the Philippines for a couple years. And because my brother and I were born in the States, rather than having to wait the full ten years before my parents were eligible to return to the US, they were eligible to return relatively soon because they had two U.S. citizens in tow. And so I only lived there full time for two years. And then we came back to the States, and I was pretty much raised in the suburbs of Cleveland, Ohio. My parents had joint appointments at a hospital in a suburb called Berea, Ohio, and one of my dad's sisters lived nearby in another suburb of Cleveland. And so they were our Filipino family in that suburban area. No other Filipinos that I knew of at the time.
Trish: And it's funny. So I forgot this because it's the first time back doing the podcast again, is how we first connected. And it wasn't Middleton Heights. It was, someone had, I think, recommended Meesh [Michelle Aguillon]. She was a previous podcast guest, and then she may have recommended you. And then I got to know all these amazing folks. But the last show I saw before the pandemic started was the one, it had the image of the rabbit head.
Hortense: Oh, Face Work. Yes.
Trish: Yes, yes. Face Work. We're going a little bit backwards, but that's the last show I saw before the pandemic. Yeah. And then the first show I saw after the pandemic was Middleton Heights. And it's funny hearing you talk about growing up in Ohio for people that don't know. Hortense did this show called Middleton Heights that was fictional, but probably based on a few real things of a town in Ohio and this intergenerational family. And so it's always funny. You're like, wait, you're talking about this thing? But I think I know this thing, but that thing is fictional, quotation marks.
Hortense: Let's just say it's heavily informed by my upbringing in the real city is called Middleburg Heights. It's not even a city. Yeah, it's a town. Middleburg Heights. But, I did take artistic license with some of the incidents that occur in the play for historical reasons, because it also tracks, political events that were happening in the US from nineteen sixty seven to twenty fourteen. It starts with the Hough riots in Cleveland and ends with the killing of Tamir Rice. And yeah, I tried to approach it, telling that story about African American and white relations in Cleveland. And I realized that's not my story to tell. And I decided then to tell it from the point of view of being a Filipino American. Um, and that was the entry into what eventually became Middleton Heights.
Trish: Yes. Yeah. So hopping around, so you're now in Ohio. And then what brings you to Boston?
Hortense: So I went to school at Boston University.
Trish: Ah, okay.
Hortense: Yeah. So I have all my degrees from Boston University. They've been very generous with me. I went back to graduate school and got my master's in anthropology and my PhD in a dual degree in anthropology and the performing arts.
Trish: For all of us that do not have advanced degrees, let's make sure our family members don't hear that Hortense did the whole thing.
Hortense: I went the distance.
Trish: And so I go by Trish of all trades, but you're definitely Hortense of all trades. So you have a lot of stuff that you're working on. Tell us a little bit more about what you do?
Hortense: So my official title is director of the Anthropology Performance and Technology Program at the University of California, San Diego. And I am embedded within the Jacobs School of Engineering, which means I have the benefit of teaching students and collaborating with fellow artists slash scientists slash engineers in developing new forms of storytelling using new media. So because I'm in the Jacobs School of Engineering, there's new technologies that I have access to, whether it's augmented reality, virtual reality, robotics, drones. And there are exciting new forms of audio storytelling, for instance. And I'm very fortunate to be able to have access to all of that. So that's what I do for my day job.
Trish: And then tell us all the other things that you do outside of your day job. [laughter]
Hortense: Well, in the past my writing career had been a silo. It was something that I did in my off time when I wasn't doing my teaching job. But because I'm now the director of the APT program, the Apt program, as it were, it turns out that a lot of my projects now that incorporate new media and storytelling are part of what I do as an academic. So I've been very fortunate to be able to find a way to kind of tie all these formerly disparate loose ends together into one role. And, I feel very fortunate, and it feels very gratifying.
Trish: What's interesting is that ability to tie in all of those things, you know, much like some English professor they have to produce papers. Like what you're working on speaks a lot towards the work that you're doing seemingly outside of work, but also very much tied to the work that you do.
Hortense: I try, I try. Definitely. I mean, it's actually not so much of an effort because people have always asked me, what's the relationship, for instance, between anthropology and playwriting? And I've always thought that anthropology gave me the tools to really dive deep into building character, writing character, and also just the histories that I receive from interacting with people as an anthropologist really informs my playwriting. So there's just a natural fit between those two. And then with technology, well, that's just been an added bonus because I was already playing around with alternative forms of media for a long time. Like I learned how to create radio transmitters during a fellowship at Banff, and I was already experimenting with sound installation, with dropping transmitters along the path for people to get to my artist studio with sounds of a bee for instance, that would slowly grow until they got to my studio and it sounded like they were inside a beehive, even though it was totally empty. So that was dating back to two thousand and eight. I think that I first did that. So yeah.
Trish: Amazing and terrifying.
Hortense: Well, there was a real concern about the about the bee population at the time.
Trish: Yeah, still!
Hortense: So this was my attempt to raise awareness about the need to protect our bees.
Trish: So it's October, which is Filipino American History Month. And the theme that they announced this year was Beyond the Margins, centering intersectional Filipino American histories. And as an anthropologist, this seems very much tied into your work. But, as we reflect on this theme, how does that speak to you?
Hortense: Oh, boy. I really love this year's theme. I think so much of my work is about asking who gets to be at the center of the story. So for instance, with my latest play Olympic Hopefuls, I wanted to put four middle-aged Filipino American women at the absolute center. But I didn't want their ethnicity to be the problem that the play had to solve. They get to be ambitious and competitive and funny and flawed, and all those characters have careers and marriages and friendships and disappointments, and they decide, somewhat improbably, that they're going to become the first Filipino women's Olympic curling team. And I think there's something important about that. Centering Filipino American stories doesn't necessarily mean that every story has to be about being Filipino American. It means that we get to occupy the whole imaginative landscape. And so, my current project, which I don't want to talk too much about, is based on a historical figure. And I thought it was going to be about another historical figure from Europe who ends up in the Philippines. But in researching that historical figure, I realized, oh my gosh, there are even more Filipino characters in that person's life that I personally wanted to center on, rather than the European that I started doing the research on. And I just found that it was very gratifying to center a Filipino character in what might ordinarily be yet another bio of a white European.
Trish: Yeah. And I think talking about Olympic Hopefuls, everybody watches the Olympics, even if you don't follow those sports generally. But all of the different stories, ethnicity, both matters and race matters. And also it doesn't because people just want hope, and all of that hope that comes out of those different characters. And I always think of Kumail Nanjiani’s, when there's that Oscar so white, meme that happened, and he talked about, you know, I grew up watching all these young white men in coming-of-age stories. And I was able to put myself in those stories.
Hortense: Right.
Trish: And so there's so many opportunities to have other folks featured because all of us have been able to watch all these movies and been like, oh, that's a coming-of-age, I understand that.
Hortense: Yes.
Trish: And then also, in addition to the Filipino-ness of it all, we don't have a lot of stories centered around middle-aged women doing something different.
Hortense: Yes. That's actually partly why my manager wanted me to write this story, because she herself said she represents a phalanx of middle-aged Filipino women who are dying for really meaty roles, because the kinds of roles that women of an age these days have been given are either secondary or their main objective is to sleep with a younger person. And, you know, it's become a trope of sorts. And so it's really wonderful to be able to allow myself the freedom to write from a Filipino American perspective, but not necessarily about being Filipino American per se, but just going through the paces of being a human and living. With their full humanity.
Trish: Yeah. Let's get some stories about perimenopausal, menopausal women. Where, where… it's. It's funny, but it's also not the joke. You know, I think I grew up with so many tropes of the nagging wife.
Hortense: Right.
Trish: And it's like, yeah, we all are going through this. Every single woman is going to go through this thing. But we also hold jobs. And there's other things that have… it's not like we get to pause everything for this, this thing that's happening. So yes, to more of those stories. I think anyone can resonate with midlife. And am I going to keep doing what I'm doing? Do I try something new? I'm scared of failure. There's a lot of different themes that people can resonate with, no matter where they are in life.
Hortense: Yes, absolutely. I just uncovered a book that was given to me like a decade ago at a landmark birthday, and it's entitled something like, an older person is always fifteen years older than I am. Like being old, like considering something as someone as old is always someone fifteen years older.
Trish: And so. Oh, yeah. That's so interesting.
Hortense: It keeps moving upward. And sure, I'm totally experiencing it. Like, my ideas about what constitutes old age has definitely changed from the way I thought about it when I was thirty years old.
Trish: Right, right. there's that clip of The Golden Girls where Blanche talks about being in her forties, and I'm like, I'm a golden girl now. Like, this is what's happening. She was lying about her age, but she could even pass for someone in her forties, I'm like, oh, then I could pass as a golden girl. Oh, man. So you said that you were working on a project that you can't mention quite yet, but are there some projects coming up later in October that we can go to, or there's some stuff coming up in the new year?
Hortense: Thanks for asking. And as a matter of fact, tonight, October one and tomorrow, October two, there will be something called the Lift Every Voice BIPOC play festival at the Cambridge Multicultural Arts Center. And one of my plays is being presented. It's an excerpt from my longer play called Conditions of Readiness. The director of my play is Jake Sung-uk Sullivan, and it will feature Audrey Adji and Mordecai SJ Choi. It's my take on the cultural perspective of gun violence, because different cultures approach gun violence as inflicted by young males very differently than the way Americans in the U.S. does. And so it is a dark comedy, if you will, which is a very difficult line when you're talking about gun violence, actually. But I remember one of my former instructors from the U.K. had told me that Americans don't really go in for so-called political theater. But if you sugarcoat it, it's going to go down a lot easier. And so trying to sugarcoat a concept like this is very challenging as a writer. And it's not to diminish the gravity of the subject, but it's a way to a) not sound pedantic and b) to hopefully resonate in a really emotional way with the audience. So that's coming up tonight and tomorrow, and then I've got a six-minute comedy set coming up on Friday, October twenty third at the Broadway Comedy Club. Working title of my set is The Hymen Chronicles. You'll have to look up what that means.
Trish: Some of us. Not all of us will have to look up what that means.
Hortense: Yeah. And then also that same weekend, October twenty three, twenty four, and twenty five, the Asian American Playwright Collective will present the AAPC Play Fest Nine. And ten of us member playwrights will have their plays stage read, and that will be at the Foundry in Cambridge. The director of my play, Scenes From a Rally is Karina Cowperthwaite.
Trish: Amazing. And I always love to end the podcast with this question. Is there someone in the Filipino/Filipino American scene in Greater Boston that you want to give a shout-out to, or someone that everyone should know?
Hortense: Yes, there are so many. There are.
Trish: So many.
Hortense: But thank you so much for this opportunity. I want to give a shout out to Lisa Fermin-Granada. Lisa starred as the mother in the world premiere of my play Middleton Heights at Umbrella Stage in twenty twenty four. And I think she's a real unsung hero in the theater world. She has since been in so many of my other plays, too many for me to even recount. She was in that one that you saw in an early reading of Face Work in Woods Hole. She's done so much of my work, and I think she's really great. I hope that you get to meet her and talk with her and possibly interview her.
Trish: Amazing. Yeah. I am in gratitude to you and Meesh. I didn't even know that all these Filipinos were in Greater Boston doing theater. I think we talked about this a little bit. I did a little bit of theater in my twenties, and I was always the only in the room. And especially if there was a character where there was a parent and, not child, because I was in my twenties, but I was like, oh, if there's no one that looks like me in this room that is older, then there's no way I'm getting this unless someone wants to write in that I was either adopted or that the parents are mixed, and like, that's how I came about. But I, kind of gave up on it because I just didn't see folks in the scene, or there'd be casting calls that literally said Caucasians or African Americans. And I'm like, well, I'm the Asian part of the Caucasian. Can I be?
Hortense: Exactly.
Trish: And I've seen so many shows that the two of you have written, produced, directed that have highlighted so many incredible Filipino performers here. And then also welcome folks from New York and Vegas and all these other places, too. So I'm so thankful to you and to everyone in the scene that is continuing to uplift these voices and making sure that our stories get told because no one else was telling them before. Outside of our families, you know, at karaoke and over mahjong and parties and all that kind of stuff.
Hortense: Well, thank you for that. I mean, I'm so glad to see that, it's true. When I first started sending out scripts, I was being told that they're unproducible because there are no Filipino actors in Boston and-
Trish: Quotations. There was quotations there.
Hortense: Exactly. There are quotation marks around that. And what I realized, particularly after we founded the Asian American Playwright Collective and collaborating with Michelle Aguillon on that. In fact, there are so many Filipinos in the Boston area. Filipinos in theater. And I'm also so happy to see that there's increasing interest in Filipinos and Filipino stories in the general population, like Lost Island (correction: Forgotten Island) just came out.
Trish: Yeah, yeah.
Hortense: Lea Salonga is the first Filipino who has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Trish: Yes.
Hortense: And I saw a wonderful film called Filipiniana this summer at the Martha's Vineyard International Film Festival. Filipiniana was very buzzed and talked about during the festival. More people want to hear these stories for sure.
Trish: Yeah. And I don't know the names off the top of my head but that also reminded me that there's a few films in the Boston Asian American Film Festival later this month, and I'll list them out in the description of the podcast so folks can check that out. But it's really exciting. And I am so hopeful that this next generation of Filipinos here, because I know a lot of Filipinos from the Philippines that are like where everywhere I'm like, no, they're not everywhere here in the US, but this next generation is going to be so, not sick of us. But they're like, oh, we're everywhere. I don't know what you're talking about that there was never anyone anywhere. Like, no, we're everywhere. I'm like, outside of Olivia Rodrigo and Bruno Mars and all these other folks, but on TV shows and film and plays that there's just going to be some representation that isn't just secondary, tertiary character, that you can just mention the Philippines or have some of our food on a table.
Hortense: Exactly, exactly. But speaking of food on the table, at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. I noticed that they had.
Trish: Where Olympic hopefuls was premiered. Yeah.
Hortense: Yes. Thank you for that. They premiered at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival this summer and won an award for Outstanding Drama, I should say from.
Trish: That’s amazing. That's amazing.
Hortense: Outstanding drama. Highly commended, I love that. But on the main street in Edinburgh, I think it's Princess Street. There was a Jollibee, and it was always crowded when I went in there. And not just by Filipinos, by everyone. Everyone wanted to go into Jollibee. But the idea of Filipino food, you know, just having fast food chains that are very popular around the world is remarkable. And delicious.
Trish: And also, this is a formal call to action for Jollibee to open up in Boston.
Hortense: There you go.
Trish: Send them this podcast.
Hortense: Yes.
Trish: You're in Scotland, but you're not in Boston. What is going on?
Hortense: No. That's crazy.
Trish: Well, Hortense, thank you so much for taking time to chat with us today. I know we had a chance to catch up recently, but it was great to know more little bits about your story. And thank you again for all that you do to elevate Filipino stories in Greater Boston.
Hortense: Well, right back at you, Trish. I think what you're doing with BOSFilipinos and all of your work elevating the work of Filipinos and women is really remarkable and commendable. So thank you so much for all that you do, Trish.
Trish: Thank you!
