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To share one of its leading shows from last season with a wider audience, The Club at La MaMa will present a return engagement of "House/Boy" by Nicky Paraiso from November 4 to 21. The piece is directed by Ralph Peña, who is Artistic Director of Ma-Yi Theatre Company. The play is Nicky Paraiso's third autobiographical evening-length solo work with music and mutimedia, dealing with identity, sexuality and the enduring theme of what "home" means to Filipino Americans. Last season, Luis Francia wrote in the Village Voice, "In the earlier parts of his Asian Boys trilogy, Nicky Paraiso explored with a ruminative yet passionate voice his growing up queer and Filipino, with a strong-willed mother, in a Queens landscape of loss and ambivalent belonging. In House/Boy, the third installment, he sings of his father, who has previously remained mostly in the background as the strong silent male-in a xenophobic society the imposed role for immigrant men of color, valued for their hard work but resented for their bravado and flamboyance….With a piano and some well-chosen songs, Paraiso has shepherded expertly and movingly the different parts of his tale under one well-wrought roof." The predecessors of "House/Boy" were "Asian Boys" (P.S. 122, 1994, co-produced by Ma-Yi Theatre Ensemble) and "Houses and Jewels" (1994, DTW). Both were stories of growing up gay and Filipino in the borough of Queens, where Filipino Americans, like many other Asians, tend to see themselves as strangers in a strange land. "Houses and Jewels" was about his mother's house in the Philippines, where she grew up with her five sisters. (He now calls it "a Filipino version of 'The House of Bernarda Alba.'") Now the focus shifts to his father and to that peculiarly Filipino male prototype, the houseboy. Partly, it is dedicated to his father, who died in the family house in Queens in 1987. It contains some unfinished business, because Nicky never did sing for his father while the elder was alive. Nicky's parents, Nicasio and Agustina, had known each other in the Philippines, but Nicasio had moved to the U.S. in his twenties. Here he married an Irish-American woman and settled in the Bronx; they had a son, Michael, to whom the show is also dedicated (Nicky hardly knew him). The marriage broke up and Nicasio returned to the Philippines to find a suitable wife, this time someone Philippine-born. He was reunited with Agustina, who was the last of her sisters to wed and was already known as a spinster. When Nicky was in his thirties, in '83, she was homesick and returned to the Philippines without her husband. To Nicasio, a Pullman porter on the New Haven Railroad, the house in Queens was home. He was its caretaker and he was waiting for Nicky to take it over (an ideal he shared with Agustina, interestingly enough). But all Nicky wanted, like others of his generation, was to get out of Queens. Children of first generation immigrants are the borough's largest export. Nicky wanted to become a Manhattan artiste. After Nicasio died in Christmas of 1987, Nicky brought his elder's ashes back to the Philippines. His mother was living there with a houseboy, and this is where "I Never Sang for My Father" gets entwined with another theme. The houseboy, named Efren Martinez, was tall, lanky, flamboyantly gay and effeminate; "the stereotypical effeminate houseboy," says Nicky. When Nicky visited in '83 and '85, it was as if the son was actually intruding on the private world of a houseboy and his mistress. One night, Efren endured a frightening nightmare (in Philippine myth, there is a nightmare in which a spirit appears and takes your soul away). The next morning, Agustina found her brother-in-law's gold watch missing. The houseboy, accused of stealing, left in a huff and was never heard from again. Efren's persona happened to echo Nicky's search for Filipino role models in the media, where there were two prime examples. One is Patrick Adiarte, a child actor who played the prince in "The King and I." In tribute, Paraiso will act the final scene of the musical , playing all three parts: Yul Brynner's, Deborah Kerr's and Patrick Adiarte's. The other prototype is Zorro David, who played the houseboy Anacleto in the film, "Reflections in a Golden Eye" (1967), directed by John Huston and based on Carson McCullers' novel (with Marlon Brando, Elizabeth Taylor, Julie Harris and Brian Keith). In tribute, Paraiso will perform "Anacleto's Ballet," based on a dance the character performs for his mistress (played by Julie Harris) in the film. The two stories are interwoven with Nicky playing and singing at a grand piano and speaking directly to the audience in a confessional way. With multimedia added (mostly, projections of his family), it comes out as a performance piece layered with cabaret style. Scenes are punctuated with songs that Paraiso has written, plus a few drawn from the American cabaret songbook and Filipino love songs and folk songs delivered in their native language. Nicky Paraiso was a member of Meredith Monk/The House and Vocal Ensemble (1981-1990), touring extensively throughout the US, Europe and Japan. He has also worked with Jeff Weiss and Carlos Ricardo Martinez since 1979 and was an actor and musical director in "Come Clean" and the Obie-winning "Hot Keys." He is also affiliated with Yoshiko Chuma and the School of Hard Knocks, with whom he has appeared in four major productions since 1988. He is also a frequent performer with Ma-Yi Theatre/NATCO. Paraiso's awards include a 1987 Bessie and a NYSCA Performance Art Initiative Grant. He was nominated for the prestigious Cal Arts/Alpert Award in 1998. His films include "Book of Days," "Fresh Kill" and "Jeffrey." In 1994, in "Notes on a Stonewall Summer" (American Theater), critic Charles McNulty wrote that "Asian Boys" demonstrated "that musical talent and daring honesty can often be as liberating as the most flamboyant cross-dressing." Musing on the aesthetics of minority theater, he added, "Paraiso demonstrates that there is nothing implicitly undramatic about the marginalized self. For the artist with vision, there's no need to travel far and wide to find a subject bristling with conflict, ambiguity and theatrical life." Set is executed by Mark Tambella. Costume design is by Gabriel Berry. Lighting design is by Justin Townsend. The houseboy dance is choreographed by Chris Yon. This production is a part of the Performing Ethnicity International Conference and Arts Festival, organized by Ma-Yi Theater Company, The City College of New York, the University of the Philippines system and Philippine Forum. Major support is provided by The Ford Foundation. For more information on Performing Ethnicity, visit www.ma-yitheatre.org. Ma-Yi Theater Company, now in its fifteenth season, is devoted to plays of the Asian-American experience cross-cultural and intercultural collaborations. It has been regularly featured in productions of The Club at La MaMa. * Nicky has performed House/boy at the Dublin Theater Festival, October 2007 |
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