April 28, 2023
For immediate release

Contact:
Andrew Wood 415-399-9554 (o) 415-305-1102 (c) [email protected]
Lucho Ramirez: (415) 425-0445 [email protected]

Contemporary Artists Focus on
US / Filipino Relations
Helps Frame 2023 SF Intl. Festival

Calendar Editors Please Note
Who: Four Filipino American Productions
What: 2023 San Francisco International Arts Festival
Where: BRAVA Theater, Joe Goode Annex and Theatre of Yugen.
Date & Time: June 9-18, 2023
Tickets: $17 - $28 general admission. Early Bird Sale Ends April 30, 2023
Box Office and Information: https://www.sfiaf.org or 415-399-9554.

Photos Available on Request

April 28, 2023: This year's San Francisco International Arts Festival (SFIAF) will feature four contemporary productions that use family and community stories to speak to the United States' history with the Philippines and to the Filipino-American immigrant experience. The projects bring a Filipino (and other) minority perspective to the Festival theme of IN DIASPORA: I.D. for the New Majority.

As the United States reflects (or obfuscates) on 200 years of the Monroe Doctrine, composer, John Calloway's Buffalo Soldiers in the Philippine-American War: A Crisis of Conscience literally explores his family's bi-racial history with the Archipelago. The war marked the first time Black American soldiers were deployed as part of an empire building exercise outside the immediate vicinity of the United States. The piece draws attention to the inner conflicts many of these soldiers felt when they realized that the American treatment of Filipinos was not so dissimilar to what the American treatment of Black slaves had been prior to the Civil War (and that became resurgent in the post-reconstruction era)...and the ramifications for the Calloway family.

Two solo theatre productions explore different points on the trajectory of the immigrant experience. Jason Biyani's Locus of Control looks at the migration and assimilation process for his own family as an example of the practice in the later 20th century. Kat Evasco goes a stage further. Her work reflects on overcoming the initial disorientation to gain a precarious toe-hold on the American Dream, only to discover, to her shock, that both she and her Catholic mother are not 100% red, white and heterosexual. Mommy Queerest is less ab coming-of-age than it is a coming-to-terms story as Kat navigates the contradictions of her multiple identities.

Finally, Steamroller Dance Company artistic director, Jesse Bie offers a path out of Catholic guilt and dogma with an unapologetic celebration of Asian-American Queer identity by revisiting one of the ensemble's classic works from the turn of the century. The much acclaimed Young Gods is Re-Imagined for the benefit of the post ACT Up Generation.

Festival director, Andrew Wood said of the Filipino focused programming, "The artists employ a range of emotions to tell their stories including humor and irony as well as direct calls for empathy and justice. While these productions speak specifically to different facets of the Filipino experience in relation to the United States, they are equally emblematic of, and interwoven with, many other minority and immigrant stories that relate to traversing the discrimination they encountered as they sought to establish their identities and communities in this country. And, also like many other minority and immigrant histories, theirs is a microcosm of the Festival theme: I.D. for the New Majority.

Calendar listings for the Filipino American productions presented at SFIAF are as follows (click on links for more details):

Dance
Steamroller Dance Company
Young Gods Reimagined (2000) (45 minutes w/out intermission)
Joe Goode Annex; Thur Jun 15, 2023 8:00 PM, Sat Jun 17, 2023 3:30 PM
Young Gods, Reimagined re-investigates one of the company’s seminal works by interviewing former company members to delve into their experiences of the creative process. Choreography from the original work is reconfigured so former dancers can engage with new dancers cast for the performance. The interviews and archival footage are woven throughout the performance to create an immersive experience for the audience.

Music
John Calloway
Tribute to the Buffalo Soldier and the Afro-Filipino (60 minutes w/out intermission)
BRAVA Cabaret; Sat Jun 17, 2023 2:00 PM
John Calloway will give a work-in-progress presentation of the piece that will premiere at the Asian Art Museum in October 2023. Tribute to the Buffalo Soldier and the Afro-Filipino examines the confluence of the African / Filipino aspects of the Calloway family history.

Theatre / Spoken Word
Jason Bayani
Locus of Control (75 minutes w/out intermission)
BRAVA Theater; Theatre of Yugen
Fri Jun 9, 2023 8.30 PM, Sat Jun 10, 2023 5:30 PM
Locus of Control explores the complicated, sometimes fragmented experience of the Filipinx-American background and identity. Setting himself behind a DJ booth, Bayani seamlessly moves between poetry, storytelling, music, and video taking the audience through his family’s history of migration viewed through both a historic and intensely personal lens.

Kat Evasco
Mommy Queerest (60 minutes w/out intermission)
Theatre of Yugen; Sat Jun 17, 2023 8:30 PM, Sun Jun 18, 2023 5:30 PM
Written with John Caldon, Mommy Queerest is Kat Evasco’s autobiographical one-woman show. An unconventional mommy/daughter tale that tackles conflict with humorous insight, while illustrating the experience of being a Filipina lesbian, gay Christian, survivor of sexual abuse and young American just trying to get some.

Funders
SFIAF 2023 is made possible in part by the support of Bernard Osher Foundation, BRAVA Theater Center, California Arts Council, California Office of the Small Business Advocate, California Venues Grant, National Endowment for the Arts, New Place Fund, Phyllis C. Wattis Foundation, the Western Arts Federation (WESTAF) and many generous individuals.

~XXX~

Contemporary Artists Focus on US / Filipino Relations Helps Frame 2023 SF Intl. Festival

Contemporary Artists Focus on
US / Filipino Relations
Helps Frame 2023 SF Intl. Festival