NYC stage diva topbills Fil-Am theater fest

“The name Ching Valdes-Aran may not ring a bell among ordinary Filipinos back home. But ask any theater fanatic in New York City (and even in Manila) and you’ll be proud to find out that the Philippine-born actress is a revered acting diva on the Big Apple playhouse.”

That’s Funfare’s Big Apple correspondent Edmund Silvestre (of The Filipino Reporter) speaking.

Continued Edmund, “Ching, winner of the prestigious OBIE Award (Off-Broadway’s Tony Award) for her performance in the play Flipzoids, may not be as famous as theater superstars Liza Minneli or Vanessa Redgrave, but she’s one of the most respected Asian actresses around whose mere presence commands respect and attention.”

Among Ching’s celebrated stage performances are the off-Broadway productions of Last of the Suns for Ma-Yi Theatre, The House of Bernard Alba for National Asian American Theatre Company, Macbeth on Broadway (as Lady Macbeth opposite F. Murray Abraham), and the highly-acclaimed Dogeaters for Public Theater/La Jolla Playhouse, and where she magnificently played Imelda Marcos. (Dogeaters, based on the novel of Jessica Hagedorn, also starred actor Joel Torre who gave a sterling performance as an outspoken opposition senator who was assassinated).

She also has a long list of film and TV appearances, among them Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Ugly Betty, Nurse Jackie, Across the Universe, Rescue Me, Time’s Up!, and Kung Fu Granny, to name some.

“Her name alone renders prestige and even legitimacy to any Asian theater production,” says New York-based Pinay writer Carissa Villacorta, who is helping promote Ching’s latest project.  

According to Edmund (in another joint Funfare-Reporter interview), Ching is taking center stage in a New York festival of Filipino-American theater called The Pearl Project Theater Festival featuring the world premiere productions of award-winning Fil-Am playwrights Eric Gamalinda, Jorshinelle Taleon-Sonza, and Kristine M. Reyes, ongoing since July 6 until the 25th, presented by Diverse City Theater Company (DTC) at theater row’s The Clurman Theatre on West 42nd Street in Manhattan.

Ching, along with an equally brilliant Fil-Am actress, the stunning Ali Ewoldt (Cosette in Broadway’s Les Miserables and Maria in the international tour of West Side Story), leads an ensemble of Filipino and American theater artists to be megged by award-winning director Nelson T. Eusebio.

The Pearl Project is presenting two full-length plays and two one-acts in repertory:

• In Gamalinda’s full-length play Resurrection, starring Ching, the unexplained suicide of a young woman triggers a series of relentless changes in a family, tearing it apart.

• Taleon-Sonza’s full-length play The Encounter dramatizes an unexpected visit by the incumbent President of the Philippines in his political rival’s prison cell.

• Quarter Century Baby, a one-act play Reyes, starring Ali Ewoldt, tells the story of a parents’ surprise visit to their Filipino daughter and her American boyfriend – a visit which causes turmoil and reveals painful truths.

• Something Blue, a one-act play also by Reyes, follows an estranged father’s quest to reconnect with his daughter on her wedding day.

“The theater is a profound venue to examine the universality of the human condition,” said Victor Lirio, DCT’s artistic director. “The human heart beats from the same place in all of us regardless of race, color, gender, and religion. Filipino-Americans have had a rich theater tradition based largely on stories about the immigrant experience. I am thrilled to add another dimension to this tradition by presenting works that examine the universal themes of family, love, and the desire for a meaningful life — expressed by my generation of Filipino American artists.”

Gamalinda, the son of Doris G. Trinidad, has received numerous awards and grants for his writing and film, including the Asian American Literary Award, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Philippine Centennial Literary Prize, the National Book Award, and a number of Palanca Literary awards for fiction, poetry, essay and playwriting in the Philippines. Most recently, he was a finalist for the 2009 Man Asian Literary Prize for his new novel, The Descartes Highlands.

Reyes is a recipient of DCT’s First Draft Fellowship for her full-length play, Queen for a Day, in 2005. She has studied at The Primary Stages School of Theater, and at Ensemble Studio Theatre with Romulus Linney, Edward Allan Baker, and the late Curt Dempster.  

Taleon-Sonza holds a Ph.D. in Postcolonial Literature from Drew University and an M.F.A. degree from the Actors Studio at The New School. Her trilogy of plays, Migration Blues, was produced by the University Diversity Initiative at The New School; and her play, Sandman, was presented at the Circle in the Square Theater as part of Actors Studio’s repertory season. Sonza’s play Dog Days in America earned a spot in the University of Massachusetts’ Southeast Asian Women Playwright Archive. Other awards include the Philippine Centennial Literary Prize for her play Domestic Helper and the Palanca Literary award for her play Pure.

Eusebio III is the artistic director and co-founder of Creative Destruction. He has developed and directed work for companies including Pan-Asian Rep, Ma-Yi Theatre Company, South Coast Repertory, Laguna Playhouse and the Mark Taper Forum. Recent directing credits include: 8TRACK: B-Sides & Mash-Ups; God, Sex and Blue Water; Obama Drama: A Political Theatrical Spectacular!; and 365/365. He was a former resident director for Ensemble Studio Theatre and is a member of the Lincoln Center Theater Directors Lab and the Rhodopi International Theatre Collective. Eusebio holds a B.A. in Drama from UC Irvine and an M.F.A. in Directing from the Yale School of Drama. He is the recipient of the NEA/TCG Career Development Award.

Said Edmund, “Diverse City Theater Company is run by artist playwrights, directors and actors. It’s an independent, non-profit theater developing and producing organization based in the world’s most diverse city, New York. Its mission is to promote multiculturalism in the theater arts by developing and producing powerful and thought-provoking works that explore and examine the society’s diversity issues.”

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From Funfare’s “beauty experts” Felix Manuel, Joey Cezeare, Gery Yumping and Francis Calubaquib, this report:

1988 Bb. Pilipinas Maja Maria Muriel Moral is the country’s official candidate to the 2010 Mrs. Universe Beauty Pageant to be held in Vilnius, Lithuania, from Aug.12 to 22.

Now 46, Maria is married to businessman Joeffrey Pandi by whom she has two sons, Jay and Jarred. Pandi is a provincial board member in Camarines Norte where the family is based.

Maria finished elementary and high a valedictorian in at the Colegio del Santisimo Rosario in Libmanan, Camarines Sur and graduated with a B.S. Civil Engineering degree from the University of Nueva Caceres in Naga City in 1985. She was Miss UNC Friendship in 1983, Miss UNC Coed, Miss Bicolandia in 1987 and Miss Philippine Eagles in 1987 before she won Bb. Pilipinas-Maja in 1988.

When Maria represented the country in the 1988 Miss Maja International pageant in Puerto Rico, she won the Best in National Costume Award and the Miss Simpatica Award.

Other Bicolanas who have been chosen Bb. Pilipinas are Melody Gersbach (from Legazpi City, Albay), 2009 Bb. Pilipinas-International; and Maria Venus Raj, reigning Bb. Pilipinas-Universe who will compete with more than 80 other beauties in the 2010 Miss Universe pageant in Las Vegas on Aug. 23.

What’s up?

• The big question: Is the TV host(ess’) stint on a popular show co-terminus with her romance with the show’s “big boss”? It seems. Asked if it’s true that the TV host(ess) and her boyfriend/co-host are having an “LQ” (lovers’ quarrel) and might break up, somebody close to the girl told Funfare, “The moment you stop seeing her on the show, it means na talaga ngang hiwalay na sila.” You see, there’s a pattern.When the guy’s relationships with his previous co-host(esses) ended, the girls disappeared from the show. Stay tuned.

• Clarification: A few issues ago, Funfare printed a letter from reader Myrna Almaria who recalled how Jeffrey Hunter, the leading man of Barbara Perez in the Hollywood movie No Man Is An Island fell from a horse while shooting a movie in the Philippines and gave up his slot at a local hospital for surgery on his spinal column and slip disc, giving the slot to reader Myrna’s husband, and instead had an operation in the US. Wrote Myrna, “My husband survived, he’s now 74, but the Hollywood actor did not.” Reader GT Viterbo Jr. of Quezon City sent the following rejoinder: I think the actor the reader was referring to was Jeff Chandler who suffered a spinal ailment while shooting Merill’s Marauders in 1962 in the Philippines, with Luz Valdez among his leading ladies. Chandler died soon after. He was best known for his Oscar-nominated performance in Broken Arrow (1950) starring James Stewart. On the other hand, Jeffrey Hunter died of a stroke in 1969, years after he starred in No Man Is An Island which was released in 1961.

• Congratulations to poet and author Vim Nadera (photo) who was honored with the Patnubay ng Sining at Kalinangan ng Lungsod ng Maynila Award in the field of Literature during the Araw ng Maynila celebration last June 24. The Palanca winner obtained his B.S. and M.A. in Psychology at UST where he got his inspiration to write through The Varsitarian, the campus organ. Nadera established the USTETIKA Annual Awards for Literature, the oldest school-based literary awards in the country since 1985. He currently chairs the Unyon ng Mga Manunulat sa Pilipinas and is one of the founders of the 25-year-old LIRA (Linangan sa Imahen, Retorika at Anyo).

• Renowned artist Tito Estrada (photo) will have his second one-man show at The Philippine Center on Fifth Avenue in New York on Sept. 20. Called Masskara, the show will feature acrylic paintings and Philippine seashells. Among the invited guests of honor are Prof. Lorli VIllanueva Dima-ala, Bibsy Carballo, Girlie Love Alcantara and Margarita Delgado Magsaysay. Tito is also behind the famous interior design studio Galleria Estrada.

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