{"id":17348,"date":"2023-03-17T20:25:08","date_gmt":"2023-03-18T06:25:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/?p=17348"},"modified":"2023-03-17T20:25:21","modified_gmt":"2023-03-18T06:25:21","slug":"how-ive-given-up-real-life-for-lent-to-be-an-actor-but-just-for-45-days-or-so","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/2023\/03\/17\/how-ive-given-up-real-life-for-lent-to-be-an-actor-but-just-for-45-days-or-so\/","title":{"rendered":"How I\u2019ve Given Up Real Life For Lent To Be An Actor. But Just For 45 Days Or So."},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"
L: Emil Guillermo as Gabriel Noitallde. R: Laura Robards as newscaster Hedda Duckbill. Photo by Jonathan Slaff.<\/sub><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

by Emil Guillermo<\/em>

\u201cBloody Sunday,\u201d the day of the 1965 Selma march for voting rights and social justice and the violent response to it by white Southerners, was publicly commemorated over the weekend.

But this year, the actual date, March 7 falls on a Tuesday this year. So we get to linger with the history into the week, giving us time to appreciate our role on that day.

It isn\u2019t talked about much, but let the record show, Asian Americans were there marching for civil rights alongside African Americans on that historic date.

AAPIs were in coalition with African Americans.

Vincent Wu was one of MLK\u2019s bodyguards that day and was arrested at Selma. It\u2019s a little-known bit of Asian American history.

But that\u2019s just it.

There\u2019s a lot in history that isn\u2019t widely known, which is why you should see Ishmael Reed\u2019s \u201cThe Conductor.\u201d It\u2019s playing now off-Broadway at Theater for the New City through March 26.

But even if you\u2019re in California, Hawaii, Europe, or the Northern Marianas Islands, you can still get a livestream ticket and watch the latest from the MacArthur genius award-winning novelist, poet, essayist and playwright who turns in a Shavian tour de force. (You can get tickets at https:\/\/theaterforthenewcity.net\/shows\/the-conductor-2023\/<\/a>.)

It\u2019s the second project I\u2019m doing since mid-February. The first being my one-man show \u201cEmil Amok: Lost NPR Host\u2026\u201d also in New York City.

I tell my friends for Lent, I gave up my life to be an actor.

It just made sense to stay to be in Reed\u2019s play too, though admittedly, I have my biases.

I have known Ishmael Reed for more than 40 years and have a small comic part in the play. When I was in a creative writing MFA program, Reed was the visiting professor. When one teacher told me to stop writing about Filipino characters, Reed told me to stick them back in.

That\u2019s what Ishmael Reed\u2019s life has been about: imagining stories of inclusion, where we matter and count. All of us. Asians, Latinos, African Americans, Native Americans. All of us.

Ishmael Reed was woke when others were walking around happily playing dead.

Now being anti-woke is a thing. And they are portraying \u201cwokeness\u201d as the problem.

In \u201cThe Conductor,\u201d Reed takes a satirical swing at the rise of anti-wokeness by taking a recent news story, last year\u2019s recall of progressive school board members in \u201cliberal\u201d San Francisco, and then imagining an outrageous scenario.

There\u2019s a fictional mad Indian prime minister who shoots down a U.S. spy plane.

Indians in America come under attack and are victims of xenophobic hate.

A Fugitive Indian Act is being debated in Congress, and in anticipation of its passage, Indian Americans flee to Canada where they can seek refuge by taking a flight back to India.

It is a crisis and Indian Americans are seeking refuge through a new underground railroad to get to Canada.

Hence, the need for \u201cThe Conductor.\u201d

Far-fetched? We just had the anniversary of Executive Order 9066, which led to the incarceration of more than 120,000 Japanese Americans during WWII.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruling that allowed for the incarceration of Japanese Americans was never formally overturned.

The precedent is still there. Think it can\u2019t happen again? Considering the conditions of the current court, nothing appears to be \u201csettled law.\u201d

You\u2019ll think of the Japanese American experience, even though Reed\u2019s play focuses on Indian Americans. But why stop there? Considering the recent news stories of espionage balloons and China\u2019s current courtship of Russia, there\u2019s an eerie feeling when one of the characters in \u201cThe Conductor\u201d boldly states, \u201cThe fate of immigrants is tied to their countries of origin.\u201d

Reed\u2019s satirical vision can almost seem too plausible and not exaggerated enough.

The play blends the international scene with the local San Francisco school board recall, which gave the anti-woke movement a national boost.

If you haven\u2019t noticed, the culture wars are being fought most vigorously at the grassroots level with education as the focus.

Issues like admissions to elite high schools, as well as curriculum debates over history that\u2019s critical of America\u2019s missteps of the past.

The movement\u2019s prime proponents are people like Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who is on a mission to cleanse the schools of real history in favor of a glorifying and patriotic, U.S. history. A happy history. The critical be damned. To DeSantis, the problem is \u201cthe woke mind virus that\u2019s infected the left and all these other institutions.\u201d

But of course, we increasingly have those amongst us in the AAPI community who sound just like DeSantis. Nikki Haley speaks of anti-wokeness and the need for generational change. She also wants to be president.

So does Vivek Ramaswamy, a much younger Indian American with Ivy League credentials, who doesn\u2019t mind pushing out Haley. Ramaswamy is more anti-woke than even any right-wing white zealot.

You can see their ilk in \u201cThe Conductor,\u201d played by me. In my small part, I am a Pacific Islander who has just won the Manhattan Institute\u2019s \u201cAnglo of the Month Award.\u201d

Now that\u2019s funny.

Amid the satire, \u201cThe Conductor\u201d is chock full of history, specifically Asian American history, the parts that aren\u2019t taught currently in schools. You\u2019ll learn about the writer Frank Chin, a key member of the Chinese American avant-garde, hardly known to Chinese Americans but studied by scholars in China and Japan.

You\u2019ll learn about the Indian caste system and Dalits, and how immigrants have brought that cultural racism into America to the point where new laws are needed to ban caste-based discrimination. Seattle became the first city to pass such a law just last month.

It\u2019s all sprinkled throughout in a satirical portrayal of exactly where we are in modern American race history.

And where\u2019s that?

We\u2019re 58 years away from \u201cBloody Sunday\u201d and still have a long way to go.

Get tickets to see \u201cThe Conductor\u201d in person in NYC, or livestreamed at https:\/\/theaterforthenewcity.net\/shows\/the-conductor-2023\/<\/a>.

EMIL GUILLERMO<\/strong> is a journalist and commentator.  A former host of NPR\u2019s \u201cAll Things Considered,\u201d he worked in Hawaii as a columnist for the Star-Bulletin and an editorial board member for the Advertiser. He vlogs at <\/em>www.amok.com<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Emil Guillermo \u201cBloody Sunday,\u201d the day of the 1965 Selma march for voting rights…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17322,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[29,20],"tags":[],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/i2.wp.com\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/CP-Emil-Photo-scaled.jpg?fit=2560%2C1920&ssl=1",2560,1920,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/i2.wp.com\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/CP-Emil-Photo-scaled.jpg?resize=150%2C150&ssl=1",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/i2.wp.com\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/CP-Emil-Photo-scaled.jpg?fit=300%2C225&ssl=1",300,225,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/i2.wp.com\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/CP-Emil-Photo-scaled.jpg?fit=640%2C480&ssl=1",640,480,true],"large":["https:\/\/i2.wp.com\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/CP-Emil-Photo-scaled.jpg?fit=640%2C480&ssl=1",640,480,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/i2.wp.com\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/CP-Emil-Photo-scaled.jpg?fit=1536%2C1152&ssl=1",1536,1152,true],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/i2.wp.com\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/CP-Emil-Photo-scaled.jpg?fit=2048%2C1536&ssl=1",2048,1536,true],"ultp_layout_landscape_large":["https:\/\/i2.wp.com\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/CP-Emil-Photo-scaled.jpg?resize=1200%2C800&ssl=1",1200,800,true],"ultp_layout_landscape":["https:\/\/i2.wp.com\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/CP-Emil-Photo-scaled.jpg?resize=870%2C570&ssl=1",870,570,true],"ultp_layout_portrait":["https:\/\/i2.wp.com\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/CP-Emil-Photo-scaled.jpg?resize=600%2C900&ssl=1",600,900,true],"ultp_layout_square":["https:\/\/i2.wp.com\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/CP-Emil-Photo-scaled.jpg?resize=600%2C600&ssl=1",600,600,true],"covernews-slider-full":["https:\/\/i2.wp.com\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/CP-Emil-Photo-scaled.jpg?resize=1115%2C715&ssl=1",1115,715,true],"covernews-slider-center":["https:\/\/i2.wp.com\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/CP-Emil-Photo-scaled.jpg?resize=800%2C500&ssl=1",800,500,true],"covernews-featured":["https:\/\/i2.wp.com\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/CP-Emil-Photo-scaled.jpg?fit=1024%2C768&ssl=1",1024,768,true],"covernews-medium":["https:\/\/i2.wp.com\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/CP-Emil-Photo-scaled.jpg?resize=540%2C340&ssl=1",540,340,true],"covernews-medium-square":["https:\/\/i2.wp.com\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/CP-Emil-Photo-scaled.jpg?resize=400%2C250&ssl=1",400,250,true]},"author_info":{"info":["admin"]},"category_info":"Candid Perspectives<\/a> Featured<\/a>","tag_info":"Featured","comment_count":"0","jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i2.wp.com\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/CP-Emil-Photo-scaled.jpg?fit=2560%2C1920&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17348"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17348"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17348\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17349,"href":"https:\/\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17348\/revisions\/17349"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17322"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}