The Importance of Being Earnest, Perseverance Theatre
Wilde’s words can be deadly, his plays long and languid in the hands of amateurs. Not so at Perseverance. Throughout the evening Flordelino Lagundino in the role of Algernon playfully delivers dialogue, making it sound natural. Lagundino lives in the world of the play, draping himself in five different ways on the fainting couch, stuffing muffins into his mouth, turning the aristocratic mansion and country house patio into playgrounds. His time-period posture and poses anchor his highly entertaining, energetic performance. Knowing how and when to give and take on stage is an art he has mastered.
–The Juneau Empire
8 Stars of Gold, Perseverance Theatre
Flordelino gives us a very entertaining portrait of Wally Hickel's wife Erma Lee which is alone worth the price of admission.
–The Juneau Empire
Shakespeare’s R&J, Generator Theater Company (formerly Thunder Mountain Theatre Project)
"Shakespeare's R&J" becomes as much about the reactions of the players to their chums' abandon in playing the roles as it is about the tragedy of the star-crossed lovers. That's not to say that it's bleak or dark, however; director Flordelino Lagundino capitalizes on the prep-school setting to wring every drop of sexuality out of Shakespeare's text, served up with the crude abandon in which teenage boys — and in this case, a receptive audience — revel.
–Anchorage Daily News
"It's a coming of age piece," explained director Flordelino Lagundino, who did a splendid job casting these talented actors.
Lagundino has pulled out of the script a vigorous inquiry into the nature of love, manhood and emotional violence. Themes including homophobia and sexism are established in a strident, modern, way at the top of the play with the men reciting clips from their Latin or social studies homework in unison.
–The Juneau Empire
Doubt, Perseverance Theatre
"Doubt" is a meaty nugget of a play. With only four characters, a rich slice of life is created, layering together themes of sexism, racism, morality, creativity and the hierarchy of power.
At the end of the play, I thought Father Flynn had been wrongly accused, but my theater companion came to the opposite conclusion. We each had many reasons to uphold our interpretations, and this allowed for a lively discussion lasting nearly as long as the play.
Director Flordelino Lagundino told me after the 90-minute show that his aim was to get us doubting our decision at the end of each scene.
"Shanley (the playwright) definitely wants to mess with our minds," Lagundino said.
New information is revealed at every turn, yet there is no definitive proof. Lagundino said that during the rehearsal process, he and Christian decided whether the priest is innocent or not. Of course, that is privileged information! But, according to Lagundino, it really doesn't matter because the priest is going to "play it straight" either way. Either he is genuinely chagrined at being maligned, or he is flawlessly acting. Will his acting hoodwink you, too?
–The Juneau Empire
Yellowman, Perseverance Theatre
The main reason to see this gritty performance is to witness an astounding tour-de-force by two exceptionally talented actors who create a whole seething, breathing world on stage.
Lee and Barbour expend a prodigious amount of energy bringing a complex script to life: I especially loved their portrayal of Alma and Eugene as children. Of course, this is when the rituals of their inner torture and rejection began, but the actors are simply delightful in their exuberant portrayal of childhood energy. They fairly fly around the stage, playing patty-cake and bouncing up and down the dusty small-town Carolina roads in the stifling heat.
As they mature their interaction becomes more nuanced; the consummation of their sweet love is beautifully portrayed - a slow and gymnastic pas de deux. So why does this love unravel? Because of the rancor of hatred, fueled by alcoholism and hopelessness. Not cheery themes. But the acting is truly a marvel.
–The Juneau Empire
The Long Season, Perseverance Theatre
Alaska Is in the Heart: How a new musical and a community-based drama vie to capture the frontier lives and immigrant dreams of Filipino Alaskans
Community
In another part of Douglas Island, Merry Ellefson, Perseverance's most-produced playwright, finds herself in a quandary. How much ethnic conflict and dirty laundry can a documentary play air in public? Would it hurt Voyage's dramatic oomph and authenticity if identities were kept anonymous? At one point, feeling overwhelmed by matters relating to Filipino customs and language, the blonde Caucasian asked her Filipino-American director Flordelino Lagundino if he would consider writing Voyage himself. Imported in January from Washington, D.C., by Perseverance's new artistic director, PJ Paparelli, the young, doe-eyed Lagundino, who works more frequently as an actor, declined the offer. Like Yew, he is an outsider to the Juneau community. Having wrenched a 45-minute first draft out of a stack of 129 pages of single-spaced transcribed interviews, Ellefson worries about insensitivity. Her play might stir too much "not-so-good blood," she says, as when it relates how in the 1950s and '60s several uppity Filipino women, newly arrived to Juneau and feeling threatened by Filipino-Indian intermarriages, slammed the doors in the face of Tlingit wives and mothers, who were charter members of the Filipino Community Hall they had built. Their Pinoy husbands became angry and bitter. "We're not proud of any of this," Voyage's mestizo says. "Don't get me wrong. It is just part of history."
With a chorus of four actors shifting parts to portray more than 22 Filipino citizens of Juneau, ages 16 to 87—remarkably, the Indopino character, partly lifted from Marcelo Quinto's stories, is being portrayed by a woman—Voyage spins forward and backward to tell a whole stretch of Filipino history in Alaska. Poetic, unsentimental, sparely produced (a trunk for props, a cream-colored scrim bearing the names of pioneering manongs in Juneau and Anchorage), the docudrama samples from the everyday realities of Filipino parents, teenagers, actors, service-industry drudges and cannery workers. Sketching themes of identity, family, work, assimilation, struggles and dreams, the play recovers memories of persevering in the face of white racism, of confronting intolerance even among Tlingits and Filipinos, and of the longing (or lack of desire) to go home to the Philippines. Aside from the mestizo, a state lesgislator and an 87-year-old merchant marine emerge as indelible characters.
Directed by Papparelli and Lagundino, Voyage was performed for two weekends this past April, first at the Filipino Community Hall and then at Perseverance's second-stage space, which seats about 60 people. This coming fall, Perseverance plans to tour Voyage to Ketchikan, Sitka and Anchorage, as well as Kodiak, where the population of 13,913 is almost 15 percent Filipino, many of whom still work in the canneries. Ellefson mostly merges the true stories into group composites, "just out of respect," she says. "It's the line you draw. I live here, too. I see my community in the bank, on streets, on the trails." For the tour, Voyage will name some names: She got permission from Long Season's folkloric dancer Ellery Lumbab and his hip-hop-loving 18-year-old son, Joshua, to lay out their fractious disagreements onstage.
Ironically, Voyage is the documentary play that The Long Season was supposed to have been. The double irony is that The Long Season was never supposed to have been a musical in the first place.
Epilogue
Mary Gubatayao-Hagen is Tsimshian/Filipino. Standing by the glass door with a friend at the end of a Saturday performance, she has been patiently waiting for the cast of The Long Season to appear. Everyone else in the audience has driven home. On this cold, rainy night, the white fluorescent lights in the lobby are softened only by a bouquet of flowers. It is the day after opening night. Carrying a backpack, Flordelino Lagundino is the first to emerge. Gubatayao-Hagen approaches him. One by one, the other actors gather to listen as she speaks:
"I saw my Filipino uncles in your show. They were Alaskeros. The mandolin was a beautiful touch—I really felt the loneliness of my bachelor uncles. Some married Tlingit women who had to be strong for the sake of us, their mestizo children. When you guys did the bamboo dance, I remembered the wonderful parties we had. I can tell some of you are American born. But I can see and hear in the other actors how the manongs moved, how they spoke." She pauses, tears rolling down her cheeks. "This show—this is how they lived. As a Native Alaskan, I get many opportunities to shine. Tonight I shine as Filipino. I can feel that all my grandfathers and uncles and manongs are here tonight. Their spirits are smiling."
–American Theatre Magazine, Randy Gener
Songs in the wilderness: Play focuses on life of Alaskeros
“When people are inclusive, I find that much, much more interesting,” remarks Flordelino Lagundino, who portrays the fiery labor organizer Bong Bong. “Performing as a Filipino hardly ever happens. The best experiences I’ve had with plays are with a multicultural cast.”
Adds Lagundino, “They made this Filipino story mainstream by putting in a very traditional musical formula, which universalizes the Filipino American experience. It makes it available for everyone, not just Filipinos, because they have this emotional connection. It’s a human experience, not just a Filipino experience.”
–Philippine News, Dennis Solis
As You Like It, Washington Shakespeare Company
And kudos to whoever decided his beloved Audrey should be played as a deliciously dim transvestite hooker by Flordelino Lagundino. [The scenes with Touchstone and Lagundino] are priceless.
–The City Paper, Bob Mondello
Flordelino Lagundino as an Asian-accented, cross-dressed, fabulously costumed, sluttish and alluring Audrey steals the show.
-Gwendolyn Bradley
Willy Wonka, The Kennedy Center
Flordelino Lagundino makes a likably peppy Charlie.
–Washington Post, Nelson Pressley
Boxing Ennui, Cherry Red Productions
Giving the proceedings a freakishly funny and frightening resonance is Lagundino as an off-kilter mime.
-City Paper, Alexander C. Kafka
