I Think I Want To Work As A Writer Now...

I submitted a short review about the play The Romance of Magno Rubio to a US-based Pinoy newspaper. It was a spur of a moment thing, composed the crap in 30 minutes and typed it for 10. It's short and the whole story about this writing assignment will be in my next blog.

ROMANCE IN THE US SOIL (WHERE FILIPINOS TOIL)
Richmond J. Ramirez, MD

Setting afoot in New York City three months ago, I
watched a television plug of the play The Romance of
Magno Rubio. Surprisingly, it was riddled with a lot
of praises from the cynical, perfectly snubbish,
critics of New York. I always eyed the Broadway
musicals as my kind of theater but I knew, I would
eventually see this play. Together with my friends
Robert, Russell and Luise, we bought tickets for it
hoping to catch a drift of the Filipino heritage on
stage that was sweeping the Big Apple. Never did we
thought that we were close to have missed such a
brilliant theater piece.

The Ma-Yi Theater reminds me of the Wilfredo Ma.
Guerrero theater back in UP where I frequently watch
the works of Tony Mabesa, Floy Quintos and other
theater personalities that I have grown to admire
during my stay in the University. Surprisingly, 80%
of the attendance last night were consist of
non-Filipinos. The play's playbill then contained
glossary for Filipino words which I doubted for a moment
if the audience would appreciate the use of the
Filipino language in the play, especially in the singsong
parts.

Based from the work of the late Carlos Bulosan, it
tells the story of a Filipino migrant worker, named
Magno Rubio and his enigmatic love for an unseen American
woman from Arkansas. Bulosan, who himself was a
"manong", narrates the lives of the first generation
of 100,000 migrant Filipino laborers whom American
laborers hired to work in U.S. plantations. Their
lives provided the backdrop in which the love of Magno
Rubio blossomed in all its innocence.

The plot may sound cliche, but the script, actors and
direction on stage gave it lividity. Each of the
characters had their own strengths and the actors
played their part in a very impressive way. The
dialogue was interspersed wittingly with Tagalog,
which I think is conscientious of the rest of the
American audience. Complete with the singing, arnis
moves and clever Filipino humor, it was worth any
musical on broadway and better yet, we can call it our
own.

After watching the play and the constant battery of
the words "Filipino ako!", I felt a twinge of
nationalistic pride and nostalgia of being 20,000
miles away from home. Too bad, we were only four among
the few brown faces within the predominantly white
crowd. The Romance of Magno Rubio should have been
our celebration of the Filipino pride: that we are a
people who toiled the soil of foreign lands until our
backs ache, but has too rich a culture capable of
producing honorable works of art and most of all,
capable of loving in an almost insane, Filipino way.