‘Larry the Musical,’ a new movement
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Pictured above from left to right, top to bottom: Marah Sotelo, Vida Mae Fernandez, Daniel Lloyd Pias, Jocelyn "Jojo" Thompson-Jordan, Kurt Tijamo, Kylie Abucay, Jaron Liclican, Bebe Browning,* Joshua Carandang,* Rocky James Concepcion, Eymard Meneses Cabling,* and Romelo Urbi (Photo by Rudi Tcruz Photography)
*The Actor appears through the courtesy of Actors' Equity Association, the Union of Professional Actors and Stage Managers in the United States.
Imagine this once unknown man, Larry Itliong, standing on salmon packaging boxes or flimsy grape crates in order to be heard and prevail in his fate-designed social justice quest for pioneer Filipino laborers in America.
On a rainy evening, at the Brava Theatre in San Francisco, the character Larry Itliong owned the full stage, not just a box. A theatre dedicated to listening to the community’s artistic expression is hosting Larry the Musical, An American Journey, a real five-year journey of a brand-new artistic collective made up of writers, academics, actors, musicians, community activists, and art benefactors. Together they crafted a musical, the first all-Filipino American theatre production based on the life and transformative work of labor leader and civil rights activist Larry Itliong.
To open the musical, its writer and executive producer Gayle Romasanta proudly announced that the stage play is 100-percent from a Filipino American perspective. That’s her ode to a late dear friend Prof. Dawn Mabalon with whom she co-authored the first Filipino children’s book Journey for Justice, The Life of Larry Itliong.
“New Hope”: the cast of “Larry The Musical” (Photo by Billy Bustamante)
Romasanta and Mabalon were both raised in Stockton, California where the largest Filipino population thrived in the ‘30s until the ‘70s. It’s also where itinerant Itliong once lived and first organized an asparagus workers’ strike. Following Mabalon’s untimely passing in 2018 and Romasanta’s nationwide book tours and the distribution of over 5,000 copies of Journey for Justice, the untold story of Itliong and the Filipino American farm workers began being amplified in various media.
Now a stage musical, Larry Itliong’s life story is finally spoken and sung to a greater register so that a brand-new generation and audience can witness the Filipino narrative and reclaim an American story.
Larry Itliong (Source: The Delano Manongs)
A quick look on the Filipino American history timeline helps ground the musical:
There are Four Waves of arrival of Filipinos is America according the Filipino American Historical Society (FANHS) – the First Wave (1763-1906), the Second Wave (1906-1934), the Third Wave (1945-1965) and the Fourth Wave (1965-present).
In the early scenes of the play Romasanta thoughtfully traces the beginning of Itliong’s journey to the United States from his hometown in the Philippines in 1929. Composer Bryan Pangilinan marks the opening scenes with the genius of his lyrics that summon emotions that come with family separation, which is likely to make the immigrants in the audience take stock of their life’s trajectory in America.
What emerges at the start of the musical is the discovery that the Filipino American immigration story can be shared across many cultures, for it is a genuine American narrative if we believe that immigrants built this country.
Pangilinan skillfully writes in an Ilocano line that serves as a farewell embrace – “Ayayatin kita” – I will love you -- sung to a young Larry (Joshua Carandang) by his parents, his love interest, Malaya (Marah Sotelo), as he goes to take the long journey aboard the Empress of Asia to the “Land of the Free.”
Malaya (Marah Sotelo) and young Larry (Joshua Carandang) (Photo by Billy Bustamante)
Among 800 ship passengers, Itliong finds fellow Filipinos from other parts of the country in the third-class section brightened by nothing but hopes and dreams of a bright future.
Larry’s youthful ambition of becoming a lawyer thrums a rhythm in his heart, and the chorus of the song Where I Wanna Be shares a resolute aspiration that propelled the Manong (elderly pioneers) Generation.
Historian Fred Cordova was first to describe the journey as being across “oceans of dreams,” a vision shared by Asian as well as European immigrants to America. No sooner did the pioneer generation realize that trouble awaits on the very soil they labored on – oppressive labor conditions in the sugar plantations of Hawaii and Alaskan canneries, where Itliong found himself during the Depression, in the reality that the writer Carlos Bulosan poignantly depicted.
Larry Itliong with the United Farm Workers Union (Source: UFW.org)
Why not just a feet-stomping musical flooded in lights and glittering with celebrity actors? What the audience sees onstage is a product of a long process that Romasanta calls “grounding.”
Inspired after watching a local production of the Broadway musical Allegiance with Pangilinan in the lead role, Romasanta saw a vision for her book. In turn, Pangilinan, a trained composer, imagined song lyrics from her story’s narrative.
The quest to celebrate a forgotten Filipino immigrant hero has one more invisible artist in Dawn Mabalon whose unfinished publication on labor history in America left 900 pages of research that centered on Itliong’s civil rights organizing years and interaction with better-known names in California’s farmworkers movement of the ‘60s and ‘70s.
Elder Larry (Eymard Meneses Cabling) and young Larry (Joshua Carandang) (Photo by Billy Bustamante)
As a critical mass of Filipino talents began to assemble, there were road trips to places of significance such as Delano in the central valley of California, the premier of the first songs in a public workshop, and more research by the Romasanta-Pangilinan team in a dogged effort to birth a musical that is Filipino in shape, sound and form.
“On its opening night, after a week of previews hailed by standing ovation night after night, the production group was assured that the musical would resonate.”
In these times when social media promotes everything that can be talked about, the Larry the Musical production fires up many points of light. Is it an immigrant history? Is it a love letter to Filipinos in America? Is it a radical assertion of civil rights once again? Is it part of the Browning of Broadway musicals?
“American Mary” Jocelyn Thompson-Jordan, Bebe Browning, Kylie Abucay, Marah Sotelo, and Vida Mae Fernandez (Source: Broadway.com)
“Protest”: the cast of Larry The Musical (Photo by Billy Bustamante)
On its opening night, after a week of previews hailed by standing ovation night after night, the production group was assured that the musical would resonate. The Older Larry (a possible Tony candidate Eymard Meneses Cabling) gives the best line: “The heart of the Filipino is revolution,” making the opening night audience roar.
Here's a parallel video review by Tesz Millan, a FilAm who was introduced to Larry Itliong by this musical:
Larry The Musical runs until April 14, 2024.
Elena Buensalido-Mangahas is Chair of the Board of Directors of the Filipina Women's Network and serves on the Governing Board of the Little Manila Foundation.
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