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[music]

Arun Venugopal: This is All Of It. I'm Arun Venugopal, filling in for Alison Stewart. One of the most innovative shows on Broadway right now is a dance-pop opera about the Philippines infamous first couple, Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos. It began over a decade ago as a concept album from musicians David Byrne and Fatboy Slim. Let's listen to a clip from the Broadway production.

[MUSIC - Here Lies Love]

Let's get some history in about this show, which you learn at the show. Ferdinand Marcos becomes president of the Philippines in 1965. He declares martial law in 1972, holding onto power for another 14 years before being forced into exile amid protests that came to be called The People Power Revolution. Amnesty International estimates that 70,000 people were imprisoned in that time, and several thousand were killed under Marcos' dictatorship. Filipino people suffered extreme poverty while the administration stole around $10 billion of public money.

This musical, Here Lies Love includes a lot of the statistics and accounts of human rights abuses, but its focus is on the notoriously lavish first lady rather than her husband, and its setting is a disco style club with part of the audience on the dance floor as the actors and even the stage they're on move around the space. Jose Llana originated the role of Ferdinand Marcos off Broadway, and he stars again in the Broadway production. The person responsible for the choreography with all these moving parts is Annie-B Parson, who recently choreographed David Byrne’s other Broadway foray, American Utopia. Jose and Annie, thanks so much for joining us today.

Annie-B Parson: Hi.

Jose Llana: Thanks for having us.

Arun Venugopal: Jose, let's start with you. Before we get into the show, a little backstory, you were born in the Philippines, right?

Jose Llana: I was. I was born in martial law.

Arun Venugopal: Born in martial law.

Jose Llana: Yes, I was.

Arun Venugopal: Your parents were among the many Filipinos who left in, what, the late ‘70s?

Jose Llana: In ’79.

Arun Venugopal: How old were you, if you don't mind sharing?

Jose Llana: I was three years old when we left and my sister was four. We came to New York first and then we settled in DC.

Arun Venugopal: Growing up in all these ideas of a martial law and family having fled, did these permeate your childhood or is it something that you came to much later in terms of what that was that you left?

Jose Llana: It absolutely permeated my childhood. My parents were major anti-Marcos activists in the Philippines. My mom and dad were actually in college from '65 to '69, which was during the extreme height of the radicalism of young people who were questioning power and questioning-- My mom and dad were very proudly part of, what they call the first quarter storm in 1970. When things started getting dangerous and then martial law was finally declared, my parents realized it was not a great place for them to raise their kids. They found, thankfully passage here to New York and America, but my sister and I were raised with an absolute understanding of why we left, what martial law was.

My parents joined many other Filipino-Americans who were also here. In suburban Virginia basements, we would be watching news reports and television and then having fundraisers and sending money back to friends and family who were at those protest rallies. Everything that happened, particularly like Ninoy’s assassination in '83, those images were burned in my brain as a kid. I remember when we were putting the show together and that they flashed these images and Peter Nigrini put up these images, it was like my childhood was being flashed in front of my eyes.

Arun Venugopal: Did your parents have friends or family who were I guess take?

Jose Llana: Swept?

Arun Venugopal: Yes.

Jose Llana: Absolutely. One of my godmothers, Joanna, she was a journalist and a lot of my parents' friends were journalists in the Philippines, which is why they got nervous because it was the journalists that were being picked up. She disappeared for a couple months. Thankfully, she came back, but she obviously went through a lot of trauma with her time in prison. It was one of those things where the young people, in particular, the ones who were at the rallies and the ones who were making a difference and trying to do something were the most nervous and a lot of them left.

Arun Venugopal: Did you have family who’ve come to see the show?

Jose Llana: I have. They were all there for opening, my mom, and dad, and my sister. With Annie-B, I've been involved with this since 10 years ago and it's been a constant conversation. Even I remember back in 2011, I had told them that I was going to be a part of the first workshop, and they thought, "You're doing a musical about the Marcoses?” I think they were concerned. They didn't know anything about the show, but they had an understanding and they trusted me that I was not going to be a part of something that glorified them and did anything other than tell the story so that people can remember what happened and what went on.

Arun Venugopal: Listeners, especially Filipino listeners, we want to hear from you. Have you seen Here Lies Love on or off Broadway? Call 212-433-9692 and please share your experience of the show and also your relationship with this history. Again, that's 212-433-WNYC. Annie, you're the choreographer for this show. So many innovations in terms of how this is presented. It's also gone through quite an evolution from the earlier years off-Broadway to this moment, right?

Annie-B Parson: Yes. Alex Timbers, the director, is responsible for the beautiful sharing of the space with the audience and a lot of the placement of the dancers. He just has this incredible gift of the body and space for a director. But yes, I worked with the music to create the dances themselves, and there's probably about 25 different dances.

Arun Venugopal: That's lot.

Annie-B Parson: It's a big project.

Arun Venugopal: Which means that I guess the dancers really are telling the story.

Annie-B Parson: There are. They are.

Arun Venugopal: They’re putting a lot of weight, aren't they?

Annie-B Parson: I think so. They speak very directly also-- I mean, we’re talking about foreman content here as I'm listening to Jose. From a formal perspective, they speak very directly to the music, the musicality, the tonalities of the music and so forth and David Byrne’s aesthetic.

Arun Venugopal: I think one of the interesting challenges, back to the content, we're talking about a show, which is about this very serious history, but also delivered-- there's a lot of pleasure in what we're experiencing, participating in. If you're on the dance floor as an audience member, it's a lot of fun. You're moving around as they slowly rotate this. As someone who is involved in all that, it seems like there must be quite a balancing act between projecting these characters who are, in some sense, they're desirable, but they're also demagogues, aren't they?

Jose Llana: Right.

Annie-B Parson: And they were desirable, and they were glamorous, and that's true. I'm aesthetically really excited by work that combines lightness and seriousness. I as an audience person often feel my body get heavier and heavier as I watch heavy subject matter with heavy presentation or form. Even to think back of the [unintelligible 00:08:24] during the Weimar Republic or something like that where things were serious, they were terrifying. What was their response? Absurdity, the bizarre. I think lightness and darkness need to play together, and that is something that David Byrne brought to the table with the idea of framing the whole piece in a disco.

Arun Venugopal: Jose, I would love to hear-- Sorry. You were about to say something.

Jose Llana: Yes. I think part of the history that we're telling is the whole history, which is it was a seduction. In hindsight, it's easy to look back and say, "Oh, they were always terrible and the country always hated them." No, that's absolutely not true. They were elected in a landslide victory. Marcos came in with lots of talk of nationalism and Filipino pride. I consider my job every night as a seduction. It was basically me not only seducing Imelda, but seducing the country and getting them to fall in love with me, and then betraying them after that. I think you have to go through the whole journey to appreciate the end.

I think a lot of the times people, because of all the horrible things that that happened and what they did very explicitly, it's easy to look back and go, "Oh, we always knew they were evil,” and that's absolutely not the truth. The truth is, including my parents, that a lot of people voted for them in 1965 because they came in with a lot of great rallies and conversation about Filipino pride and taking their country back from the Americans and the Spanish and the Japanese. Like Annie-B said too, it's like the show has to be fun, and it has to be engaging, and it has to- -bring them in because there’s going to be some dark stuff happening, but you have to bring them in first. From my perspective as a character, I have to seduce them first.

Arun Venugopal: We've got some people weighing in. I'll read one of these messages from Erica in Brooklyn. I saw the show twice at the Public and I'm so thankful I get to see it again on Broadway next Thursday. That's the 17th, I guess, of this month. It's one of the most brilliant productions I've ever seen. I'll be the one with the curly blonde hair dancing my head off. Can't wait.

[laughter]

Arun Venugopal: That's great. This is kind of a wild experience, as in I’m like as an actor who's on stage surrounded by, I guess people coming from different backgrounds who may know something about history, maybe know it intimately, and then a lot of people who know nothing. You're very physically interacting with these audience members aren't you, Jose?

Jose Llana: Absolutely. My first entrance song, I'm literally on the floor with the audience interacting with them and putting my arm around their shoulders, and having them be part of the storytelling. It's thrilling and, it's a surprise and it's sometimes very intimidating for me because I have no idea what to expect. There's a level of improv happening with these audience members. Most of the time they're great. Sometimes it's not so great. [laughs]

Arun Venugopal: Tell me about those examples. What happens when it's not so great?

Jose Llana: I think the best part of interaction with an audience is to find someone who is a little docile and just lets themselves be there. The worst are like the people who want to ham it up on the camera and try to be part of the storytelling and then it never goes well after that, but they mean well, do you know what I mean? So you try to like, “Okay, okay,” and I try to nudge them out of camera focus and move on to the next person.

Arun Venugopal: Do they tend to be guys more often?

Jose Llana: No, actually, no, because I'm on a search for my wife in that song.

Arun Venugopal: Okay. That's good.

Jose Llana: It's pretty much I'm going through the audience looking for the perfect [unintelligible 00:11:50]. I'm looking until I find Imelda, so it’s all women that I'm going to.

Arun Venugopal: For those who've not been to the show, I guess, the people you're referring to, it's not simply that you're down on the floor interacting with these people, but that there is a camera, like a news camera if you will, who's capturing this and then those scenes are being projected onto these large screens-

Jose Llana: Everywhere, everywhere in the theater.

Arun Venugopal: -which is part of the narrative of the image [unintelligible 00:12:25] that's happening constantly in real-time.

Jose Llana: In real-time. What's great is that I've had so many friends see the show sitting in different perspectives either on the floor or in the gallery seats, or even in the rear mezzanine and the minute they realized-- at first they thought, “Oh, it's a pre-shot video.” Then the second they realized it was a live feed of what was actually happening on the floor, it was such a beautifully euphoric moment for them to go, “Oh my God, this is happening in real-time. Oh my God, this is--” and that's exciting to be able to-- and to make the people in the back of the theater feel like they’re as much a part of the action as the people on the floor. It's really cool.

Arun Venugopal: Annie, these elements, some of them are new. You've been with the show from the beginning, right? What has changed for those who are repeat attendees like Erica in Brooklyn who's been multiple times at the Public? Why are they coming back if clearly for something else? What has changed since the early days?

Annie-B Parson: One thing that changed was we have enlisted two of the producers, Jose Antonio Vargas and Clint Ramos gave us days of dramaturgy where they went song to song to song and told us the history and some personal histories also from Jose and some of the other cast members that go underneath each song. The soil of the piece definitely changed. The texture is more saturated. It's darker. It has more gravitas, I would say vis-à-vis the spacing because we are now in a larger space and we're encompassing a much larger audience. The spacing of where things are happening is so much more varied than it was at the Public but the songs are the same, and the dancers are primarily the same.

Jose Llana: Right. I think one of our lead producers, Diana DiMenna made a great analogy. She said the show was still the same fantastic racecar that it was 10 years ago. It's just the track is different that it's on right now. I think the relevance of the shows is obviously much stronger with a current Marcos back in power. One of the major shifts we do is before the last song, before one of the last songs in the show, there is a connection to where we are today that we didn't necessarily say outright 10 years ago, because 10 years ago, we were in the Obama administration and there was Aquino currently president of the Philippines. What a different world we live in today right now.

I think people-- I have had many friends who saw the show 10 years ago at the Public and who came back and they always bring that up. They're like, "Wow. I remember seeing it back then, but now, seeing it now in today's world and reading about Putin and reading about a third indictment,” you know?

Annie-B Parson: Yes. Unfortunately, it's pretty relevant.

Arun Venugopal: We're going to continue our conversation about Here Lies Love with Jose Llana, who plays Ferdinand Marcos and choreographer Annie-B Parson after a quick break. This is All Of It.

[music]

Arun Venugopal: This is All Of It. I'm Arun Venugopal sitting in for Alison Stewart. We're talking about the Broadway show Here Lies Love and let's hear a little music from the show. This is A Perfect Hand, and it's sung by Jose as Ferdinand Marcos.

[MUSIC – Ferdinand Marcos: A Perfect Hand]

Arun Venugopal: Jose, tell us what the song is about A Perfect Hand.

Jose Llana: Well, he's looking for his running mate. He's looking for someone who can-- Politics is politics and a young senator can't win the presidency without a beautiful woman on his arm. I think that was of its time and it's still probably true today. I think this entrance song for Marcos is him acknowledging that with the right running partner, the right woman, he can finally create the perfect ticket for him to get to the presidency.

Arun Venugopal: One of the great things about watching a show like this on the right day is seeing community show up and respond because they were definitely showing up and responding on the day I went. There were Filipino audience members to my left, to my right. It made the story that much more real and urgent. It wasn't just a story. It was real. I'm just curious, did you do outreach to Filipino communities?

Jose Llana: Absolutely. Actually, we have a woman in our producing team named Giselle Tongi. Her official title is Community Outreach or Filipino Outreach. I think because it's such a sensitive subject matter for many Filipinos, including my family, the ability to reach out to them and say, “Whatever you're hearing that we're doing and whatever the show's about,” which is a sensitive issue. A lot of people realize that no matter who's what side of politics you're on, martial law was a traumatic time for a lot of people.

I think Filipino-Americans in particular are the ones who moved here like my parents. You either did what my parents did, which was to embrace the past and talk about it so that we learn from it or many Filipinos decided to leave it behind and raise their kids and assimilate in America and be American, and let's not talk about it. Both are legitimate responses to trauma. I think what G has been doing and what we've been doing with the show is reaching out to the Filipino-American communities, particularly in the Tri-State area to say, “Come in an invitation from us and we want to hear what you think about what we're doing, and then you can go tell your friends and other Filipinos what we're doing and whether they want to come see it or not.”

To have that kind of connection with actual Filipinos seeing the piece has been really helpful for a lot of people to address that trauma

Arun Venugopal: Towards the end of the show, people around me and on the dance floor everywhere were holding up their hands shaping it as an L with their thumb and their forefinger. As I walked out, I'm like, "What's that all about?"

Jose Llana: That means Laban. It stands for L-A-B-A-N, which means to fight. It became a rallying cry for the People Power Revolution. It was usually done in rallies to show support and strength against the Marcoses, and usually for Corazon Aquino, for someone to take power back. It became a rallying cry, and with the signature color yellow, the yellow t-shirts were everywhere. I remember growing up and like I said, in the basement of my Springfield, Virginia home, my parents go out and buy yellow t-shirts for us to wear and to show support and Laban became the rallying cry.

Then in our show and in Annie-B's beautiful choreography, at the end of the song, one of the songs in the show, they put the Laban sign up with all their hands and it's so powerful to see the audience follow along.

Annie-B Parson: And the audience starts to too.

Jose Llana: Very powerful.

Arun Venugopal: Tell me more about that. That's such an interesting-- because it comes from the show and it gets embraced by people in the audience. As I said, if I hadn't had that interaction with someone as you were walking out, I just never would have known about this. Annie, if you could just talk about that.

Annie-B Parson: That really came from the dancers that at the end of a certain section, they raise their arm at the end and they made this L shape. I didn't know what it meant either. It looks powerful and an idea, but we just kept it and every night, the audience, you see a group of audience people responding in kind. It's really beautiful to see.

Jose Llana: It's really powerful. I don't know if you knew this, last week people started putting their hands up in Laban even during [unintelligible 00:20:49] at the end. It was really powerful.

Annie-B Parson: That's incredible.

Jose Llana: The next song after, the final song of the show.

Arun Venugopal: I think what is surprising or interesting is that this is not just something, a vestige from some earlier era. It seems to very much have a modern currency, this gesture, which is I guess why people were naturally putting up-- Is that something that you think is still very present to politics today of the Philippines?

Jose Llana: Absolutely, and obviously too, everyone's sensors are up, obviously, because Bongbong is back in power and I think--

Arun Venugopal: Tell me for people--

Jose Llana: So sorry, Bongbong Marcos is Imelda and Ferdinand's son, and he was elected president of the Philippines last year, and so he's going to be there for the next six years. For us to do our show now is very specific and there are a lot of people in the Philippines who have strong opinions about whether or not the story should be told. I think our goal, my goal as a Filipino-American, is to tell the story and have people have conversations because I think the most dangerous thing to do is to not talk about the past and to not bring up martial law.

The more we talk about it, the more people can get educated on what it really was, because there's a lot of false misinformation happening in the Philippines right now telling people that martial law was a glory time in the Philippines and it was not. It absolutely was not. I think social media has had a major hand in that. There's been a lot of people who only get their news from social media and I think there's been a lot of misinformation. To hear the words Laban come out now, and particularly of people in my parents age in their 70s who have distinct memory of being in those rallies, it's important to keep talking about it and to keep bringing it up.

Arun Venugopal: Annie, there's obviously only so many Imelda Marcoses out there to create something as both fun and as serious as a show like this. Do you have reason to believe that the industry is more open to reaching out beyond the normal boundaries of the Broadway storybook and draw in from around the world, whether it's the Philippines today or elsewhere because of how this has been received?

Annie-B Parson: People are really interested. I think also, they're really responding to the staging. We haven't mentioned that much of the audience is also seated so you can do either. People seem very excited about the staging, which is new to this jurisdiction of theater. Not downtown theater. They've been doing immersive theater for many decades. I think it's the first time that the level of ambition of breaking the proscenium is happened at this scale in this particular area of theater, physical area called Broadway.

People are responding to dancing, they're responding to their bodies being engaged. They're responding to playing a part in the piece, even though they didn't know they were cast as extras. When you watch it, everyone in the audience is behaving perfectly. They're members of the wedding, they're members of the protests, they witness an execution. They're part of a funeral and they do all this perfectly. When you're watching, you're like, "Wait, did they have 300 other people when they're casting this?" It's amazing.

Jose Llana: It's great.

Annie-B Parson: I think that also is catching on and we'll see a lot more of that. But yes, we're interested in democracy right now, so this is a really good story to be telling.

Arun Venugopal: I guess after a century or so of American exceptionalism having such a firm grip on the public imagination, people might be a little more receptive to these connections between the "Third world" and our own predicament.

Jose Llana: People ask constantly what research that I do to try to understand what it's like to play a dictator and a lot of my research was not researching Marcos. It's picking up the newspaper today and seeing how certain world leaders act today and it's the same script, it's the same playbook that they all use. Have people doubt journalism, put people away that question your authority, give an image whether false or true of strength and power and ignore truth. You know what I mean? I think the playbook is the same.

Annie-B Parson: It's all there.

Jose Llana: It's all there.

Annie-B Parson: I asked Conrad Ricamora what his model was for Aquino. I said, "Is it Bernie?" He said, "No, no, it's Elizabeth Warren."

Arun Venugopal: Wow. Why is that? What does that mean?

Annie-B Parson: Intellectual, understated, super, super serious.

Arun Venugopal: Interesting.

Jose Llana: Mines easier, mines Putin.

[laughter]

Arun Venugopal: I've been speaking to Jose Llana who plays Ferdinand Marcos in Here Lies Love as well as the choreographer, Annie B. Parson. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Jose Llana: Thank you.

Annie-B Parson: Thank you, Arun.

Arun Venugopal: That's All Of It. Join me tomorrow. We'll be talking about a new documentary from award-winning director, Stanley Nelson, it's called Sound of the Police and it examines a long painful history of Black Americans and law enforcement from slavery until today. Nelson and his co-director Valerie Scoon will join me in studio. See you next time.

 

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