Linda Faigao-Hall
Exploring the intersection of Filipino mythology and Western contemporary life
Photo by: Natasha Marco
Linda Faigao-Hall was born in Cebu City, Philippines, and holds a graduate degree in English literature and educational theater from New York University and Bretton College, Wakefield, England.
In her plays, Faigao-Hall weaves Filipino mythology and folklore into contemporary life to achieve the stylistic effects of magical realism and to offer an alternative worldview that values dreams, myths, and the occult. However, her plays are not limited to themes of ethnicity, encompassing a wide range of sociocultural experiences and reflecting the complexity of life in contemporary America. They explore the subjects of American imperialism, third-world poverty, hate crimes, sexism, and domestic abuse… Her characters defy easy categorization, transcending the stereotypes of helpless Asian women….
Storhoff, Gary. “Linda Faigao-Hall.” Asian American Playwrights: A Bio-Bibliographical Sourcebook
Productions & Readings
Faigao-Hall’s plays have been read and produced at various theatres both in the East and West coasts and abroad. They include:
Dance Me! A new play about Filipino ballroom dancing will be produced in the fall of 2019 by Out of the Box Theatrics, NYC
The Female Heart Produced by Diverse City Theater Company (DCT), Samuel Beckett, Theater Row, 42nd St; Harold Clurman, Theater Row, 42nd St; UP Playwrights’ Theatre, Dilliman, Philippines
The A – Word produced by DCT, Samuel Beckett, Theater Row, 42nd Street
Woman From the Other Side of the World, produced by Ma-Yi Theater, New York, NY; East West Players Inc. Los Angeles, CA; Asian-American Repertory Theater, San Diego, CA; InterAct Theater, Sacramento, CA; Al-Khobar, Saudi-Arabia
God, Sex and Blue Water produced by Living Image Arts (LIA), Lion Theater, Theater Row, 42nd St
Sparrow, produced by LIA, Lion Theater, Theater Row, 42nd St
Interview, produced by Find Your Voice, Inc. (FYV), Clark Studio Theater, Lincoln Center Plaza
Duet, produced by FYV Inc., Clark Studio Theater, Lincoln Center Plaza
State Without Grace, produced by Pan Asian Repertory Theater, New York, NY; Asian-American Theater Company, San Francisco, CA
Walking Iron (National Endowment of the Arts award), read at Working Theater, New York, NY; Ensemble Studio Theater, New York, NY
Lay of the Land, read at Ensemble Studio Theater, New York, NY
Unpublished Manuscripts
Requiem Ms. 345. Roberta Uno Asian Women Playwrights Scripts Collection 1924-1992, Special Collections and Archives, W.E.B. Du Bois Library, U of Massachusetts, Amherst, 1986.
Americans Ms. 345. Roberta Uno Asian Women Playwrights Scripts Collection 1924-1992, Special Collections and Archives, W.E.B. Du Bois Library, U of Massachusetts, Amherst, 1987.
Men Come and Go Ms. 345. Roberta Uno Asian Women Playwrights Scripts Collection 1924-1992, Special Collections and Archives, W.E.B. Du Bois Library, U of Massachusetts, Amherst, 1987.
Sparrow 1990
And the Pursuit of Happiness 1991
Burning Out 1991
Manila Drive 1992
Pidgin' Hole 1996
He & She 1998
Salad Days 1999
The 7th of October 1999
Education
B.A. English Literature
Silliman University, Philippines
M.A. in English Literature
New York University
Word on the Street
“At a time when faux zombies and dull vampires swirl around us incessantly, it’s a pleasure to be haunted by the real ghosts that Linda Faigao-Hall evokes to guide us through the debris and basora of our borderland planet, her real dreams of flesh and glory and sorrow. Pay attention to this playwright’s words crackling with the desire for redemption, her words that dare not lie about who we are and where we might be heading if we only found the courage to listen to each other.”
“Linda Faigao-Hall has fashioned a thoroughly involving serio-comic tale of an expatriate Filipina attempting to live the yuppie good life in Manhattan.”
“UPT’s staging of The Female Heart (which was originally written for American viewers) allows us to see ourselves in/from the “in-between” imagination of a Filipino-American artist, whose wistful and dualistic nostalgia is comparatively instructive of our cultural difference, even as it coincides—and, of necessity, doesn’t or cannot ever coincide—with our own fraught and helplessly complex realities.”
“Faigao-Hall never shies away from the difficult moral questions her topic raises, which ultimately is the true strength of the play.””
“Linda Faigao-Hall’s well-written new play at East West Players hauntingly affirms the power of a rediscovered heritage to restore the extraordinary to mundane existence.”
“Ms. Hall has written an amazingly complex play, succeeding in twenty three minutes, what other playwrights can’t accomplish in two and a half hours. There is a sense of resolution of one of life’s most difficult choices that leaves the audience sad yet satisfied.”
“Linda Kalayaan Faigao’s ‘State Without Grace,’ a new play at the Pan Asian Repertory Theater, is a multigenerational study of a family in disharmony. The setting is a city in the Philippines, but the situation transcends geographical and ethnic boundaries. Both the play and the playwright are marked by their potential.”
Published Works
Savage Stage
Buy the book here
Nine plays make up this collection of dramatic works developed and premiered by the Obie Award winning Ma-Yi Theater Company in New York. Through its plays, the company brings to the table of Asian American discourse an alternative view of the savage.
Consider the tropes of danger and deceit found in: Han Ong's Middle Finger; Linda Faigao-Hall's Woman From The Other Side of the World; Sung Rno's wAve; and Qui Nguyen's Trial By Water. Examine the exotic as weaponry in: Kia Cothron, Jorge Ignacio Cortinas, Ong and Rno's Savage Acts; Ralph Pena's Flipzoids; and Chris Millado's PerigriNasyon. Rethink debates on cosmopolitanisms and nationalisms through Lonnie Carter's The Romance of Magno Rubio, and Pena and Rno's Project:Balangiga.
The book is accompanied by an introduction tracing the history of the company and four other critical essays. Editor Joi Barrios-Leblanc argues that it is by creating a 'theater of disturbance,' employing elements of the 'savage' as weapons of dissent, and performing that which is empowering, that Ma-Yi Theater Company redefines the 'savage stage' of Asian American theater.
The Best Ten-Minute Plays (2 Actors) 2008
Buy the book here
Antwan Ward (left) and Melanie Nicholls-King (right) in Linda Faigao-Hall's THE A WORD (photo credit: Carlo Damocles) Cover Photo
The Female Heart and Other Plays
Buy the book here
The Female Heart and Other Plays collects for the first time a range of work by pioneering Filipino-American dramatist Linda Faigao-Hall. The plays in this volume are funny, sexy, tragic and resonant as they deal with identity, longing and transculturation.
“Faigao works within the solid tradition of the emigré artist who comes from elsewhere, who is in the United States but not always of it. Which makes her an acute and imaginative chronicler of what ensues when the past that is never quite the past and the utilitarian present come up, like geological plates, against each other, upending smooth narrative arcs. This threat of perpetual derailment, much as the monsoon or fierce tropical heat in the Philippines, is a constant element in the lives Faigao-Hall cares very much about, particularly those of women of color….”
LUIS H. FRANCIA, Preface
“Despite having had long and interesting career, Linda Faigao-Hall has not yet, to my mind, been properly acknowledged as a truly individual and exceptional writer. My only thought about why this might be, other than the obvious vagaries of chance, is that Linda’s work somehow reminds me of no one else’s — which, of course, makes it difficult to classify and for others hard to accept. As you see with the plays in this volume, they are each quite different, and alone or together, they represent a distinctive mélange that you’ll see nowhere else. That said, the most characteristic thing about Linda’s plays are their excellence: searingly vivid characterizations, muscular writing with (as it were) a sting in its tail, and a way of weaving stories that draw us closer to the people in them…”
IAN MORGAN, Afterword
About Dying in Boulder
New American Drama Examines Aging and Dying
DYING IN BOULDER
Performances begin February 28
La MaMa in association with Out of the Box Theatrics presents the World Premiere of DYING IN BOULDER by Linda Faigao-Hall, directed by Ian Morgan (Associate Artistic Director of The New Group). Previews begin February 28 at The Downstairs at La MaMa with opening night slated for March 3.
In a quest for a “good death,” a dying Caucasian-American Buddhist in Boulder, Colorado enlists her reluctant mixed-Filipino family in micromanaging her impending funeral rites. DYING IN BOULDER is a comic but moving exploration of American cultural confusion around aging and dying – and our inability to control either.
This play is dedicated to Bataan Go Faigao (12/1/1945 - 9/23/2012)
DYING IN BOULDER stars Obie Award winner Jan Leslie Harding (Mac Wellman’s Sincerity Forever), Fenton Li, Bernadette Quigley (Mr. Robot,) Michael Rabe, and Mallory Ann Wu with a production team that includes Raven Ong (costumes), Yu-Hsuan Chen (set), Fabian Obispo (sound), Jen Hill (lighting) and Frank Hartley (stage manager).
Photo by: Billy Bustamente
Linda Faigao-Hall (playwright) Productions: The Female Heart (Diverse City Theater Company & Ensemble Studio Theater), Theater Row, NYC; The A – Word (DCT, Theater Row, NYC), Woman From the Other Side of the World, (Ma-Yi Theater, NYC), East West Players Inc. Los Angeles, CA; Asian-American Repertory Theater, San Diego, CA; InterAct Theater, Sacramento, CA); God, Sex and Blue Water (Living Image Arts, Theater Row, NYC); Sparrow (LIA, Theater Row, NYC), State Without Grace, (Pan Asian Repertory Theater, NYC; Asian-American Theater Company, San Francisco, CA); Publications/Anthologies: The Female Heart and other Plays by Linda Faigao-Hall, No Passport Press, New York, NY; The Best Ten-Minute Plays of 2008, Smith & Kraus; The Savage Stage - The Best Plays of Ma-Yi, New York, NY.
Ian Morgan (director) is Associate Artistic Director of The New Group. In addition to overseeing the company's mainstage season, he created and runs the NewGroup/NewWorks play development program and education programs for all ages, including the Scene 1 program for teens. He has developed many plays for the company, produced and directed in the New Group (Naked) second stage series, and directed the Drama Desk Award-nominated premiere of The Accomplices. Also as a director, he has mounted new work in New York at 59E59, Soho Playhouse, Stella Adler Studios, Abrons Art Center, HERE, and Theatre Row, where he premiered Linda Faigao-Hall's play Sparrow. He has workshopped new plays at places such as the O’Neill Theatre Center, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Cape Cod Theatre Project, Barrow Group, Jewish Play Project, and the Magic Theatre. Playwrights he's collaborated with include Ghazi Albuliwi, Christina Masciotti, Brett Neveu, Scott Organ, Mishael Shulman and Zohar Tirosh-Polk, and international writers like Jelena Kajgo and Matei Visniec.
Out of the Box Theatrics was founded in 2015 by Elizabeth Flemming with a mission to encourage artists and audiences to view theatre from a new angle (“outside the box”). Past productions include site-specific revivals of Athol Fugard's Master Harold... and the Boys (starring Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt's Doug Plaut), Bill Manhoff's The Owl and the Pussycat, and Jason Robert Brown's Songs for a New World.
La MaMa is dedicated to the artist and all aspects of the theatre. The organization has a worldwide reputation for producing daring performance works that defy form and transcend barriers of ethnic and cultural identity. Founded in 1961 by award-winning theatre pioneer Ellen Stewart, La MaMa has presented more than 5,000 productions by 150,000 artists from more than 70 nations. A recipient of more than 30 Obie Awards and dozens of Drama Desk, Bessie, and Villager Awards, La MaMa has helped launch the careers of countless artists, many of whom have made important contributions to American and international arts milieus. La MaMa’s 56th season highlights artists of different generations, gender identities, and cultural backgrounds, who question social mores and confront stereotypes, corruption, bigotry, racism, and xenophobia in their work. Our stages embrace diversity in every form and present artists that persevere with bold self-expression despite social, economic, and political struggle and the 56th season reflects the urgency of reaffirming human interconnectedness.
DYING IN BOULDER runs February 28 – March 17, Thursday - Saturday at 8pm and Sunday at 5pm. Running time is 90 minutes. The Downstairs at La MaMa is located at 66 East 4th Street, between Second Avenue and Bowery – closest train is the F at Second Avenue. Tickets are $30 general admission or $25 for students and seniors + $1 facility fee. La MaMa also has a 10 for $10 ticketing initiative with ten $10 tickets available for every performance (advance purchase only).
Tickets may be purchased at the door one hour prior to curtain. To purchase tickets, call 212-352-3101 or visit www.lamama.org.
Contact
Email Linda Faigao Hall at:
kalayaan48@gmail.com
Literary Representative:
Ms. Elaine Devlin, c/o Plus Entertainment, 20 West 23rd Street, 3rd Floor, NYC, NY, 10010
Tel: 212.842.9030
