“Hi. My name is Conrad A. Panganiban (tagalog pronounciation). But growing up in all my schools, I’ve always pronounced my last name as Pan-Gan-Eee-Ban (anglified version). And I don’t really think I began to pronounce it the correct way, Pah-nga-ni-bahn, until I consciously declared myself as a Filipino American Playwright. It’s like, by using the anglified version of my last name, it was like I was erasing the part of my culture just to make it easier for other people to understand me. When I started to explain who I am as a writer and what I write, it just made sense that I need to pronounce my last name as it is and should be.”
Fortunately, for my screenwriting class, we had an assignment of how to pitch yourself as a writer: Who are you? What do you write? Why do you write what you write? What have you written? What are you working on now? And for this assignment, I wrote:
===
When I was 8 or 9, my family was invited to a party by one of my dad’s Filipino military friends. And at this party, all the Filipinos stayed in the garage while all the Americans, that’s what my parents called caucasians, were inside. And that’s when I realized that I wasn’t as American as the ones on the inside. I felt like, The Other. That’s what I’d mark at the bottom of a form in school for my ethnicity under white, black, latino, and asian-american. I was the checkmark next to, “Other”. Even after finishing school, getting a corporate job, and joining a theatre company, that memory of being The Other was one of the reasons, I started writing plays–to tell the stories from both of my cultures–American and Filipino–for audiences to experience together in ONE room. From the beginning, I gravitated to writing family dramas with drops of comedy because of my love of movies like Parenthood or tv shows like Family Matters and Growing Pains. And recently, I’ve grown passionate about using my voice for social justice, like my coming-of-age-play called, WELGA, which was produced late last year by a High School in Sacramento, CA. It was about a mother and son who deal with gentrification, educational disparity, and labor rights. And I’m proud to say that it went on to win best male and female lead actor awards for the ones who played actual Filipino-American characters! So it felt like a natural leap, especially when there’s so much division in this country, to write for the screen for anyone who feels like The Other because #representationMatters.
===
That WAS my written pitch. But something happened when I began to pitch who I am as a writer into the Zoom cam to my instructor and fellow writers. I started with what I said at the top. And then I added my accomplishments and the logline for my TV Pilot, THE PASCUAL FAMILY DETECTIVES.
This spoken version just felt right and that’s what I’ve been using recently as a guest speaker for a playwriting class at SF State, a Fil-Am Educators of CA event, and at another event for the Oakland Asian Cultural Center. It’s been a blast to talk to these new friends and it was such an HONOR to even be asked to talk about the journey I’ve been on as a Filipino American Playwright.
The Anglified version of me was really concerned about getting produced and understood by theatre companies in order to be produced by THEM. But at what cost if I’m not writing about what makes me… me? And I think, because of these events and what I’ve written, and what I will write, I feel like I’m stepping into a new chapter, a new scene, a new version of who I am as a writer.
Let’s Go!