I just wanted to thank everyone who has visited this website from the Philippines! Maraming Maraming Salamat! Thank you for taking the time for finding the home for my plays as I haven’t really advertised it, much less expected anyone to even search for plays written by an American born Filipino who happens to write plays! Please know that I’m grateful for the visit 🙂
Even though I started this website as a blog about my playwriting journey in earnest in 2007 with only 2 posts on another WordPress site. And for 14 and a half years since I began sporadically writing my highs and lows of being a playwright, it’s only been within the last 3-6 months that I’ve seen more people coming here… and mostly from THE PHILIPPINES!
And because I love more stats…
The main objective for this site: a way for my work to keep living. The unexpected turn was seeing a lot of emails coming to me asking permission to use my plays for school projects and almost all of these inquiries came from the Philippines! It’s been happening for maybe 6-9 months until I FINALLY asked… uh, how the heck did these students from halfway around the world even find me? And that’s what I asked one of the students who contacted me with an answer:
It was [name redacted], one of the tech crew, that found your play on Google. She said that she was just randomly screening for plays written by a Filipino and given that “Palengke” is a Filipino word, it popped on the search results. That’s how she found your play on your website. She then shared it with the class. As we did a cold reading of the play, our instructor liked it and approved our choice. After that, we drafted a letter asking for you approval. She sent to me your website in hopes of finding your contact information but all I found was your IG and twitter. Hence, I followed you on these social media accounts (please let me know if this is okay with you) because I couldn’t find your email. While browsing other websites, I came across newplayexchange.org that has your email. So, I sent the letter hoping that the email was still active, and if not, I was suppose to contact you through IG and twitter. We find it very important to communicate with the author before doing anything else, so we asked for your permission.
Undergraduate Student at the University of the Philippines Visayas Tacloban College
Another query I received was from a student from Bulacan State University in July 2020:
“Good day sir! May I ask for your permission to translate your play, “Thicker than Wine” in Tagalog. This is part of the requirement for our translation class in grad school.”
And since then, much to my surprise, I had more and more requests from students asking for permission to use my plays for translation projects to the one-acts that had been recorded and posted onto YouTube which I randomly found! (LOL!) to full-length productions on Zoom where I sat in on rehearsals at 3 in the morning, like Ang Palengke produced at the University of the Philippines Visayas Tacloban College in June 2022.
I’ll be setting up a page shortly dedicated to a listing of my plays with characters whom are specifically Filipino and plays related to Filipino/a/x American Issues and Themes just to make it easier to find in one place.
Your visits, even if only for school projects, mean a lot to me. I am humbled and grateful for your time spent here.