Fil-Am actress Christine Corpuz takes on the Filipino nanay

NEW YORK – The Filipina Nanay. The character is now almost iconic in Filipino American pop culture. Images of Filipina mothers dot the landscape, from the controversial Black Eyed Peas video which raised the ire of Filipino American academics for its portrayal of the bossy immigrant matriarch, to the almost cloyingly endearing web satires about a stay-at-home mom produced by Internet star, Christine Gambito, in her YouTube blog, “Happy Slip." Often armed with a loud accent that turns every “f" to a “p" as in “friends" to “prends" and fantastic to “pantastic", these mother figures for many Filipino Americans are both difficult and comforting to behold. The former due to their grandiose exaggerations, and the latter because one finally sees a familiar figure expressed universally. In her one woman show entitled, “I am Nothing Like My Mother," Christine Corpuz, a young Filipina American actress and sometime playwright, explores the gray areas in this dichotomy, employing the Filipina Nanay – not only as a character with a funny accent – but as a bridge for other characters in her play to live out seeming contradictions in life. “I Am Nothing Like My Mother" is the first time the legendary Nuyorican Poets Café has ever fully produced and promoted a Filipino American solo artist. The Nuyorican is a 34-year-old art institution in Manhattan’s Lower East Side renowned for its commitment to innovative poetry, music, hip hop, video, visual arts, comedy and theatre by artists traditionally under-represented in the mainstream media and culture. The play is written and performed solely by Corpuz, a recent graduate of New York University’s Tisch Graduate Acting Program, and directed by Rome Neal, the Artistic Director of the Nuyorican Poets Café theatre program and an Audelco Award Winning/Lloyd Richard’s Director Award Recipient. Asked why the Nuyorican produced Corpuz’s work, Neal said, “As the Artistic Theatre Director of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, it is part of our mission to help develop new artists of color. In my early years as a young black man stepping into the arena of theatre as a playwright/actor, there was no one there to afford me with such an opportunity. So it felt like the right thing to do especially because Ms. Corpuz has tremendous talent as a writer/actress, and because she is a Filipino American." Frustrations and contradictions Being the only FilAm actress at her acting program during the three years she attended, Corpuz found it increasingly frustrating to find acting gigs, let alone lead roles for a woman who looked like her.“Whenever I would be called back for a part it was almost always to play a ‘hot Asian girl,’" said Corpuz, “I found it very limiting because there was nothing out there for me." Then one day, inspiration struck. Corpuz bored and frustrated with her lack of acting callbacks, was in her apartment dancing and suddenly she began to speak in a Filipino accent, channeling her Ilongga mother’s native inflection. She flailed around with the music speaking in her newly discovered character until she saw herself in the mirror. “At that moment, I was weirded out," said Corpuz, “I saw myself dancing this modern way and talking with a Filipino accent and it was so unattractive." She continued, musing, “I wondered why I felt that way and this idea kept turning in my head, this idea that we live and feel in such contradicting ways. I love my mom to death, so to feel weird when I saw myself in the mirror [talking like her] was something I had to explore." What resulted was “I am Nothing Like My Mother," a one-woman show where Corpuz, in a variety of vignettes in which she plays multiple personalities, delves into the may ways everyday people edit their lives. “I am guilty of it. I think we all are, “said Corpuz, “People act a certain way in public and another in private. It’s not being untruthful to ourselves. It’s more complicated than that. It’s more like hiding ourselves from the outside world, or because of the outside world." Life Giving Art “I Am Nothing Like My Mother" was first developed by Corpuz last summer as her first attempt as a playwright. She then shelved it for almost a year until a couple of months ago when auditions became less frequent. Instead of getting frustrated and angry with not being seen as a “mainstream" actress, Corpuz decided to remount her show instead of waiting for a role to be written for her. She pitched the play to several theater companies in New York until it was finally picked up by The Nuyorican Poets Café in November. In total, Corpuz plays 10 different characters in her play. She ranges from a 6-year-old girl named Chloe, who upon learning of her father’s infidelity wonders what is so wrong with loving everybody, to a 60-year-old black man named James, a homeless man Corpuz once encountered in the streets of New York City who gave her a lesson about the current world’s lack of human contact in the midst of MySpace, cell phones and texting. And then of course, there is her mother. As the play’s narrator and guide, Corpuz based this character on her real mom, Shirley, an accountant who immigrated from the Philippines in the 1970s and settled in California.“My mom is a total character by herself, “said Corpuz, “She has such joy and so fun-loving. She’s always been the life of the party." “So a lot of the play was influenced by own experience with my family and my upbringing in the United States with immigrant parents from the Philippines." Corpuz continued, “A lot of the play also deals with my life experience with loss and pain. I’ve been hurt a lot, in relationships that didn’t turn out as expected or losing people I love in my family." “And the one life lesson I learned [amidst all the pain and loss] is that we can’t censure ourselves for how we live."Christine Corpuz is now relishing this newfound sense of freedom, in her acting and in her own personal journey. As a daughter of an immigrant who might not look like everyone else, who might not look like mainstream America, Corpuz’s characters will ultimately look familiar to an audience who values that the heart cannot betray itself – even if it does speak with a Filipino accent. As she takes on the role of the Filipina Nanay, Corpuz in one scene intones, “After you see Christine in her show, come and look at my face …it’s the same." I Am Nothing Like My Mother runs at the Nuyorican Poets Café from Friday, December 21, 2007 thru January 13th, 2008. For more information go to http://www.nuyorican.org. - Philippine News