HERE LIES LOVE!

Yes, Lee has seen this show twice on Broadway but he wanted to share the experience with us, so we went to see a new "re-visioned" version in LA at the Mark Taber theater.

Rather than retell the story, I have posted here the timeline we saw outside the theater of the US involvement in the Phillipines over history.

Here Lies Love is a musical about former First Lady of the Philippines Imelda Marcos and her family’s rise to power and subsequent fall at the hands of the Philippine People Power Revolution. It is the first production since its Broadway run in 2023, in a city that is home to the largest Filipino population outside of the Philippines itself.

[Note: I edited this down from the detailed history & info I found on-line]. It is an experiential musical that examines how power, spectacle, and myth shaped the rise of Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos and how those myths persist. Imelda’s family’s rise to power and subsequent fall at the hands of the Philippine People Power Revolution is key to this production. You are positioned as a TV studio audience for a Filipino variety show to mirror how authoritarian power seduces, distracts, and ultimately attempts to normalize itself through by seeking to control the narrative you see and experience.

In February 1986 (40th Anniversary), millions of Filipinos gathered in a 4-day nonviolent uprisings to challenge the rule of President Ferdinand Marcos. The People Power Revolution culminated in Marcos’s exile to Hawaii and the inauguration of Corazon “Cory” Aquino as Philippines’ 11th and Asia’s first female president, restoring democratic governance and inaugurating the Philippines’ Fifth Republic. The uprising emerged from the long shadow of Martial Law, declared in 1972, during which civil liberties were suspended, opposition leaders imprisoned, independent media silenced, and thousands subjected to torture, enforced disappearance, and extrajudicial killings. Economic collapse, entrenched corruption, and escalating political violence deepened public discontent throughout the early 1980s. The 1983 assassination of opposition leader Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Jr. galvanized resistance both within the Philippines and among Filipinos abroad. When Marcos called a snap presidential election in February 1986, public outrage reached a breaking point.

This production different from Broadway, featuring an all-Filipino cast is serves as a catalyst for dialogue about historical accountability, intergenerational memory, and the ongoing afterlives of authoritarian rule. As People Power turns forty, its legacy reminds us that democratic gains are neither permanent nor inevitable, and that remembrance must be paired with vigilance, truth-telling, and collective action. Los Angeles and California are home to the largest and most politically engaged Filipino diasporas in the world. The theater hosts Filipino community nights, community conversations, talk backs, and events throughout the run of the engagement to further dialogue.

Many Filipino immigrants first began to settle closer to Little Tokyo, in a community dubbed “Little Manila,” from the 1920s to 1940s. In 2002 historic Filipinotown became an officially recognized Los Angeles neighborhood and home to a rich cultural community that speaks to Filipino American’s past, present, and future in Los Angeles.Weiterlesen