KATAUHAN AT PAMILYA:
HOW WE SEE OURSELVES

Staged Reading Festival
Potrero Stage
November 10 - 12, 2023

Presented as part of PlayGround’s 2023 Innovators Showcase, Katauhan at Pamilya was a staged reading series of three plays by Filipina/o/x American playwrights that explore the intricacies of identity and familial relationships through supernatural and spiritual connections.

Supported by CA$H Theatre, a grants program of Theatre Bay Area.

The Plays

Bloodletting by Boni B. Alvarez
Directed by Abigail Pañares

Under the watchful moon, estranged siblings Farrah and Bosley reunite in the Philippines to spread their father’s ashes in Palawan’s treasured underground river. They take shelter from a storm in a local café, where they open old family wounds and encounter an aswang, a Filipino witch, who awakens in Farrah an ancient, terrifying, and innate power. Will she embrace her new-found power? Or let it destroy herself and her brother?

Hail Mary/Maria by RJ Silva
Directed by Krystle Piamonte

Kid, short for Kindness, gets slapped with his first real crush. He relies on his three Marys for guidance: his Filipina mother Marie, the Blessed Virgin Mary, and his favorite pro wrestler Maria. And although he feels like he's blindly top-rope diving into love, will he be able to stand as a champion for himself? A coming-of-age story with the electricity of a live wrestling show, the comfort of your Filipino family, and the warmth of a budding romance, HAIL MARY/MARIA is a heartfelt adventure of finding and loving who you are.

Mama, I Wish I Were Silver by Amanda L. Andrei
Directed by Yari Cervas

On a cold January day in 2020, Sofia and Ariel, two estranged Filipina American half-sisters, reunite in Virginia to clean out the photographs, papers, and letters of their recently deceased mother. When they find a cassette tape seemingly recorded during martial law in the Philippines, when Ariel was born, they realize that what their mother left behind has a life of its own.