A good story takes us to a new place, works its magic and leaves us wanting more. Great stories entertain and bind us to the power and truth of the spoken word. Powerful stories reveal who we are and how we are connected to each other and to the world. All of this happens in Flip Out!, a unique and thought-provoking storytelling performance by three charismatic Pinays in their 60s who share the joys, sorrows and challenges of growing up Filipino in Hawaii.
Sandra Keonaonaokamaileopanaewa Claveria, Lorraine Godoy and Angie Libadisos act, sing, and dance their way through history, culture and community. They show us how the resilient human spirit can overcome broken dreams, survive tough times through hard work and achieve cherished goals. Their stories are simultaneously poignant and hilarious, outrageous and wise, authentic and surreal.
And, ohh! The places these stories take you—inside lola’s house; among neighborhoods in plantation communities; aboard the steamship President Cleveland, Honolulu-bound in 1952; amidst the action at Cebu Pool Hall on Hotel Street; to Hilo, Waimanalo, Kalihi, Oakland, Boston, and Switzerland. Flip Out! also takes you to where love, shame and pride are abundant.
The Flip Out! women begin their magic by transforming the familiar. Sandra Claveria grew up in Keaukaha, the youngest of six children of a Native Hawaiian mother and an immigrant Filipino father who arrived in 1926 to work at the Papa’aloa sugar plantation on the Big Island. She jokes that she was “so ashamed of being Hawaiian, I forgot I was Filipino.” Her sentiment is sad, yet common. How many in the world grow up being ashamed of their ethnic background, regardless of what and where they are?
Claveria’s comic timing, rascal personality, and loving “tita auntie” demeanor elicit the kind of uproarious laughter that starts deep in the belly. Asked what spurred her fairly recent journey to rediscover being Filipino, she recalls the day her son told her that he was curious about the town of Claveria in the Visayas. “After that, I had to go on the Internet to learn about it myself,” she laughs.
Another defining moment caused her to question her close relationship with her father. She was asked to speak to a group of caregivers, primarily Filipino women. After the talk, she asked herself, “Who am I really, in terms of my connection to my father?” The process of continued questioning resulted in Claveria doing oral histories on three of her father’s friends. The Hawaiian phrase, ho’ala hou, (to reawaken) has special meaning at this stage of her life, for she is “reawakening what has been dormant for many years.”
Lorraine Godoy, on the other hand, was keenly aware of her Filipino heritage. Raised primarily by a disciplinarian grandmother, Godoy dreamed of going away to the attend Northwestern University in Chicago to study journalism. But it was not be. Godoy’s ensuing adventures of survival involve Europe, children, a college degree, a career in insurance, and a return to Hilo to care for her ailing father. This fairy tale-like progression of events belie the rude awakenings in Godoy’s life, which she has transformed into insights.
Godoy notes that this performance is another step toward “connecting all the disparate elements” of her life and leaving some history for her children and grandchildren who have “little or no connection with being Filipino.” She considers the performance an exploration of “what it means to be a woman, a Filipino, a human being.”
The magic intensifies with the appearance of the energetic and wacky stage presence of Angie Libadisos. Born in Sampaloc, Manila, she arrived in Honolulu in 1952 as a child aboard the steamship President Cleveland. She quickly stepped into the role of class clown as a coping mechanism at Lanakila Elementary School to ward off her classmates’ teasing of the new immigrant kid in town.
Libadisos’ stomping grounds were the areas around Hotel Street, where her mother owned and operated Cebu Pool Hall. She learned to speak “proper” English from the Navy men of the Seventh Fleet, who poured into bustling downtown for rest and recreation. Her mother’s “dogged approach to surviving, to making things work with what little you have” is why performing these stories are important to Libadisos. She also learned street smarts from her mother, a professional gambler whose earnings purchased several businesses and homes.
A self-proclaimed “born again Filipina,” Libadisos is a delight and a sight to behold. She paints a colorful childhood redolent with the homemade Filipino desserts that she and her family would sell at chicken fights, canned food meals that she prepared when her parents were out working, and the savory, delicate parts of a freshly-butchered pig. A veteran stage and television actor (formerly Angie Baker) and musician, Libadisos shares the trials and tribulations of her outrageously vibrant life.
Joining in the musical renditions of Dahil Sa Yo and a Visayan folk song is Dina Kageler, a Caucasian woman who spent time in the Philippines as a teacher in the 1970s. She taught the the cast the Tagalog and Visayan song lyrics. The irony is not lost on the audience.
After the audience is bestowed with profound stories about inter-generational social values, the clash of local versus immigrant culture, the pursuit of the American dream, father and daughter relationships, the grit to overcome barriers, the steel will to survive and succeed—after all that—the audience is left still wanting more. The producer of the show, Akiko Masuda, originally envisioned a one-woman comedy show performed by Libadisos. But the vision evolved and kept evolving. Masuda’s efforts culminated last month, when Flip Out! opened to a variety of enthusiastic audiences and packed venues on the Big Island. Masuda is planning to take the show on the road statewide.
Of the significance of these stories, Kageler concludes, “Stories are the way we all learn, the way we hold on to what’s important to us.” And hold on we must—to the memories of our ancestors, to our own dreams, to our children’s hopes.
What does it mean to be Filipino? What does the future hold? Go attend a Flip Out! performance and listen for the answers. Listen for the power and truth in their stories. Listen for how you are connected to each other and to the world. You will find it there in the Flip Out! stories because it is your story, it is mine. It is the story of all humanity.
- EVENT: Flip Out! Storytelling Performance
- DATE: Sunday, October 25, 209
- TIME: 1:00 pm and 4:00 pm
- PLACE:Kawananakoa Backstage Theatre, 49 Funchal Street (located on the corner of Pauoa Road & Funchal in Nuuanu) at Kawananakoa Intermediate School
- COST: $12 (For tickets, call 988-2215 or email msakiko@hawaii.rr.com)
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