By WALTER ANG
April 13, 2023 | USA.Inquirer.net
NEW YORK — Black Filipino American Roger Mason has won the 2023 Young-Howze Award for Mind-Blowing Stage Writing of the Year for the play "Lavender Men."
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| Roger Mason |
"It represents a two-decade journey to be seen and appreciated officially as a playwright," says Mason. "Because I am interdisciplinary, people struggled for many years in the early days of my career to label and categorize me. Embracing me as a writer is embracing the culmination of all the ways in which I comprehend the world through creative expression."
Described as a queer historical fantasia, Mason's play features the fabulous gender non-conformist Taffeta as a post-modern matchmaker who invades the private world of Abraham Lincoln and his queer legal assistant Elmer Ellsworth.
"Because of this award, I am healed. I have come full circle. I am grateful for the boost in confidence. The Young-Howze Award is giving me the momentum and the strength to trudge on in our challenging but fulfilling business."
The awards are given out by theater critics Ricky and Dana Young-Howze. "Lavender Men" was staged last year in Los Angeles by Playwrights' Arena and Skylight Theatre Company. Playwrights' Arena is led by Fil-Am artistic director and founder Jon Lawrence Rivera.
Self-description
Mason is a self-described "Black, Filipinx, plus-sized, gender non-conforming, queer artist of color" and uses they/them pronouns. Their playwriting has been seen on Broadway, Off and Off-Off-Broadway and regionally.
Mason's play "The Pink: An Initimacy Ritual" recently had a staged reading with Primary Stages and Breaking the Binary Theatre.
The play is described as a "hook up performed in real time between two queer people of color seeking true intimacy in the age of dating apps and digital sex." As these two humans, Mel and Herman, grasp for "the real" in the bedroom, their conversations, silences and moments of touch blur the lines between affection, sex and euphoric romance.
Waiting for a Wake
Mason's "Waiting for a Wake" will have a staged reading with Tony and Obie-award winning theater company Page 73 at Open Jar Studios on April 21. Dramaturgy is by Fil-Am Gaven Trinidad. The event is free and open to the public.
The play spends one day in the house of the Brickstones, a Black and Filipino family. Thirty-year-old Quentin dreams of escaping the nest through fashion design. Patriarch Ovid wants to write his memoirs and make all his family members his secretaries. Matriarch Divinia pines for peace in the house and often runs away to find it. Jason plays video games in his room when things don't go his way because it helps quell his rage.
Once a beacon of social mobility, the family is deferred from their American dreams by co-dependence, mental illness and mutual financial abuse. How will they survive their lives without destroying each other completely?
"Waiting for a Wake" was originally commissioned by Leviathan Lab, founded and led by Fil-Am artistic director Ariel Estrada.
Filipino heritage
"My Filipino heritage has influenced all of my writing, actually, not only in terms of character line up, but also tone, structure and aesthetic," Mason says.
Mason's first play involving Filipino characters was "The White Dress," which is "a genderqueer coming-of-age play inspired by the Stations of the Cross."
"Filipino immigrants play a huge role in my play `Hide and Hide,' a take on the term tago nang tago, which takes place in 1980 Los Angeles. It concerns the sham marriage between a Filipina undocumented immigrant and a gay Texan murder suspect trying to find asylum in the City of Angels."
As for "Waiting for a Wake," Mason says it is forging a space for the Black and Filipino nuclear family as the new protagonists of the American family drama genre. "It is essential for audiences to learn about the true diversity of the American experience. We are a melting pot."
"My plays, which investigate Filipino heritage and the immigration West, invite audiences to witness the vibrant humanity of people who travel from their homes for the social mobility and bounty that the world claims to offer while never losing sight of the land from which they came. We are always traversing between worlds trying to find peace and joy in the meantime."
"Waiting for a Wake" is on April 21 at Open Jar Studios, 1601 Broadway, New York. Visit https://ci.ovationtix.com/3082/production/1153874
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https://usa.inquirer.net/126821/fil-am-wins-young-howze-playwriting-of-the-year-award