A new staged reading coming to NACL (North American Cultural Laboratory) this weekend asks audiences to imagine a near future where Philippine mothers are recruited as soldiers in exchange for citizenship and safety for their families.
The work-in-progress, Line Up, by playwright Kenneth Keng, explores immigration, colonialism, empire and motherhood through a speculative lens that feels increasingly close to present-day reality.
Keng, who was born and raised in Manila, said the play grew out of years of thinking about overseas Filipino workers and the sacrifices many families endure in pursuit of economic survival.
“I thought a lot about overseas foreign workers,” Keng said. “Millions of families in the Philippines [are] having to be separated. Their mothers will go and be caretakers, will be nurses, and not see their children … for the chance that they can send money back.”
He called that separation “an ongoing tragedy” and said the play examines how wealthier nations exploit the desire parents have to protect and provide for their children.
“The idea of the promise of prosperity and how richer countries would exploit that otherwise very beautiful and pure maternal instinct,” he said.
The staged reading arrives at a moment when debates over migration, labor and global inequality continue to intensify. Keng said he has been startled by how quickly current events have begun to resemble what he originally imagined as exaggerated fiction.
“I am annoyed and horrified at how quickly events have caught up with what I thought were cartoonish exaggerations in the text when I originally wrote it just a couple of years ago,” he said.
Rather than simply sparking discussion, Keng hopes audiences leave thinking about collective action and solidarity.
“The need for organizing, the need for solidarity, the need for identifying who our actual enemies are,” he said, “and how to stand against and defend that which we all hold dear as human beings.”
Keng also describes his work as grappling with the tension of loving American culture while recognizing its relationship to empire and cultural dominance.
“I grew up loving American culture, American TV shows, theater,” he said. “I’m always grappling in my work [with] whether I am tailoring it more for American audiences or for Filipino audiences.”
The residency at NACL marks Keng’s first extended creative residency outside New York City. He said the slower pace of rural life in Highland Lake has changed the way he approaches the work.
“To be in a space with a commute that consists of walking across from the farmhouse to the theater,” he said, has allowed him “to do less, actually.”
Instead of filling every hour with rehearsals, Keng said collaborators encouraged him to leave room for reflection.
“What if we had less scheduled time in the theater and more time to just look out and do nothing,” he recalled being told, “to see how the work expands.”
Image: Kenneth Keng. (Mia Isabella Photography)