DUGO
August 26 & 27 8PM
The Magic Theatre • Saturday and Sunday August 26 & 27 @ 8PM
Introducing a project by Sean San Jose
In collaboration with Rachel Lastimosa, Patricia Barretto Ong and Joan Osato
Sponsored by SOMA Pilipinas Filipino Cultural Heritage District
A new performance piece walking through memory of a time before AIDS
Created by Sean San José with Rachel Lastimosa, Joan Osato, Christopher Sauceda & Tessa Nebrida
One weekend only at the Magic Theatre in the YPT space
What memories do we have of the times before AIDS?
What ghosts did AIDS leave behind? What are their whispers?
AIDS struck (and continues to strike) our City in devastating ways, many irreparable. It is a disease that hit our Queer, Black and Brown folx, poor folx at horrific, disproportionate numbers and echoes. We can not continue to bury, hide, or forget this time, period, and people. For a culture that generally is well versed in “working through” dramas and traumas (from colonialism onward), this is also a culture of storytellers carrying history, memory in deep detail, with the possibility to illuminate our path moving more fully forward.
We hope to gather, cull, and curate stories from the community that parallel our loss of culture, City, and sense of family, but also paint a picture of our world before AIDS. We hope the telling, recalling, recreation, reinterpretation, re-contextualizing, these memories and stories can help us more openly see ourselves as children who grew out of the epidemic and listen to stories that speak to the fears and feelings of living through a pandemic today.
Dugo is Tagalog for blood- and through the river of blood in these stories we will follow: AIDS blood, Filipino blood, family blood, shed blood, everlasting blood. This project is about remembering our past, and a time before lost culture, lost cities, lost family, lost loved ones. It is a chance for us as a community to assess the many losses over the past 30 years through the lens of Filipino families in this City and specifically, the SOMA Pilipinas neighborhood. Join us in ceremony and conversation and creation of an active testimonial and portal for remembering and reimagining times before the AIDS epidemic for Filipinx families in San Francisco.
This project is supported in part by the generous support of The Creative Work Fund
And through the Magic Theatre Residency Program
Tickets $20
Vaccination required for all in person events.