The monologue and what they wore

Five women in all black outfits, mostly in the same shape save for Bituin Escalante, all the same age bracket save for Jay Valencia-Glorioso, enter the stage and sit on bar stools. The central figure talks of age as Gingy (played by Glorioso) -- the one monologue that’s a thread through the others, the one whose life of dresses is intertwined with memories of family and marriage and children, found and lost loves. The four other women take on roles that are familiar though definitely not about everyone in Third World Philippines. Love, Loss, and What I Wore (written by Nora Ephron and Delia Ephron, directed by Michael Williams and Cathy Azanza-Dy) is after all about womanhood in America – let that be clear. And as with Vagina Monologues (by Eve Ensler) which claimed universality via the, uh, vagina in the beginning, at some point it is the differences among women that monologues like these make more glaring, race and class serving as stark and painful reminders of a failure at sisterhood. This is not a digression, as it is a matter of fact: the women here are not the same as us, nor can these experiences be ours in terms of context, especially given fashion (and our lack of it). Which is not to say either that Love, Loss, and What I Wore ceases to be a fun experience for a Pinay in poor Pinas. In fact, once you get over the fact of its strangeness (descriptions of clothes that we do not know of in this country), it becomes a reminiscence of sorts for you, who lives as a middle class Filipino girl and must know how high heels feel, how those nice leather boots are but a dream, how the bra is the enemy, as are the darn purses you cannot seem to afford. These female voices work for you because you know all of these to be true, even as you are in this context.

That holds true even for monologues like “The Gang Sweater" (Escalante) or “Brides" (Cathy Azanza-Dy and Teresa Herrera) that can only happen in America. It holds true for Gingy’s Story, the clothes for which became less and less familiar as she aged. In these stories among many others that involve a shrink here, an ultra-conservative mother there, the material ends up banking on an audience’s capacity at empathy, a woman’s ability at wondering: what if that were me? Yet that question seems too simple for the more powerful and heavier monologues here. “Boots" about the rape of a college student who always wore mini skirts and boots, “The Bathrobe" about the loss of a mother and the entry of a new one, the girl whose stepmother gave away her favorite dress, the point in “Gingy’s Story" where she speaks of losing a child, the breast cancer survivor who wants a tattoo where her nipples should be, are surprisingly poignant moments in a play that promises the ditzy-ness of fashion talk, the superficiality of women talking about what to wear. In the hands of this cast of actresses, these stories are told with an intensity that flows from that stage to us up in the balcony. This has plenty to do with direction and the decision to keep it simple. In fact the rendering of Gingy’s history of clothes seemed unnecessary, especially since for the rest of the women the monologues spoke for themselves. Especially since the most that’s expected for monologues aren’t props as it is the lack of it, and how a cast of women can rise to the occasion and become these characters, changing as they do in quick succession. And here this cast succeeds at forcing the audience to contend with the multiplicity of voices that come from just one actress. Save for the Gingy monologue that’s left to Glorioso who played it to a tee, each of these women were able to take one woman’s story and make it distinctly different from the rest of the others they were telling. Azanza-Dy moved from little girl to sarcastic woman choosing between wearing heels and the act of thinking; Menchu Lauchengo-Yulo’s breast cancer survivor monologue kicks pity out the door even as what was beneath the humor and strength was the fact of loneliness with ailment that is ultimately only about oneself and one’s body. Escalante as the lone morena and real-bodied woman could not but shine on this stage especially in her Latina monologue, even more so when she began her tirade against the purse. But it might be Herrera who is a revelation here, shifting in character by changing postures on that stool, moving from the girl in boots to one-half of the lesbian couple with ease, it was difficult not to be taken on that ride, too. Now tie this cast together into the company monologues, the ones that subsist on perfect timing necessarily borne of an intimacy with each other, and you can only imagine the wonder of having all of them talk about their first bras and the new black, their mothers, their lovers, everything in between. That one moment when the whole company stood up and did Madonna’s Vogue was a fantastic moment that seemed to me like something the show should’ve ended with, though it was no surprise that it would be Gingy who would begin and end this story, and tie it neatly together. At least about as neatly as our purses are messy, about as organized as our closets, about as decisive as we can be about choosing what to wear in the morning. Because as with Vagina Monologues there is no end to this conversation that Love, Loss, and What I Wore begins, and maybe there lies its possibility at being powerful. Its themes of desire and love, togetherness and sadness, mothers and daughters, friendship and sisterhood, force you to contend with the memories that clothes carry, even the ones that are painful, even more so the ones you’d rather not talk about. And where the monologue ends is where your own conversation begins, yes with your clothes, but maybe even better, with letting them go. Memories and all. - YA, GMA News