by Nerve V. Macaspac and Lara Saguisag
“Here Lies Love in Critical Contexts: A Public Syllabus” is a compilation of readings and resources that help contextualize and complicate David Byrne and Fatboy Slim’s Here Lies Love, which was first staged at The Public in 2013 and premiered on Broadway in July 2023. Organized thematically, the resources turn up the volume on key points that are referenced—or elided—in the production. We place emphasis on Imelda Marcos’s active role in the dictatorship; the U.S. government’s support of the Marcoses and their regime; the transformative role of protest, including protest expressed through film, literature, songs, and the visual arts; and the vibrant people’s movements that brought an end to the dictatorship. This syllabus also pushes back against the circulating fantasies about the authoritarian rule of Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos in the Philippines. We hope the materials here will enable critical engagement with and disruptions of these fantasies.
Here Lies Love is hailed as groundbreaking for featuring Broadway’s first all-Filipino cast. While we recognize the contributions of Filipino and Filipino American artists on Broadway, our syllabus also invites careful consideration of Filipino presence and representation in the musical and, more broadly, in the performing arts. We do so by calling attention to the vital history of Filipino protest theater. We also juxtapose Here Lies Love with Miss Saigon to encourage critical reflections on how gendered, racialized, and colonial imaginaries as well as labor and power dynamics play out in musicals and other aesthetic forms.
We hope this syllabus brings to light the tensions that constitute and are generated by the Broadway production of Here Lies Love. In what ways can Filipino performers and producers recalibrate and remix a musical that is conceptualized, choreographed, and directed by White creators? What happens when a production that omits or liberally reinterprets facts about the conjugal dictatorship of Ferdinand and Imelda is supplemented by paratexts and community outreach efforts that seek to educate the public about Philippine history? How can projects that attempt to humanize Imelda account for how she shored up power through the dehumanization of tens of thousands of Filipinos? And what do we make of the responses and agencies of audience members, who come to the musical with varying degrees of knowledge about the Marcos regime? As we observed, some giddily danced as the actors playing the Marcoses sang. At the same time, others stood still and refused to sway along. Some cheered when the words “Marcos wins!” flashed on the theater’s walls; later, others joined the performers in raising their hands to make the “Laban!” sign. We offer this syllabus as a resource for making sense of and working through these tensions.
“Remember, it’s a party!” This is one of the “party rules” for Here Lies Love’s dance floor ticket holders. The musical encourages the audience to dance and to lose themselves in the glamor of a nightclub setting. There is no doubt that many are dazzled by its spectacular and innovative design. Yet even before the disco ball starts to turn, some are asking: How do we crash the parties of the powerful, the parties that come at the cost of people’s lives and freedoms? “Here Lies Love in Critical Contexts” is a practice of paying attention to every beat and every false note, of hearing through distractions and distortions of tyrants. We hope this public syllabus strengthens our capacity and resolve to never again dance with dictators.
