Lea Salonga breaks new ground in Broadway musical ‘Here Lies Love’

Editor’s Note: This feature is part of CNN Style’s series Hyphenated, which explores the complex issue of identity among minorities in the United States.

(CNN) — The first time I saw the Filipino actor and singer Lea Salonga on stage was in 1999, when she reprised her role as Kim, the Vietnamese lead character in “Miss Saigon,” at New York City’s Broadway Theatre. It had been a decade since Salonga debuted at the show’s premiere run in London, and some eight years since her performance in the Broadway version earned her the 1991 Tony for Best Leading Actress in a Musical — the first time an Asian woman had won at the awards for an acting role. At the time, Salonga was one of the few Filipinos in mainstream pop culture that I, a then-teenage Filipino-American born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, had to look up to.

I recently had the opportunity to see Salonga again at the very same venue — in “Here Lies Love,” a musical about the life of Imelda Marcos, former first lady of the Philippines and wife of authoritarian dictator President Ferdinand Marcos. After more than 20 years in power, the Marcoses were forced out of the country in 1986 amid the People Power revolution.

Salonga plays Aurora Aquino, the mother of Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino, a Filipino senator and opposition leader who was assassinated — at the former Manila International Airport which now bears his name — upon returning to the Philippines in 1983 after a three-year-long self-imposed exile in the United States. His widow, Corazon Aquino, would go on to become president of the Philippines in 1986 after the Marcoses fled. (Ninoy and Corazon’s son, Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III, also served as the country’s president in the 2010s.)

“You may feel like nobody sees you…” the actor Conrad Ricamora, who plays Ninoy Aquino, sings in the musical. It’s a line that resonates: Filipino-Americans make up the third-largest Asian population in the United States, yet for decades we remained virtually invisible; Filipino restaurants, celebrities and stories remained largely absent from the mainstream. “Here Lies Love” arrives onto Broadway, though, at a moment of greatly increased visibility, representation and empowered Filipino identity. With an all-Filipino cast and over 30 producers of Filipino descent, it’s a groundbreaking Broadway milestone.

“I remember when I first moved to New York, it wasn’t like this,” said Salonga. “Now it’s like, ‘Oh, if I have a hankering for sisig (a Filipino pork dish seasoned with calamansi, onions and chili peppers), I know exactly where to go.’ I don’t think I would have been able to say that 20 years ago.”

“Seeing all of this happening here in the United States as far as Filipino representation, it’s hopefully going to pave a way for even more — for everybody else too, not just for us,” she continued.

‘We are just so good at assimilating’

Notably, Salonga’s turn as Aurora Aquino also marks the first time she’s played a Filipino person on stage.

“I played Vietnamese in ‘Miss Saigon,’ Chinese in ‘Flower Drum Song,’ French twice in ‘Les Mis,’ Japanese-American in ‘Allegiance,’” she told CNN. “The only times I’ve ever played Filipino in mass media were on film… to be on Broadway, though, and playing someone that was Filipino, an actual human being that existed? I’m like, ‘Oh, finally. Finally, in my long career, I get to do this.’”

“We are just so good at assimilating,” Salonga said when asked why she felt Filipinos in the United States had been overlooked for so long. “Maybe it’s a holdover of colonial rule and a survival mechanism: ‘Assimilate, so that you don’t get in trouble…’ Perhaps assimilation has been one of our people’s modes of defense and survival, but these days standing out is not a bad thing.”

Even on that night in 1991 when Salonga won her groundbreaking Tony, the occasion went by without much fanfare. “Here’s the thing that a lot of people don’t know,” she corrected me when I asked her about being the first Asian woman to win a Tony. “I’m not.” That honor belongs to the Korean-American costume designer Willa Kim, who first won Best Costume Design in 1981 for “Sophisticated Ladies” — and took home a Tony again the same year as Salonga for “The Will Rogers Follies.” “I don’t recall anybody making a huge deal out of it,” Salonga said. “If that happened today, it would have been huge. Somebody ought to give her her flowers, if they haven’t yet, because she was a pioneer.”

“Here Lies Love” is an immersive experience that invites show-goers to the dancefloor, literally, imbuing the proceedings with a fun, nightclub-meets-karaoke vibe. For some, the production glazes over the atrocities committed by the Marcos regime — even before its debut, the show received so much criticism alleging it glorified the Marcos reign that producers released a statement clarifying their intent: “‘Here Lies Love’ is an Anti-Marcos show. It is a pro-Filipino show, being told in a quintessential American form: the Broadway musical.” At the end of her turn as Aquino’s mother, Salonga defiantly holds up the L symbol — for “Laban,” the Tagalog term for “a fight” and a popular gesture during the People Power Revolution.

As a young performer, Salonga had sung for the Marcoses several times during state dinners at the presidential palace in Manila. Imelda Marcos was “always glamorous. Very tall. Always beautiful,” Salonga said. “And all the events always started late. That’s what I remember.”

When the Marcoses fled to Hawaii in 1986, having been granted asylum by the United States, Salonga was celebrating her 15th birthday in Manila. “I lived a very sheltered existence,” she recalled. “I was a very obedient young person. So the effects of martial law were pretty much kept from me. Or kept from a lot of other people because there wasn’t a free press in the Philippines. I don’t think any of those atrocities — unless you knew how to get that kind of information — were coming to light.”

As a further example, Salonga brought up the experience of Jose Llana, the actor who plays Ferdinand Marcos in “Here Lies Love.” “Both of his parents were student activists,” she explained. “For the sake of him and his sister, his parents decided, ‘We’ve got to get out of here.’ And so they did, and he was brought up in Virginia. There are so many stories like that — and many other stories that aren’t.”

“The one reaction I seem to be witnessing more and more from (show-goers) is ‘OK, I saw this show. I need to find out more.’ I mean, this happened with my own kid,” she said, noting that her 17-year-old daughter went straight to a Google search after seeing a performance.

“There’s so much information that has to be compacted and presented,” she continued. “And we’re looking at a trajectory spanning many, many years. As far as glossing over that, if that is the opinion of someone who watched the show, I’m not going to tell them how to feel or how not to feel.”

‘At times uncomfortable to watch’

The trajectory Salonga mentions is not over: Another Marcos is currently in power in the Philippines — Ferdinand “Bongbong” Romualdez Marcos Jr., son of Ferdinand and Imelda. The show addresses his presidency at its conclusion as DJ/emcee Moses Villarama tells the audience, “Democracy around the world is under threat.”

The show’s myriad Filipino producers, who include Salonga, Apl.de.Ap of the Black Eyed Peas, singer H.E.R., comedian Jo Koy and journalist Jose Antonio Vargas, made sure that nothing was missed, including the fact that a Filipino invented karaoke. (Its creators, David Byrne — who in 2010 released an album of the same name — and DJ Fatboy Slim, are both White British men.) “We did a pretty good job of keeping the story focused and honest and truthful, and at times uncomfortable to watch,” Salonga said, referring to moments like when the audience is forced to dance with ensemble cast members wearing giant masks of former world leaders including Moammar Gadhafi, Fidel Castro and Ronald Reagan, among others, in a Studio 54-style disco number. The context, just in case you’re wondering: Imelda Marcos socialized with Castro and Gadhafi while her husband was in power, much to the dismay of the United States.

When I first saw Salonga play Kim in “Miss Saigon,” I didn’t question the casting. I was proud to see someone Filipino — like me — on stage. Watching “Here Lies Love” over two decades later, the emotion returned, packing an even stronger punch. The world is now a different place, and as much as the musical is a bold step forward in its representation of Filipino talent and storytelling, it is also a sign of the potential still untapped.

“Hopefully it will lead to many more colorful stories like this about different parts of the world… and for people to really occupy space — to be who they are,” said Salonga. “It’s an incredible feeling to be able to do this.”

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