←Recommendations of Culture Night

I need to see this play fully produced. A perfect example of the super specific feeling totally universal.

As a mixed race Filipina-American, this play hit close to home for me. In the mixed race experience, there is often a fear: am I embodying my culture enough? Am I making my family enough? Hoe can I, as a single, American person, resist colonization? Andrei tackles these questions with empathy for every character and perspective. She wields the world of Filipino-Americans, diaspora, and coming of age in college with elegance, hilarity, dance, tattoo, and an ancient curse.

Culture Night is a gorgeous meditation on inheritance and the conduits among our identity, the performance of our identity, and our ancestors. One part classic romance, one part haunting, and one part traditional dance, Culture Night exhibits a sharp theatricality and a powerful invitation to any cultural night presenters out there to integrate Amanda's brilliant play with the traditional dance program.

A passionate, energetic, and imaginative play: "Culture Night" boldly depicts a range of experiences on what it means to be Filipinx and allows its characters to deepen into their own resolutions, as the magical realism in the piece also develops into a striking third act. Central to the story is the theme of credibility: how to enter and move through communities - and while all audiences will resonate with this conflict writ large, I appreciated the uncompromising specificity of experience with which the play is drawn. I highly recommend this play, which demands to be performed and experienced!

With thunder, steaminess, generational curses, dance numbers, magic, the Devil himself, and a group of tired college students, Culture Night defies the concept of a cultural monolith for Filipinx Americans. The characters rage and try their best to honor their lineages/histories while also planting their own roots for what their identity means to them. A play about a culture night that is a culture night in and of itself. A bop and a half!

Culture Night addresses what it means to be Filipinx-American, particularly in spaces in which one’s cultural identity is denied, overlooked, or diminished. While this topic is heavy, there is a certain joy present throughout the piece (which I really appreciated). Dance and music are such an integral part of this play and throughout, I found myself wanting to dance. I cannot wait to one day see this play performed.

This play is a delight to read and, I imagine, an absolute joy to see on stage! Suffused with magic, humor, and dance, this script is nevertheless rooted in important questions about who gets to celebrate a culture, in which ways, and for whom. Andrei has crafted a sprawling piece that is both a celebration and critique, written from a place of personal experience yet epic and relatable. Read this play… and then produce it!

CULTURE NIGHT is a stunning visual piece of theatre exploring the ways in which we often struggle to unpack the weight of our families, history, and culture in a society that incentivizes forgetting and often fetishizes/exorcizes remembrance. But the weight of this struggle is never overwhelming as Andrei expertly weaves in humor, heart, and sexual tension into every scene. This play balances truth and joy in ways not often seen on stage; it demands to be seen and heard.