Gaven Trinidad

Filipinos love love.
Filipinos love beauty.
Filipinos love beauty pageants.
Former Beauty Queen Carmelita returns to Queens, New York, to start a new circuit of beauty pageants for the community in celebration of Filipino American Heritage Month. Her daughter, Jesca, is against the practice, and tries to stop them. As a way to prevent Jesca from doing so, Carmelita coerces her seven-year-old grandson Ernesto to participate, which then unearths troubling questions of race, identity, colorism, and the Global South’s obsession with the multi-billion dollar industry of skin whitening. We explore whether mercury makes the skin glow and what inner monsters we resurrect in the process. Part Filipino telenovela, part pageant, and part melodrama, the play hopes to get under the skin of all who interact with it.

Six-year-old Eddie and his Nanay ("mother") are determined to make the United States his family's new home after facing life-threatening danger back in the Philippines. Eddie and his imaginary friend create their own worlds in which Eddie can face the challenges of growing up in the United States as undocumented, an English language learner, and queer. A community leader narrates the 90 min play with new narrators at every performance. With imagination, heart, and with some audience participation, the play creates time and space for adults to remember what it is was like to be a child; and the play gives children a voice to be taken seriously by adults in these times of political tumult. The play is performed in English and Tagalog, with the preference of subtitles available in both languages. The play was honored as a finalist for the 2021 Bay Area Playwrights Festival Competition.

G is a non-believer turning 33. The age Jesus died. The age their uncle committed suicide. In search for more life, G suddenly finds themselves in the in-between, in a world neither for the living nor dead. G travels to across an imaginary Filipino countryside to a place where unbeknownst to them they’ll have to confront their deepest fears of life: will they ever find love? Accompanying them on this trip is their late grandfather, with whom they’ll meet monsters of Filipino folklore, a ferocious Tikbalang, their late uncle, and their lost aunt, a survivor of demonic possession and exorcisms. A ritual play, a community is asked to participate in singing and maybe some storytelling. They together ask if love does exist in a world of cruelty, and discover together the joys of life, the reasons why we fight to live, and gratitude to themselves and loved ones. Inspired by Dante's Inferno, family stories, and my bipolar disorder.

A sultry one night stand turns into a weekend romance that changes the course of two queer men's lives. In the face of death and loneliness, the unexpected lovers discover for themselves the quiet moments between them that affirm their existence in this world. The play's narrative is nonchronological and interspersed are original songs performed by the two lovers themselves. Part play, part concert, an unconventional love story.

It's the end of days and A and Z are sent on a mission by their cult leader to preach the teachings of the Enlightened Garden. Before they do so, they are tasked by their leader to complete several errands that test their loyalty to the cult. A little bit of Sarah Kane, a little bit of Waiting for Godot, a little bit of Salvador Dalí, and 100% Gaven Trinidad. A play to remind the playwright and his audience that there is hope in a world that may be so bleak.