Fil-Am actor Sara Porkalob headed to Broadway
Actor-playwright-singer Sara Porkalob. WEBSITE
Filipino American playwright, actor and singer Sara Porkalob will have her Broadway debut in September.
Porkalob, 32, will play the part of a Founding Father in the official revival of “1776,” about the declaration of U.S. independence, at the Roundabout Theater in New York.
The Bremerton, Washington native has been performing since she was five and has been on stages from Seattle to Boston.
While at Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle, she decided to be a professional storyteller about people who share her background, “which is largely brown, black, queer immigrants.”
Thus was born her one-woman “Dragon Trilogy,” a “matrilineal musical celebrating the three generations of my Filipino-American family,” she told KIRO7.
It starts with the “Dragon Lady,” about her “glamorous, mercurial, talented grandmother who was a cabaret singer in the Philippines, maybe even a gangster before she immigrated to be united states.”
“Dragon Mama,” the second in the cycle, “is a love letter to my mother and my other mother Tina. Two queer women who decided to break cycles of generational trauma, so they can raise me with all the hopes and passions that they had when they were my age.”
“Dragon Baby,” the third and final in the cycle, hasn’t been produced yet. “Dragon Lady” and “Dragon Mama” are on stage at Cafe Nordo in Pioneer Square until March 5.
Porkalob is a Filipina with a Hungarian last name, from her mother’s stepfather. “So, it’s a family name,” she told KIRO7. “Yes, Ma’am, “I’m going to tell them to remember it, because I’m about to be very, very famous.”
