Robert (Bob) Francis Flor is having a busy year. We were just in touch with Flor regarding his radio play Mara Hukluban, and now Flor is back with another play for the stage, entitled Salamangka Returns, which will be presented in mid-May at Theatre Off Jackson.
Salamangka Returns follows the character of Genea as she trades classical guitar for the rhythms of her ancestors, seeking guidance from her father. “In this play, there are themes of cultural appropriation, personal ambition, and heritage in a world where characters have one foot in the past and another in the present,” Flor said. “My plays are fictional but inspired by a person or events.”
In our previous interview, Flor mentioned that Salamangka Returns was inspired by the popular 1970s band Tamaraw. “Tamaraw came on the Seattle scene in the early ‘70s,” Flor recounted. “I knew several of their members because they grew up in Seattle’s Central District, attending Garfield, Franklin, or O’Dea.”
Reminiscing with community members brought back memories for Flor. “I was speaking with Barbara Bergano following the Filipino National Historical Society meeting,” he remembered. “We talked informally about music and Tamaraw came up. She told me she was their manager.”
Flor noted that a band being managed by a woman, especially a minority woman, was unique in those days. “That was so cool, I thought,” he recalled. “Over lunch, she and Steve Aspiras, their sax player, told me additional stories about the band. I hadn’t realized the late Roy Flores helped them get started. They needed money for instruments, and he generously funded their start by co-signing a loan.”
But that didn’t mean they had it easy. “Minority bands like Tamaraw struggled to get gigs in those days,” Flor said. “It wasn’t that they weren’t talented or popular. It had to do with race and their following.”
Tamaraw was a diverse group, with some former members of the Filipino Youth Activities, a group started by Fred and Dorothy Cordova, though “the members weren’t all Filipinos,” Flor noted. “They included other Asian and white Americans from the CD and Rainier Valley.”
Flor appreciated that Tamaraw played contemporary dance music. “Very much Latino or Black-based like Oye Como Va, a Santana favorite, or Suavecito by Malo,” he said. “They even opened for Tower of Power once. They were soulful and were our hopes and dreams for inclusion.”
This love of the Seattle community forms the basis of much of Flor’s writing. “I hope to elevate interest and pride in these accomplishments through the play’s characters,” he said. “I also invest them with some element of Philippine folklore, myth, or culture.”
Flor worked on Salamangka Returns in progressive phases. “I spent weeks developing a first draft which Rain City Writers and Seattle Playwrights Circle read,” he said. “A few revisions later, I discovered the Bechdel Group call for submissions of plays about women but not about their romantic relationships.”
The Bechdel Group read a few scenes and offered feedback. “Based on their comments, I revised before discovering the Playwrights Center of San Francisco call for submissions,” Flor explained. “The play was selected and read by a cast from Seattle and the Bay Area. Revisions continued until I felt it was stage-ready.”
Then Flor applied to the Seattle Office of Arts and Culture for a grant for local artists to produce their work. “I was fortunate and thankful that they awarded Salamangka Returns funding,” he said. “This will be its premiere at Theater Off Jackson, which offers co-production opportunities.”
Staging this production has required Flor to navigate a complex set of relationships, including with director Manny Golez and stage manager Rachel Rene Araucto. “Theatre, film, and opera require collaboration between the writer, producer, director, cast, stage technicians, the theatre, and the audience,” Flor said. “Like a Rube Goldberg cartoon, anything can go wrong on the journey to implementation.”
With hope that the production of Salamangka Returns runs smoothly, Flor plans to move on to revising his play Pinoys Play Ball, as noted in our previous interview. Meanwhile, Flor’s Mara Hukluban series continues on two radio stations Bellevue College Radio, KBCS 91.3 FM, and Hollow Earth, KHUH 104.9 FM.
And Flor isn’t done with radio yet. He has two more radio plays in the editing phase: Reminisce, a teenage memoir, and The Eagle’s Curse, which he calls his “apology to birds.”
Salamangka Returns runs May 16 to 18 at Theatre Off Jackson, 409 Seventh Avenue South, Seattle.
