Making History

Anne Lamott reports that Flannery O’Connor is the genius who said, “Anyone who survived childhood has enough material to write for the rest of his or her life.” Maybe you’ve been wondering who said that; now you know. Maybe you’ve also been wondering whether some people have better material, inherently more worth telling than yours, and the answer is no, of course not, but also yes. Jason Magabo Perez’ story floors: In 1976, his mother and another recently immigrated Filipina nurse were convicted of poisoning 10 people in a veterans’ hospital in Ann Arbor. The prosecution had the help of one million FBI dollars and a witness for the prosecution who called the women “slant-eyed bitches.” The women later appealed, and were freed, but we couldn’t find where the FBI or anyone else had apologized to them. A staged reading of Perez’ new pop-cultural lecture, autobiographical play, and metahistory, The Passion of El Hulk Hogancito, is his first step toward publicly telling his tale. As horrifying, deeply American, kinda maybe David Lynch-meets-hip-hop narratives go, this one is a doozy. The evening also includes a monologue called Click, by Allan S. Manalo.
March 28-April 5, 2009