From Delano to the Brava Theater | The Journey of Larry the Musical and ITs Next Chapter

Written by Jennifer Redondo

It’s been a couple of months since Larry the Musical debuted in San Francisco, California and if you were fortunate to be able to get tickets and watch this live performance at the Brava Theater (we were, thankfully!), you know what a powerful testament this production was to the legacy of the labor movement and how it’s become a touchstone to FilAm History. 

Larry the Musical is a story told through song about the life and legacy of the Filipino American labor leader, Larry Itliong. Itliong was an organizer and civil rights activist who played a critical role in fighting for equal pay and dignified living conditions for farm workers during the farm worker movement, which included the Delano Grape Strike and the creation of the United Farm Workers union from the 1930s-1977. It’s based on the book, Journey for Justice: The Life of Larry Itliong by Stockton natives, Gayle Romasanta and late Filipino American historian Dr. Dawn Mabalon. Romasanta is also one of the Executive Producers, along with Bryan Pangilinan. They both took some time to sit with us during the well-deserved break after Larry the Musical wrapped. Read on to learn more about them and what’s next for Larry the Musical. 

1. Tell us about yourselves, Gayle and Bryan. 

Bryan: I’ve always identified as an artist, vocalist and performer. I’m a composer and community builder. I’ve been working with non-profit development for over 25 years. I’m passionate about using philanthropy and community resources. I’m very passionate about using the arts to create change and impact social justice. 

I was born in Manila, and I migrated to the United States when I was 3 years old. I grew up in Paradise Hills which is in southeast San Diego, California. Starting at the age of 10, I studied Filipino folk dance and music under Professor Bayani Mendoza de Leon. I learned flute, banduria, octavena, guitar and various indigenous instruments. That put me down a path of Filipino folk dance and performing for over 40 years. 

I went to UC San Diego (UCSD) and got my degree in Ethnic Studies. I started the first Pilipino Cultural Night (PCN) in 1992 at UCSD, and it’s still thriving today! Creating Larry is a throughline of that experience. It’s been amazing to be able to integrate ethnic studies and arts to create something that inspires change in the Filipino community. 

I moved to San Francisco 25 years ago to do work with HIV/AIDS organizations. I got my first job working at the Asian Pacific Islander Wellness Center as a grant writer, and have been doing philanthropy and fund development ever since. I now work with Gayle as the Director of Fund Development at the Filipino-American Development Foundation. We are artistic partners and also partners in community building. Larry is a product of that.   

Gayle: Bryan and I met in 2005 when he was Managing Director of Bindlestiff Studio. I was the Artistic Director. Bindlestiff is the only Filipino-American theater space in the United States in SOMA Pilipinas Filipino Cultural Heritage District in San Francisco. We were creating and barely making rent, like true starving artists. It was punk rock, and the city wanted to kick us out. We had a campaign to stop the eviction. We demanded that they create a theater for us. We created a 501c3 for Bindlestiff. I wrote the original mission statement, and Bryan got the first major grant for the building. We have been in these art spaces and fighting for our art for a long time! 

I started performing in elementary school, starting with the violin. I continued to play violin even throughout college. I’ve been doing theater since high school. I was a Theater major at Cal State Long Beach. They wanted me to try out for South Pacific during that time, and there was no way I was going to get that role. I wasn’t going to fight for that role either, the only role available to me - an Asian sex worker with a heart of gold. I left the theater program and stuck to being a Creative Writing major. I’ve written commercially and academically and artistically for over 30 years now. Our entire Larry team – we all have been training and performing since we were children. 

I attended law school but dropped out. I was also touring as a violinist at the same time. It didn’t make sense for me to finish law school. I got a scholarship to get a writing MFA from California College of the Arts. I co-composed the first Google Philippines campaign, in which they let me put my name on it. I wrote a musical called Love in the Time of Breast Cancer. I published my children’s book, Beautiful Eyes,  and then co-wrote Journey for Justice: The Life of Larry Itliong with Dr. Dawn Mabalon. I did a lot of writing, publishing and editing. All of these experiences brought us to where we are now. It makes sense now that we did Larry. We had to go through this in order to get here. 

I am currently the Executive Director of the Filipino American Development Foundation. We manage one of the largest Filipino-American non-profits in the United States. The amount of assets, direct services, and fiscal sponsors that we support for our community is inspiring. We are the fiscal sponsor for Ruby Ibarra’s scholarship Pinays Rising, Pinayista, SOMA Pilipinas, Pinay/Pinoy Educational Partnerships and so many more. From an organizing perspective, Bryan and I understand what that heartbreak is like – working in the community. 

Bryan: We wanted to write a love letter to the Filipino-American community and community organizing. We are artists and community organizers. We are able to amplify and uplift and honor the contributions of community and organizers, through music. It’s resonating with a lot of folks. It’s the story of Larry and the manongs and manangs, which is a reflection of us. It’s all the hardwork and sacrifice. 

Gayle: We mirrored the history of our community. “Solidarity Forever” is a song about our leadership who are getting torn apart because of the different issues. It’s really hard to be an organizer. You will get thrown under the bus before you get flowers, if you even get flowers at all.   

2. How did you come up with the idea of Larry? Why did you do it? 

Gayle: In 2018, Journey for Justice came out. I was doing a book tour throughout the United States and I saw Bryan in the west coast premiere of Allegiance. Most of the actors in Allegiance were Filipino and they did an amazing job. We talked about it with our friend Melvin Badiola who was the Director of Education at Brava Theater. He encouraged us to push forward with Larry.  

Bryan: That year, we met at a bar and Gayle handed me her book. I read through it and every page and experience got me inspired. I already imagined a song with each page that I read. I wanted to make a musical. In 2020, we started working on it but then COVID happened. 

Gayle: We continued throughout COVID. We always wanted to collaborate and this is it! 

Bryan: When we first started in 2018, we were working on Larry via Zoom. It gave me an outlet while we were on lockdown. I put music to the lyrics that Gayle wrote. I didn’t think it was going to be big. My goal was to do a Zoom performance of the songs during COVID. I thought 20 people would join in, and I would have been happy with that. We got our first grant from the San Francisco Arts Commission to do the Zoom performance. It definitely exceeded our expectations! 

Gayle: Even with the book, Dawn and I didn’t think we would launch beyond Delano or San Francisco. Maybe Seattle. After Dawn died, I toured the United States. I didn’t have any dreams that Broadway Barkada would become attached to this project.    

We wrote 3 songs on GarageBand, and we ended up sharing it with Kevin Nadal. In 2020, Kevin Nadal adopted a baby girl, who he named after Dawn. We had just written the song, “Follow the Ancestors” and I thought about Dawn. Kevin asked, “What are you doing with this? This needs to be on Broadway!”. Kevin asked if we had more songs, and one of his good friends, who happened to be Filipino, was working on Broadway in Hamilton. No one was working during COVID so Kevin was confident that he could get Broadway folks to read Larry. Billy Bustamante who was the Assistant Director on Here Lies Love wanted to direct Larry. From there we had a meeting with Broadway Barkada and we didn’t even have a script. Bryan brought on the Sotelo family, Sean Kana, and I brought on Kevin Camia. It started growing bigger! 

Many of our characters had to play multiple roles. We were still planning to do this on Zoom, but we brought it to the next level which we did a beautiful video behind the scenes with Workshop 1. We had over 8,000 views in 24 hours. Then we did Workshop 2 where we brought drones in. We performed Larry under a COVID-safe audience in Delano for the kids whose parents worked the fields. It was really beautiful, and it’s a testament to our team that has a great vision and talent that took storytelling to another level. There’s no way that we couldn’t go bigger! That was the trajectory for where we are now. 

Filipinos are super skilled. We are smart. But we never get the title or financial backing. We never get to be in charge, even though we have the experience and skills. We never had the opportunity to do these things. We never had titles like Producer or Director – we had to give it to ourselves. After all these years, even though we have the skills, we were still not seen. We have never had a chance to be the leaders in the mainstream. You put us in a room together, and we are a group that’s on steroids! 

Bryan: This is an amazing and unique opportunity for all of us from production to actors. None of the actors have played a Filipino character ever. This was the first time that they got to play Filipino roles. This pushed us all artistically and creatively. We were passionate about honoring our ancestors. So we went all the way up! 

Gayle: To be seen is amazing. This project allowed us to be seen. It felt good to be seen and respected to be the qualified experts that we are. 

3. What is the biggest obstacle in creating Larry?  

Gayle: Trauma. Our grief and the community's grief and holding it for so long. In the beginning, we felt that people didn’t believe in this project. Thank goodness we had a lot of real champions like Mona Lisa Yuchengo, Dr. Allyson Tintinago-Cubales and Dr. Kevin Nadal who spread it to their networks. Fundraising was challenging on top of actively managing everything for Larry – executive producing and writing! Imagine if we had the time to just be artists, and not have to worry about anything else?

4. What is your long term vision for Larry? What’s next? 

Bryan: We will be working on a concept album! We are aiming to have it ready before the holidays. 

Gayle: We are recording in the fall, and there will be some surprises from the cast! Stay tuned! Simultaneously, we are doing another fundraiser effort trying to figure out where we head to next. Where shall we show Larry next? We don’t have anything concrete yet, but we would like to show it again in 2025. We edit all the time, so it may be a little different from what has already been performed. So you have to go see it again! 

5. Throughout this process, what is one of the biggest lessons you’ve learned? 

Gayle: History repeats itself! If you need to figure out what to do, or if you want to know what will happen if you take a leadership position, watch Larry! When I was at Long Beach State, I started Kappa Psi Epsilon which was then later established at UCLA, CSU Sacramento, SFSU, UC Davis. I was 19 years old when I started it, and I didn’t know what a true leader was yet. Then I saw what it meant to lead - even during difficult times. Shortly after starting Kappa, I had my apartment broken into by a Filipino fraternity. They broke into my apartment wearing camouflage and took pictures of us sorority members scared and screaming inside. We had no idea who they were. It was sick and it was violent. I will never forget that lesson and the resilience it taught me. Those same men are in our community today, possibly still harboring those same violent and distrustful feelings about women in power and in control of their leadership and stories. 

When our leaders go out, speak, and want to create change in a culture that doesn’t always welcome change, sometimes our people go back to our colonized past. Filipino culture is very matriarchal but it also has toxic masculinity embedded into it. If you want to be a leader in our community, especially if you are a woman and/or queer, You have to make a choice: Do I do it anyways? Do I put myself in harm's way? Do I put myself out there? Do I continue putting out this work that people want to tear down? We have a crab mentality in our community. Our community feeds off dragging each other down. Larry is a blueprint on how leaders get dragged, and if you make that choice, know that it will happen –  but you do it because you know at the core, our people want change and it’s only possible when they find out their own history. 

Bryan: Surrounding myself with collaborators who I trust with my life. It’s important to surround yourself with people that have your back and support you. You can’t do it alone. I know now what boundaries are and when to ask for help. That’s hard especially when I thought I had to do it all. I also learned that a Pinay and a gay man can tell a story of the manongs, which are predominantly males, in a way that resonated with folks. We can do it! When the odds are against us, we can make this dream come true. 

There was a time when we were going to quit because we didn’t have the cash flow to pay our actors and stage crew’s salaries. This is a union show so we had to make the decision to keep going. We made this dream come true on faith! We really believed in this, our work, the writing, the story, and ourselves – we took that risk that paid off. 

Gayle: We had to have so much faith in our people to come see it so we could pay off multiple loans. The silver lining is that there are amazing and joyous moments and kapwa in our community. Our people came through. We had to keep going and continue to be around people that supported us. I am grateful for Bryan and our team that trusted each other and we were able to do this together.      

6. What did your parents say when you wanted to go into the arts? 

Bryan: My mom is a musician and was a choir director at our church. She says, “Bryan got it from me!”. My dad has passed, but he was proud of me. When I pursued the arts, they were both supportive even though my dad said that musicians don’t make any money! He got to see the first two workshops, and I know that he was proud of me. My mom is so proud, she went to 10 shows!  

Gayle: I told them when I was dropping out of law school. At that time they had gone to every show I had ever performed in. My mom said, “Daddy, did you hear that?” He said, “I was wondering when this was going to happen!” They already knew law school wasn’t for me. I am grateful they’ve supported me all these years. 

7. What advice would you give to others who want to pursue a career in the arts or activism? 

Gayle: You have to pick the right partner! It’s paramount! You have to find a partner who is willing to be part of this world and support you. Anyone can do this when you’re young and just starting out. As you get older, you have to find a partner that will not stop you from doing this work. I couldn’t have done this without my partner who helps me take care of our four kids. He cooked, cleaned, took our kids to practice and games. There’s no way I could have done this for five years if I didn’t have child care. I even left for four months to work on Larry. I had to commute back and forth from Stockton to San Francisco. I was away for writing retreats and rehearsing. Your partner will make or break you. You have to have a partner who sees the importance of this work and doesn’t downplay your contribution. When you’re trying to do work, you cannot do it if you don’t have what it takes and if you don’t have a partner that helps propel you and allow you to bloom. 

Bryan: Surround yourself with people that love and support you. Shout out to my husband, Bob. He ended up working with us on the production team. He’s not an artist, and this is his first theater credit. It has strengthened our marriage because he now understands what it takes, the hard work and the sacrifice. Shout out to Gayle’s hubby, Francis as well! Gayle is my partner, my work partner! I am so grateful to have an amazing and supportive team. Gayle has helped me not to be afraid to dream big! My advice is to go for it! 

Gayle: Have the foresight to know that you can do it. It can happen!  Your partners and the people who are your artistic soulmates will help you. Soulmates don’t have to be romantic. There’s love on so many levels, and we would be so much more fulfilled if more people understood this. We were all meant to align and work together, in a way that was meant for us. 

8. What does it mean to be Filipino-American? 

Bryan: The commitment to serving and uplifting the community. I have always valued this from my parents, and it’s something that I continue to center myself on. It fulfills me. Service is what makes me uniquely Filipino.  

Gayle: We believe in kapwa, but we also have a very western way of communication that is very different from those who are born and raised in the Philippines. Being Filipino-American is having a very western way of communicating, but with the memories, dreams and the language of the Philippines. It’s beautiful that you can maintain pre-colonial kapwa, you don’t separate your identity from your community or family. At the same time, you have a western perspective that has been influenced by American pop culture and politics. 

9. What keeps you both going? 

Bryan:  In this process, the music kept me going. The work! Any time we were working under stress, I always went back to the music. That kept me going, and that’s what made it worth it. It kept me moving forward. 

Gayle: I do it for our people - and my family. There’s so much joy and hope  that keeps me going and I truly love my work. 

10. Where can people find you? 

You can find us on Instagram @larrythemusical and our website. Please follow us and stay tuned for what’s coming next. We hope to bring Larry the Musical to a city near you!   

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Written by Jennifer Redondo

Co-Founder and Co-Author of In Her Purpose

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