Finding A New Direction for PCN

So I watched parts of SPCN last night. Yeah, I was there, but I was in and out of the hall so much (to prepare for the fundraising stuff in the lobby) that I didn't really watch it. I saw up to Kali in the first act, and only saw tinikling in the second act. But while sitting in the lobby, I did get to meet a few people in the audience and their thoughts, and I had an opportunity to think about the direction of PCNs in general, what it says about the undergraduate perspective of their families and community, and what direction PCN needs to go.

If I'm counting right, this is the 8th PCN that I've been a participant, either as an audience member or cast member. So I've been acclimated to PCN culture for some time now, although by no means am I an expert. And when I refer to PCN's direction, I refer to script. Sure the dances may change, and even its interpretations and performances may change to better suit the theatre, but overall they tend to remain unchanged. So this is an analysis of the 8 PCN scripts that I've witnessed.

Although the scripts are all varied and were performed over a span of a decade (from my sister's first PCN in '94 to yesterday's UCLA SPCN in '04), they share similar attribute. With the exception of UCLA SPCN '02, all the scripts emphasized generational gap issues. I think the issue speaks to us really well, since college is often the first time we are "on out own", so the evolution of our relationship with our parents is on the forefront of almost every college student's mind, and thus the student writer's attempts to deal with those issues reflect in PCN.

On a related topic, a good half of those PCNs have made some attempt to tell the the story of our parents' generation. With the disconnect from our parents being an almost inherent part of college life, we have a greater need to connect with our parents' experiences. In some ways, adjusting to college life is an immigrant experience; we are transported into a completely different life from what we were used to, and have to cope with all the obstacles that come with a foreign environment. So college life, in many ways, is the first time where we get an inkling of what our parents went through. So based off of that experience, we attempt to re-articulate the audience's (i.e. the parent's) story back to them.

The other half of PCNs addressed historical and ancient cultural issues. Kinda like telling our parents story, only hundreds of years before. The PCNs I've seen have used Spanish colonization, the fields of California of the 1920s, Mindanao hundreds of years ago, and the 1906 St. Louis World's Fair as settings to educate audiences about the history of Pilipinos and the Philippines. These scripts speak to our need to learn our history (after all, if we were all well-versed in our history, we probably wouldn't be using historical settings for scripts).

As fun and educational as the past PCNs have been, one glaring weakness from all the PCNs I've seen, including yesterday's UCLA SPCN 2004, is that we have not had a script that has captured college student life really well. Beyond the "guy likes girl/girl likes guy" relationship, I've never really seen any PCN, or any cultural night for that matter, utilize the college experience as a setting for script well. When I mean "using a setting well", I'm referring to capturing the little nuances that make a setting come to life. In the case of using the UCLA setting, conversations on Bruin Walk, Samahang general meetings, SPEAR counseling sessions, festivals in P-Town, dinner in the dorms, and study groups would be examples of using the UCLA setting and letting it come to life. One of the reasons I think that students underutilize their college experience as a topic for script is that college students are so inundated with college life, that writing about the college experience seems ordinary.

At the same time, I think "the college experience" is the most relevant and most important story to tell the audience, since a majority of our audience is people are not in college (relatives, alumni, and the youth), and more than anything, they want to know what is going on in the lives of their loved ones. And it's the story that college students are most equipped to tell. And yet up to now, I've not seen one PCN that has done it well.

So my mission for the next few months: to pen the greatest culture night script ever. For those who know me, I'm usually show the humble, "I'll do my best", attitude, but when it comes to this, I really believe that I can, and will, write the best script any culture night has ever seen. So I've added something for my to-do list next year, which includes revising the Samahang Constitution, lighting a fire under the ass of the Pilipino Studies campaign, pushing the Samahang projects to reach new heights, and making Schwarzenegger fall to his knees, begging the students to give back money to the Universities. Yup, consider it all done.