Can you return to a home you never knew?

Three generations of Filipina women hop across an ocean and time, memory and dreams.

Set in Canada and the Philippines, playing with English, Tagalog, Hiligaynon, and Kinaray-a, Homecoming’s magic reaches into the afterlife to explore cultural identity, familial duty, and the effects of migration.

Homecoming was produced by Urban Ink in May 2024. It premiered at The Cultch in Vancouver, BC and toured to The Evergreen Arts Centre in Coquitam, BC.

This production included an art installation called “lagi akong uuwi” (translation: i will always come home) curated by anata.laylay, and featured work from 3 Filipinx artists: Angela Asuncion, Amelia Earhart, and Melissa Barayang. For the cast and community, it also included 3 ancestral healing and connection workshops and 2 Fiestas/Feasts, organized and facilitated by Babette Santos of Kathara Society Pilipino Indigenous Arts Collective.

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Direction: Hazel Venzon
Starring: Rhea Casido, Lissa Neptuno, Carmela Sison, Aura Carcueva
Standby/Understudy: Lisa Goebel
Set Design: David Oro
Light Design: Jonathan Kim
Sound Design: SKRSINTL
Costume Design: Stephanie Kong
Assistant Set and Props Design: Noreen Sajolan
Dramaturgy: Joanna Garfinkel
Associate Director: Sarah Roa

Production Manager/Technical Director: Alistair Wallace
Stage Manager: Melanie Thompson
Assistant Stage Manager: Jennifer Wilson
Community Engagement Lead: Babette Santos
Fight Coordinators: Nathania Bernabe & Jackie T. Hanlin

What becomes of our cultural stories and wisdoms when the elders who hold them are still too haunted by colonization to share them?

An outstretched hand, a dark fairytale, a ritual, and a romp. Engkanto tells of a daughter whose elderly father is haunted by malevolent human-like spirits of the Philippines, and whose long-lost sister is trapped in another realm. Together, a family sprawled across time, continents, and the supernatural collides with the everlasting effects of colonization, the inevitability of death, and the oscillating turnover of legacy.

Pulling from Filipino folklore, first-person accounts, and true family histories, Engkanto is my attempt, my offering of a new hybrid folktale for the Filipinx-Canadian diaspora as an epic for the stage.