1. “Which Way to the Philippines?”

Abstract

This chapter examines dramatizations of U.S.–Philippine contact during the years leading up to, during, and immediately after the Spanish–American War. In the early years of the American empire, the Filipino/a performing body appears in piecemeal form on diverse U.S. stages, including the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair, as part of chautauqua circuits, and on theater venues in major American cities such as New York and Chicago. The chapter specifically turns to two of these sites, the Philippine Reservation at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair and the musical comedy Shoo-Fly Regiment by the African American creative team of Bob Cole, J. Rosamond, and James Weldon Johnson. It approaches these various performing stages as “contact zones,” as complex terrains of interaction among American patrons, Filipino/a performers, and the Philippines. Furthermore, the chapter also asks how this early contact is present in contemporary Filipino Americans' self-imagination.