by AMY BARRATT

There's a stage with a runway and a tinselly silver backdrop. Down the hall in a dressing room, attractive young ladies are experimenting with lip gloss and munching small squares of milk chocolate. I seem to have stumbled upon a typical Filipino beauty pageant, one of those overwrought affairs one sometimes comes across on cable TV. All the trappings are here, but this obscure St-Laurent location is actually preparing to house the play Miss Orient(ed), a "gentle satire" of the Filipino beauty pageant phenomenon.

One of said attractive young ladies is actress and co-playwright Nadine Villasin. By the time you read this, the play will already have opened (on International Women's Day, March 8, appropriately enough), but when I talked to Villasin, there were still a few days to go.

Originally produced in Toronto in 2003, Miss Orient(ed) is being produced here by our own Teesri Duniya Theatre in the space above Segal's grocery store that has been used intermittently by theatre companies (infinitheatre, Fringe) since the mid-'90s. Apart from Villasin, the cast and crew are all locals.

Neither Villasin nor Elizabeth Lofranco, another actress who sits in on the interview, have ever actually been in a beauty contest, but both say that, growing up Filipino-Canadian, the pressure was there.

"Pageants are huge in the Filipino community," says Villasin. "We'd like to blame it on the Americans imposing their pop culture on us, but it goes back further than that, to the time of the Spanish occupation. You won't find a Filipino community in North America that doesn't have their own beauty pageant."

Through the beauty pageant, Miss Orient(ed) explores racism, both external and internalized (yes, one of the contestants is a bottle blonde). The cast features three contestants, each of whom represents a different Filipino-Canadian experience. There's one who was born here, one newly arrived and one who came to Canada quite young. A fourth character, played by Cecile Cristobal, a real-life former beauty queen, is called the Beauty Icon. The reigning Miss Pearl of the Orient, she also hosts the pageant, and, according to Villasin, "subverts it a bit." A fifth actress, Carolyn-Fe Trinidad, gets to play an array of stage moms. Nearly all of the action takes place right there on the pageant stage.

Actors have one major thing in common with beauty contestants: constantly being evaluated on their appearance. Villasin and Lofranco talk about getting sent to audition for generically Asian roles. And if they are sent to audition for a specifically Filipino character, they know she's going to be either a nanny or a nurse. "Though it used to be prostitutes," Villasin says, "so nanny is definitely a step up." She has survived by keeping a sense of humour about it all, and by not waiting around for someone else to offer work. In addition to acting, Villasin runs Carlos Bulosan Theatre in Toronto, a community-based professional company for Filipino-Canadian artists to tell their own stories. "It's my part in the battle for representation."

Montreal's Teesri Duniya, founded over 20 years ago as a forum for South Asian artists, has expanded its mandate in recent years to include stories from diverse cultural communities. Miss Orient(ed) is part of an initiative to network with artists and companies in other parts of Canada. The company has worked hard to transform the nondescript retail space into a glittering pageant hall, where the audience will be seated at cabaret tables under strings of fairy lights.

Miss Orient(ed) runs until March 27, 8 P.M.,
(3997 St-Laurent). $12–$15, 848-0238

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