Mercury Makes the Skin Glow

by Gaven Trinidad

Filipinos love love.
Filipinos love beauty.
Filipinos love beauty pageants.
Former Beauty Queen Carmelita returns to Queens, New York, to start a new circuit of beauty pageants for the community in celebration of Filipino American Heritage Month. Her daughter, Jesca, is against the practice, and tries to stop them. As a way to prevent Jesca from doing so, Carmelita coerces her seven-year-old grandson Ernesto to...

Filipinos love love.
Filipinos love beauty.
Filipinos love beauty pageants.
Former Beauty Queen Carmelita returns to Queens, New York, to start a new circuit of beauty pageants for the community in celebration of Filipino American Heritage Month. Her daughter, Jesca, is against the practice, and tries to stop them. As a way to prevent Jesca from doing so, Carmelita coerces her seven-year-old grandson Ernesto to participate, which then unearths troubling questions of race, identity, colorism, and the Global South’s obsession with the multi-billion dollar industry of skin whitening. We explore whether mercury makes the skin glow and what inner monsters we resurrect in the process. Part Filipino telenovela, part pageant, and part melodrama, the play hopes to get under the skin of all who interact with it.

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Mercury Makes the Skin Glow

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  • Playwrights Foundation: Mercury Makes the Skin Glow by Gaven Trinidad
    “

    The Playwrights Foundation literary council readers advanced Mercury Makes the Skin Glow as a finalist for the 47th Bay Area Playwrights Festival.

    This script is a satircal and disturbing epic on colorism, community, and diaspora. Readers were struck by the ambitious scope of this play and the cultural specificity of this script’s cutting voice.

    We hope this play is considered for further development and investigation, and finds dedicated collaborators in its journey towards production.

    The Playwrights Foundation literary council readers advanced Mercury Makes the Skin Glow as a finalist for the 47th Bay Area Playwrights Festival.

    This script is a satircal and disturbing epic on colorism, community, and diaspora. Readers were struck by the ambitious scope of this play and the cultural specificity of this script’s cutting voice.

    We hope this play is considered for further development and investigation, and finds dedicated collaborators in its journey towards production.

    ”
  • Cherielyn Ferguson: Mercury Makes the Skin Glow by Gaven Trinidad
    “

    I had the good fortune to read this play for the Bay Area Playwrights Festival. It’s immensely entertaining even as it covers some serious ground. Among its themes is our need to overcome the expectations of others in order to reach acceptance of ourselves. Along the way there's fire! There are explosions! There's hospitalization and IV drips! As titled by the playwright, it's a "Filipino-American Teleserye For The Stage". It offers 13 terrific roles for six actors and it would be fantastic onstage. I’ll be keeping an eye out, hoping a theatre near me snaps it up. #BAPF47

    I had the good fortune to read this play for the Bay Area Playwrights Festival. It’s immensely entertaining even as it covers some serious ground. Among its themes is our need to overcome the expectations of others in order to reach acceptance of ourselves. Along the way there's fire! There are explosions! There's hospitalization and IV drips! As titled by the playwright, it's a "Filipino-American Teleserye For The Stage". It offers 13 terrific roles for six actors and it would be fantastic onstage. I’ll be keeping an eye out, hoping a theatre near me snaps it up. #BAPF47

    ”
  • Zac Whinnem: Mercury Makes the Skin Glow by Gaven Trinidad
    “

    This is a giant entertaining smorgasbord with a ton of style and a lot to say. I love the stage direction and asides, I think this writer would be fun to work with! Carmelita is a great character, she’s said and done awful things and always thinks she is right, but I was sympathetic because she was a multi-layered character. I definitely want to see a pair of great actors tackle Carmelita and Jesca. I also want to see the staging of the Aswang, and how that can be used theatrically. #BAPF47

    This is a giant entertaining smorgasbord with a ton of style and a lot to say. I love the stage direction and asides, I think this writer would be fun to work with! Carmelita is a great character, she’s said and done awful things and always thinks she is right, but I was sympathetic because she was a multi-layered character. I definitely want to see a pair of great actors tackle Carmelita and Jesca. I also want to see the staging of the Aswang, and how that can be used theatrically. #BAPF47

    ”

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