2007 Filipinas Magazine Achievement Awards

Arts and Culture: Randy Gener
Sponsored by One Ayala

A writer, playwright, critic and editor, Randy Gener is at home with the intricacies of storytelling and performance.

The senior editor of American Theatre magazine, Gener was hired in 2002 as associate editor. He was promoted to his current post in 2003; the position was created specifically for him. He also serves as the book review editor and leads the coverage of international theatre for the publication.

His essay, “Restaging Romania,” was included in a feature story titled “Speaking in Translated Tongues,” (American Theatre, May/June 2007) a “translation in action seen through the prism of five projects involving international exchange, play translation and cross-cultural collaboration between U.S. theatre artists and their counterparts in Romania, Argentina, Mexico, Japan, Slovenia and France.” The piece looks into the theatrical works of new Romanian writers and directors as the country prepared to the join the European Union. “Restaging Romania” was based on Gener’s residency with the Lark Play Development Center at the Odeon Theatre in Bucharest in 2006.
Gener recently won First Prize for Writing Excellence in the Leisure Activity Category of The North American Travel Journalists Association’s annual awards for his 2006 article, “The French Connection.” It was part of a series of essays and reports on contemporary theatre in France, Belgium, Norway and Italy called “The New Europe.” The piece delves into the marginal status of French-born children of African, Arab and Muslim immigrant writers “in the gallicized establishment of the French theatre and literary scene.”

A native of Manila, Gener immigrated to the United States at 17 to live with his mother in Nevada. After graduating from college, he moved to New York and interned at the Village Voice. He joined the staff two years later as a theater critic and culture writer. It was during this time that Gener decided to transition from critic to creator.

He has since written and directed numerous plays, among them “Love Seats for Virginia Wolf,” “What Remains of a Rembrandt Torn Into Four Pieces,” “Sick With Lust: Fire Island Tales,” “In September, The Light Changes” and “Wait for Me at the Bottom of the Pool.” He has adapted works by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Harold Pinter, Samuel Beckett, Sam Shepard and Andrew Holleran, among others.

Gener’s works have also appeared in numerous publications such as The New York Times, The International Herald Tribune, The Daily News, The Paris Review, The Star Ledger, Gannett Newspapers and The Korean Theatre Journal. He has contributed pieces for The Queerest Art: Essays on Lesbian and Gay Theatre and Stages of Transformation: Collaborations of the Na-tional Theatre Artist Residency Program.
In 2005 he organized and served as curator of “To Be a Filipino in America: Carlos Bulosan and His World,” a photography and oral history exhibit that depicted Filipino American community life in California in the 1930s and 1940s. Gener is working on a play featuring Filipino American immigrants of the 1940s and 1950s.

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