About the Play:

HARD TO FIND BOOK, only a very limited number of copies are still available.

Dogeaters is a full-length drama by Jessica Hagedorn. A hard-hitting play about the Philippines in the Marcos era adapted from her own her novel of the same name.

Jessica Hagedorn has transformed her New York Times best-selling novel about the Philippines during the reign of Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos into an equally powerful theatrical piece that is a multi-layered tour de force. Filled with rich characters from every level of the social ladder in the tropical city of Manila in 1982, the play follows the fates of Rio, a young, movie-obsessed girl from an upper-middle-class family, and Joey, a poor, young Afro-Filipino hustler. Their coming of age stories are intertwined with the tales of generals, waiters, a soft-porn "bomba" star, the richest man in Manila, journalists, politicians, a revolutionary fugitive, a middle-aged drag queen, and even the First Lady of the Philippines.

Dogeaters was presented at La Jolla Playhouse, the Public Theater in New York, the Kirk Douglas Theatre in Culver City, and in Manila.

Cast: 13 women, 17 men (doubling)

What people say:

"… Hagedorn expresses the conflicts experienced by Asian immigrants caught between cultures… she takes aim at racism in the U.S. and develops in her dramas the themes of displacement and the search for belonging." — Harold Bloom, Yale professor and celebrated literary critic

About the Playwright:

Jessica Hagedorn is a Filipino-American playwright, writer, poet, storyteller, musician, and multimedia performance artist. She was born and raised in the Philippines and came to the United States in her early teens. Honours and prizes include a Lucille Lortel Playwrights' Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fiction Fellowship, a Kesselring Prize Honourable Mention for Dogeaters, an NEA-TCG Playwriting Residency Fellowship, as well as fellowships from the Sundance Playwrights' Lab and the Sundance Screenwriters' Lab. She has taught in the Graduate Playwriting Program at the Yale School Of Drama, and at the MFA Creative Writing Program at Columbia University. She is currently the Parsons Family University Professor of Creative Writing at Long Island University in Brooklyn.