Flordelino Lagundino is open to your perspectives and ready for your stories
This interview was originally published in the March 23, 2018 issue of The Slant. For more Asian American news, media and culture in your inbox every week, subscribe today.
Flordelino Lagundino is a director and freelance actor who has worked in theatre for over 20 years. Most recently, he directed playwright Sam Chanse’s play, Trigger, with Leviathan Lab in New York City. In his own words, Lagundino’s “just interested in being in rooms with people that are about telling really impactful stories about what’s happening right now and in the world.”
“I feel, like many Asian Americans, there are parts of me that feel like I’m American,” said Lagundino in an interview with The Slant. “Other parts feel like they don’t belong necessarily. That’s what I’m interested in with theatre, and building a place for belonging.”
This interview has been edited for clarity and length. Read the whole interview on Medium.
1. What did your parents want you to be?
Flordelino Lagundino: It’s interesting. My family was in the medical profession, and I think they kinda wanted me to be in the medical profession as well. My sister wanted to be a dentist for a while — she went to study dental hygiene in order to move into dentistry after. I was studying pre-med my first year in college, and then chemistry beat me down and I said “that’s not for me.”
And I started looking around, thinking “what did I want to do?” Theatre came around actually, English literature. But they definitely wanted me to be in the medical profession.
2. What gets you excited to create your work?
FL: I think it’s really this idea that theatre holds this power to communicate. I feel like sometimes as an artist — I think I got involved in theatre in this way — I started playing sometimes, saying things that I wanted to say. I looked at plays, at shows, to work on as a political act, like a political action. And a way to have myself — to communicate what I’m thinking. I actually think Trigger, which is a play about this woman who learns that this woman that she knew in high school is a conservative, and she’s a liberal, and they’re polar opposites — it’s more than that, but they’re on different ends of the political spectrum, let’s say.
And it’s about — they’re trying to understand each other. The fights that they have, the real, like, strong dialogue and intentions that they have to change each other’s minds. And I’ve had those conversations with friends. Recently, there was the big election. I’m like, you know, very interested in that, in how it’s current. I’m looking for current theatre that really invigorates me and makes me think in different ways.
Sam [Chanse, the playwright], as an artist, in this play, she was like, how do you open up a place for understanding? That really goes along with what I’m interested in. Theatre can become a space where we offer up the whole of ourselves to be seen and for us to be seen.
The Slant: You’ve had those conversations in real life?
FL: Yeah, when I was actually moving from San Diego to New York, right after the election, I met up with a friend of mine I hadn’t seen since high school. It’d been a long time, and he was telling me about the elections, talking about, “oh, you know, those people, specifically Black people, they are out there. I can’t get a leg up, can’t do my job because these people are getting special treatment.”
And the thing is, this guy was making over 100k a year! You should be doing okay! And then, he’d be mentioning Obama, about him getting special treatment.
He was framing all these things, but what’s interesting is that I feel like what this play does and for myself — I can’t watch CNBC sometimes ‘cos it’s too much for me. People on different ends of the political spectrum believe so strongly, and they can’t open themselves up to other thoughts. And that’s something I want to be aware of myself. And in trying to understand him, I think I tried to do that.
There’s also another friend of mine — I grew up in a religious household, I used to talk to him about — I think Jesus was a Democrat. And during the election, I’d say, well, Jesus helps the poor. He’s good. (laughs) And he’d be like, “people should help themselves!” And I was like, “oh man, okay.”
And [my friend] was a gun advocate, and that’s fine. And we talked about it, and he had good reasoning. And everyone has their reasons for everything. And I was like, I don’t know if there’s a right and a wrong anywhere, but there’s a lot of grey. We need to find a way to common ground.
Nobody wants 17 people to die in a school. Nobody wants that. How is it possible for people to just sit at the table and talk about it?
This is getting to be a long answer, but I was watching 60 Minutes, and some Republican pollster was talking to some voters. And someone would say “I have some questions about Trump,” and everyone would just jump on it. It’s so different now with Trump people who can’t have normal dialogues even if they disagree. People are getting triggered. Just “no, you can’t.” The place that we’re in right now is so far away.
3. What do you do when you hit a creative block?
FL: Play with my daughter, probably? (laughs) I try to dig into it more. I think we’re sort of at an impasse right now in the process [with Trigger], and I’ve just spent more time with the script this morning. I think that’s what I’ve been trained to do, and what I’ve been trying to do more and more when there’s a problem. Just dig into it more, and see not what the solution is, but what are the different options, and how can we find creativity and something new within this problem that we have.
So I think that’s what I’m trying to do right now.
4. What’s something you’ve been really into lately?
FL: I’ve been really interested in travel right now. A friend of mine just moved to Okinawa and I was like, “it’d be nice to be there.” It’d be nice to just live in a different country right now. So just been thinking about — how can I put this — not escape, which is nice, but how can you put — being a part of different cultures in my life more. And setting myself in places [where] I don’t know what the outcome should be. ‘cos that’s exciting to me. I don’t know if you’ve lived in different countries, but every day is an adventure, and every day — I don’t know. How can I bring a sense of adventure?
TS: What would you do in another country? Theatre?
FL: I’ve taught English as a second language before, so that’s my focus, but I don’t know.
TS: My brother is doing that right now in Japan, but not in a huge metropolitan city.
FL: I taught in Japan a long time ago. I taught in Osaka and Chiba, and I know what that’s like ‘cos there, people exactly like him, got sent to Nowhereville. And we just never saw them again. (laughs)
5. When did you first feel successful?
FL: You know, I’ve never felt successful, so I don’t know what that is, actually. I mean, I think there was a time when I was working full-time as an actor. As an artist, that’s when I felt a little bit successful, but then I was really, really poor. So that’s not really success in the fact that I’m getting a good theatre paycheck — but a good theatre paycheck is not very much. It’ll last you two months or less than that.
I don’t know if — I don’t feel successful now. I don’t feel successful in theatre. I feel I’ve been given really great opportunities to learn and I appreciate that. But I would consider that I do have successes in my life and I’m hoping Sam’s play is successful for her as an artist.
It’s a little bit like that, because also in theatre, it’s also like, you’re constantly thinking about something you’re trying to get away from. There’s like a ladder to climb. I’m not on any — I mean, in some kinds of ways, I reject that ladder. And in other ways, there are other opportunities I’d like to have with that ladder.
It’s an interesting relationship with what success is. It’s something a lot of theatre artists talk about. You do something and you just kinda spin your wheels.
I think success would be, for me, would be being able to regularly be in rooms with people that are on the same path as I am.
6. If you were a dog, what breed would you be?
FL: I would say schnauzer. Not a miniature schnauzer, which we used to have, but I like schnauzers, yeah.
BONUS QUESTION from musician and actress Jane Lui: “Fight or flight? And has it ever backfired?”
FL: Flight. Has it backfired — are we talking about fight or — like in the instance?
TS: Fight or flight, like, run or —
FL: Oh! Okay. You take fight. I think you know, the fight that I’m on right now — I don’t know if it’s interesting. (laughs) Being a person of color in this country. I don’t know if you’ve experienced this as well, but, people — say you’re a nice person. You get angry. I don’t think [other people] look at you in the same way as somebody from this majority culture. I think if you have an irritation, they get angry at you, rather than accepting that you’re allowed to have anger.
It’s interesting. You can get judged in certain ways. It’s a question with Trigger too, actually, where women have rage as opposed to men having rage. Men are allowed to have it. And I feel like in some ways, not that I’ve given long talks about it, Asian men in Asian culture have been feminized by this country. And so there’s this sense of being docile or something, like that part of the understanding of a certain culture. And so when people meet up against something that’s different from that, I’m not sure people know what to do.
It’s a weird thing to fight. I think that there are some people who are able to fight, and who are not in the mainstream culture, that are able to make it work. But I don’t know if it’s actually changing anything. I think that the plays I’m interested in are interested in cataclysmic shifts. People are really battling. I think the battle needs to happen for a new space to open up.
So I don’t know. I think fight is important. But I’m trying to understand how to navigate that fight in a way that’s constructive.
I feel like Trigger has become a part of my life, so I feel a lot of those arguments are contained in that play. So I’ve been thinking a lot, and it’s helped me articulate some of my feelings about this.
TS: What question would you like to ask the next guest?
FL: If you could do anything else other than what you’re doing what would you do?
Flordelino Lagundino is the former artistic director at Leviathan Lab, a creative studio for theatre and film. He is also a director, actor, and a headshot/performance photographer. He is a recipient of the 2017 Drama League New York Directing Fellowship and recently acted in the Ivey Award-winning production (Best Ensemble) of Vietgone at Mixed Blood Theatre, MN. Most recently, he directed Sam Chanse’s Trigger at the Leviathan Lab in New York City. You can find Lagundino at his website.
