Nanay: if anyone gives a care
_Nanay_ (pronounced: nu-nai) is the Filipino word for mother. *Nanay* is the project of a talented group, including a university professor, researchers, actors, creative team, political advocates and the testimonials of Live-In-Caregivers who have come from the Philippines. It is a living play, in which the audience divides into groups and walk through various vignettes representing the homes and experiences of those involved with the Live-In-Caregiver Program (LCP).
The Chapel Arts centre is transformed to house this Urban Crawl project, part of the "PuSh Festival":http://pushfestival.ca/index.php?mpage=home. *Nanay* is the complicated story of the development of the LCP program, told through seven different rooms and countless recollections. As audience groups are hastily and arbitrarily divided, they are led to experience the complexity of the issue – through spot on sound reels, recreations of live-in environments, personal stories and even a pseudo-puppet show. A crew of guides, sound/lighting technicians and actors make it possible for the audience to gain a perspective on the broad scope of the issues Filipino women confront and their experience of separation from their families as they come to Canada to care for the families of others, in order to provide for their own children and potentially gain resident status in Canada.
At the crux of *Nanay* is a political and moral issue, about relationships and responsibilities: the relationship between citizens and their government and the responsibility of government to its citizens; the relationship between parents and children and the responsibility of care-giving and child-rearing; the relationship between employee and employer and the responsibility that comes with sharing the intimacy of a home. By being walked through these environments, the audience experiences all sides of the LCP issue, from the LCP worker perspective on the lower level, to the “Canadian way” on the top floor. Many audience members were jotting down notes, some were welling up with tears, while others were actively participating in the scenes, for example wanting to help Lagaya clean the kitchen.
For me, the loneliness and isolation of the workers was most effectively portrayed in a dark room with an overlapping sound reel playing a recorded testimonial of a Filipino woman saying “Canada is heaven”. I was sitting in horror thinking: what kind of _heaven_ economically demands that both parents work thus requiring them to hire a third party to care for their children, a caregiver who has to leave their own family, in order to make money looking after someone else’s? What heaven is this, where families are separated because of financial struggle, with the result of severed emotional ties between parents and children? What is heaven? Is the Canadian dream to work and have enough money to start a family, and then overwork, overstress and have one’s children raised by a nanny? *Nanay* questions the role of government in regards to the LCP program, but it also questions the structure, purpose and future of family life. Namely, this testimonial play questions the sustainability of the family unit as it stands. This testimonial asks the audience: what is a mother?
*Nanay* appropriately concludes with a talkback, in which audience members have the chance to voice their concerns, state their opinions, and take the message of the piece and apply it to their own lives.
To learn more about the Live-In-Caregiver Program and Filipino Women in Canada, contact Monica Urrutia, of the Philippine Women Centre of BC by phone at 604.215.1103 or by email at pwc(at)kalayaancentre.net.
_Nanay By Geraldine Pratt and Caleb Johnston in collaboration with the Philippine Women Centre of BC; Director Alex Ferguson; Dramaturg Martin Kinch; Actors Hazel Venzon, Karen Rae, Alexa Divine, Melissa Dionisio, Patrick Keating, Lissa Neptuno; Sceneographer Andreas Kahre; Additional Design Tamara Unroe; Costumes Barbara Clayden; Lighting John Webber; Community Coordination Philippine Women Centre; Associate Producer neworld theatre. For more information immigrate_ "here":http://pushfestival.ca/index.php?mpage=shows&spage=main&id=81#show.