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Changing a name might seem like a minor matter for those who are changing their gender identities and, for some, facing challenges like finding knowledgeable doctors, trying hormones and experimenting with painful hair-removal procedures. But many who have gone through the switch say a name change sends an important message to the world, a message solidified and made official with a court’s approval.

Dragon Lady has always had music. Transitioning to a musical made sense but required more capital and institutional support. The first two years of performing it, I had musical tracks and sang covers of popular songs that had special significance for the story. The third year, I had enough resources and support to commission a composer to create original music, plus create covers of the past songs. My grandmother was a singer in the Philippines. All of the women in my family are singers and the men are musicians. Music is in my blood. It wouldn’t be a Porkalob show without music.

“I felt like so many of the examples of art that was held out to me as something I should work toward did not reflect my experience. It did not reflect my family as people of color, as immigrants, as people who grew up poor, as women. It really forced me to acknowledge that my education was missing and there was a lack of theater, of narrative, that reflected my experience, and therefore the experience of a lot of people who looked like me,” she says. “I decided that if I’m going to change the landscape I may as well start with where I started, which is my family.”

Theatre-goers will see violence and trauma in Porkalob’s family history, but they will also find joy, resilience, desire, love, hate, redemption.

An interview with playwright Sara Porkalob about her musical Dragon Lady and how theater can be more inclusive.

Porkalob fizzes with charisma—her physical comedy is exacting and intuitive, her multicolored voice slides easily from jazz to legit musical theatre.

“Dragon Lady is about the relationships between history, memory, and storytelling in my family,” Porkalob said. “Because those three things inevitably change over time—history is written every day, memories fade, and stories are reinterpreted—developing this piece over time just makes sense.”

As she got older, Porkalob realized the power of storytelling and theater to bring people together, both to entertain, but also to make them think about the world around them.

[Sara Porkalob’s Dragon Lady] was hilarious in several places and full of moving scenes about immigration and life.

This oddly compelling piece plays more like a social experiment in unforced compliance than theater, but it works in a way that never feels forced or hokey.