It is 2013 in Manila, Philippines. A five-star hotel room has been converted into a disaster relief control centre for American NGO, SAVIOR (Saving Asia via Important Operations and Relief). Breaking news about Typhoon Yolanda floods Michelle’s communication channels, while white dudes flood Janna’s Tinder. 

Happy Feraren’s debut play SAVIOR, constellates four sharply-written characters who struggle for power: comically messianic Joe Logges (Michael Whalley); local project officer Michelle (Chrissy Mae Valentine); her chaotic, Tinderella bestie Janna (Chaye Mogg); and overworked field officer in Tacloban, Jobert (Mark Paguio). 

With fearless wit, Feraren unearths the incriminating intersection between online dating, humanitarian aid, and Big Tech. Feraren’s satire is at once geopolitical and domestic. Joe’s philanthrocapitalism ensures financial interests operate beneath the slick veneer of charity and #tech4good. Meanwhile, the Filipino characters are economically stratified, and Michelle’s misguided infatuation risks extracting from, rather than tending to, local needs. Still, at its heart, SAVIOR honors the strong survivors of Typhoon Yolanda and celebrates their creative insurgencies.

Below, Feraren speaks with Annabella Luu about Filipino humour, problematising ‘resilience,’ and decolonising aid.

What were your main influences when writing SAVIOR?

I would say in terms of comedy, it was more about understanding how far I could push and knowing what the base knowledge was of my audience here in Australia. If you look at TV shows like Parks and Recreation (American) and Utopia (Australian) the workplace comedy content is very niche. So I knew that a workplace comedy based on humanitarian work intersecting with tech was an idea that had legs. And that communicating these technical ideas should not be a problem because it's been done before and there's an audience for it. Superstore (American) was another one that also helped me understand the range that a comedy could cover. One of their season finales literally had a chase scene between an ICE officer and one of the characters in the ensemble. So though not a direct influence on my work, it was my way of learning about white people's appetite for comedy that touches on political themes. 

My main influence for the comedy was really leaning in hard on Filipino humour. The puns, the over-the-top acting, the cheekiness, the hysteria, the body language and facial expressions, the character references. I was unapologetic about it. If people can relate to everyday American or European characters, those same tropes exist in other cultures as well. So I trusted that people would get it even if they didn't grow up with these images. 

Jobert: Our local road is too small, too muddy, too destroyed from the storm that our big truck cannot pass through. Beep beep!

Michelle: Shit.

Jobert: Bleep bleep! Ma’am that’s a bad word.

Living in Manila as an artist also exposed me to a lot of politically charged art. It was almost the default. It's very common for movies, shows, plays and songs to have political undertones. Activists and artists run in the same circles and people are a lot more fearless in speaking up, despite the very real threats from the government or the elite. There was this song that I kept listening to called "American Junk" by a popular band in the Philippines—APO Hiking Society. It's very Filo. Silly but lyrically strong and a very serious message. I think the Filipino-ness of the play plus my background in improv also dictated its pace and tonal shifts, which I would not have achieved if I had clung on to Western dramaturgical ideas and formal theatre practices.

I also read a lot of academic articles and papers by Filipino sociologists and anthropologists writing about Typhoon Yolanda. Pamela Combinido’s talk and article on local aid workers in particular inspired Jobert's story.

How did SAVIOR come to fruition from the page to the stage?

There was an Incubator Fellowship with Griffin Theatre. It was a call out for aspiring playwrights to join and develop, or pitch, something. My interest as an artist was using improv to devise scripted work. I'm a big fan of theatre. I watch a lot of shows both in Manila and here in Sydney, and every time I travel, I try to catch a play or a live show, even if it's a standup comedy or dance or something. I wanted to go beyond my usual improv practice and I thought playwriting was a natural progression.

Was writing SAVIOR a solitary process or did you improvise the scenes with people?

Scene 1 was improvised during COVID with a friend of mine from Manila. It was a zoom session that we had online, around 15 minutes. I also recorded it then cut it down to four minutes or five minutes, and then I used the audio and interspersed images. That’s what I used in my pitch to Griffin [Theatre] and that's what won me the fellowship.

So the opening line, “there's so many white dudes out there,” is from the improvised session. That was my favourite moment because sometimes, I watch theatre and the dialogue and I'm like, “who talks like that?" And I really hate it. I didn't want to fall into the same trap so I was like, “okay, I wanna hear it.” Also, I respect the actors and all the character study that they've done and I think that's such a rich resource. When they're improvising with all the things they know about their character, they always make great offers. During rehearsals we would also try out the scene and then I'd tell them, “okay, do it again, but don't use any of the lines of the script” and then “do it in this time frame.” So if the scene was originally, say, five minutes, I'd be like, “let's do it in three minutes…one minute…30 seconds.” Then some of the lines that came out from there I’d then put back in the script.

Janna: Uy hala. [Looking at her phone]. There’s a flood.

Michelle: Ha? Another one? Where?

Janna: I mean a flood of white dudes on Tinder right now. Blonde, blonde, blue eyes, hazel eyes. Ang daming afam!

How did your lived experience inform SAVIOR?

The typhoon happened in 2013, [when] I was living in the Philippines. I'm not from Tacloban, but I was living in Manila. I guess it was the right amount of time to look back and process everything. Moving to Australia as well gave me that distance and clarity. When it's very raw and when it's happening to you, you don't really get to process things. When I saw all those Tinder boys during the typhoon, I mean, you just laugh at it. You're just like, “this is ridiculous.” But when you actually look back you're like, “no, that is actually so problematic” and emblematic of my whole critique about international aid and how these systems work and operate in countries like the Philippines. So that’s what being a migrant in Australia gave me more than anything. It was the head space and the distance. When I was living in Manila, it was just a constant bombardment of, “here we go again. This is not news. This is just what happens and we just deal with it and move on.”

Bits and pieces of the story were always in my head. I used to have my own youth-based, anti-corruption NGO back in the Philippines. Very lofty and ambitious. Many things that the lead character [Michelle] says in the play are things that I believed in. Telling the story to people here in Sydney about seeing Tinder boys also cemented in my mind that this was a very ridiculous, but very rich, premise. As an improviser, you're drawn to that because you step on stage with no script. What is given to us is sometimes just a single word and you mine that for everything that it is.

So that started the whole rabbit hole of writing [SAVIOR] and realising so many things that I left unprocessed from my experience in the NGO, because it was all very abrupt. I moved to Australia and then inevitably the NGO closed down. There was also a change in government in the Philippines. I kind of never let it go properly. I guess in a way, this is also me letting go of that life and that part of myself who honestly believed in that potential for change. As I grew up and as I learned more and saw more, I think you question if you left things better off. What does change mean? What does it look like and how do you really know what's better? Because sometimes you think you made it better, but maybe you made it worse. So it’s having that self-awareness.

And there is a grief to that too, in terms of letting go of that doe-eyed part of yourself that believes wholeheartedly in an organization’s “good intentions.” I see it especially in Michelle’s feelings of moral injury. Is she the character that you most align yourself with?

Michelle is actually my legal name and I never use [it]. I just write it in forms or if someone has to pay me superannuation. So I always had it, I was like, okay, well maybe we can give some life to this name because nobody ever calls me Michelle, other than immigration officers. Then I also realised it was a very common name in Sydney and very common with Asian Australians. In my year in school, there were many of us named Michelle because of the Beatles song, “Michelle.” I think of all these millennial kids of boomers who are fans of the Beatles. I thought, “this name resonates in both countries,” so I chose to keep it. It's only now talking to you that I realise yes, there is some grief. In that sense, she is the one I relate to the most.

But I was also a Tinderella, so I'm also partly Jana. I think there's a little bit of Jana in me all the time, because I feel like I was very, yes, wide-eyed, idealistic, but there was always a part of me that was sceptical. That kind of sassy girl vibe was also in me. So definitely, the two characters, but probably more so Michelle. Especially when she breaks down and she's like, “oh my God, he's gonna think I'm a slacker…Goodbye Democracy!” That was so me in 2013.

Michelle: Joe is going to think I’m Tindering on the job. And when I meet him tomorrow, he’ll think that’s the reason why it’s not going to plan in Tacloban. He’ll take me out of this project and they’ll fire me and then what? Mayor Clara becomes the hero and she’ll win another term in office. And that’s it. Goodbye Good Governance! Goodbye Democracy!

I believe there is a phrase in Tagalog for that culture of gratitude-debt?

Yes, utang na loob. You just want to be an achiever. You want to people-please in a way where you don’t really see yourself pandering to Western values, but more aligning yourself to what you believe is the right thing to do. Because you do feel stuck. You do feel stuck in Manila where you're like, “well, what are my options? Either I suck up to a corrupt politician or get rich myself and implement the changes that I want to see. Or, try and use an international system that says they have these 'values.'

What specific entanglements between romantic seduction and corporate seduction were you trying to draw out in the relationship between Michelle and Joe?

I was on Tinder at the time, finding all those aid workers. When you look at the dating statistics, the demographic of females that would get the most number of swipe-rights on Tinder or matches on OkCupid was the Asian female. And then the most attractive for the male was the white man. It’s super cringe, but you’re also talking about a real power play here. [Though] statistically on the dating app, they are the most attractive female and most attractive male, [Michelle and Joe] are terrible flirts to each other. I think that was one thing that excited me. The way that I framed it was with infatuation. Falling in love with the idea of love. Falling in love with the idea of systems that work, or falling in love with good governance and democracy. And Joe is very much the symbol of that.

For Michelle, you cannot untangle it. It goes without saying, [Joe’s] an Albright fellow. He's the J.E.S.U.S (Joint Emergency Systems and Uplift Strategist). He's also very much her type. He's a nerd. He's cute. And he's representative of all these values that she believes in. Michelle's gaze to Joe, to me, has always been infatuation and vice versa. He is a white man in Asia. He has capital. He will instantly be put on a pedestal, whether he likes it or not, whether he's cute or not. He will always be deemed as the expert when really Jobert is the one who holds the most knowledge but has the lowest status and is probably the lowest paid. Joe, as the expat, will get the most money.

The power play makes me think about Jana, who uses the Tinder boys as cash mules. In the script you introduced her as misguided by romanticism, with a “questionable taste in men.” Was she a character that you wanted the audience to underestimate in the beginning? 

A little bit. In a narrative sense, she was the foil of Michelle. She’s the street smart to Michelle's book smart. Jana can get things done, even if it's not by the book. I wrote her dedicated to many of my friends who are such smart, powerful women, but diminish themselves because of the stupid men that they date. Janna to me was like that. You think she's just a little, sassy girl, but she's smart and she cares. She knows how to move through life. She knows how to find ways to get things done. She's good with people. Instantly, she can make a connection with Jobert, for example, that is very genuine. Michelle can't do that. Michelle's so corporate and will always have that hierarchy.

In the play, when you hear Michelle talking to Jobert, [Janna’s] like, “oh, you're so patronising, Michelle. Shut up.” Janna is a real character all throughout. That's what I realised after watching it. Janna is the one who doesn't have a mask at any point. She's really the one to wake up Michelle from her lovesick, rose-tinted glasses. 

As a satire, did SAVIOR start from a very clear place of critique? Or did you write it more from a place of interrogation and suspicion towards something that you couldn't quite put your finger on.

I think the first one. I knew what I wanted to say. I knew the critique. I knew what the commentary was, based on my experience, going through all those patronising moments with American funders. But I also knew satire was a tricky medium because our information ecosystem is so broken. We're so post-truth and it's like, how do you create satire that is very clearly satire, so we know who exactly we're laughing at? You have to calibrate and be precise about, “what is this saying?” From the image, the costuming, the set design. What is this moment saying when people are laughing? It was great to have different collaborators, like my director (Kenneth Moraleda) and my set designer (Hailley Hunt) on board with the best way to tell it. I know that a lot of things are very specific to the Philippines, but at the same time, I knew that I wasn’t gonna water this down for an Australian audience. I also trust my audience. It doesn't matter if this is a culturally specific joke. They'll ride with it. There are enough Filipinos in Australia for everyone to have somewhat of a reference of what Filipino life is like. So I think, more than an interrogation, it was a calibration every time.

Then the comedic rule that I followed was always truth and comedy. I would never use comedy to escape the truth or hide the truth. I would always use comedy to heighten it so that when people laugh, it's at the recognition of truth. It's funny 'cause it's true. And then always punching up. Throughout the entire play, Joe is the joke and it ends with blood on his hands. It was also about respecting the gravitas of the loss because Typhoon Yolanda had a death toll between 6,000 to 10,000 people. I could have written it as a straight comedy and ended in a satirical way, but I really wanted it to have a gut-punch and have a lot of heart and warmth in the end, especially for the Filipinos in the house.

When I went to Tacloban as part of my research, I went for the 10-year anniversary of Typhoon Yolanda. It really shook me. When you go there, you don't see any of the devastation that you saw before. It’s a buzzing city. But then they hold vigils every year on the night of the storm. All the streets are lined up with candles. That is what inspired the last scene. I really wanted to honour and respect that. It can't just end with crucifixion and a sad, dire parody, because if the role of comedy is to bring out the truth and heighten the truth, then it's like, okay, now no more masks. No more gags. This is where we're at.

SAVIOR ends by centering Jobert. But in the beginning, he is off-stage playing the peripheral role of the comedic field officer and stagehand for scene transitions. He is even absent from the promotional synopsis. Were you intentional about initially misdirecting the audience as to who the play was about and who whose voice would be privileged? 

Absolutely. I knew from the start when I was writing it and I told my director [Kenneth] when he first came on board. He choreographed all that movement beautifully. I had this image of Jobert never being centre stage until the end. Until it's his moment. That misdirection is also reflective of the protagonist, Michelle, who’s a Manila girl and removed from the reality of Tacloban. She also has her own savior complex. I think the struggle for me was more that I didn't want to co-op Jobert’s story and tell this story entirely in his perspective, because that's not my story to tell. People who have gone through the storm have written and created their own stories, and I respect that. So yes, the play ends with Jobert, but I am not also going to pretend that I understand his plight completely.

The journey of Michelle is that realisation—a coming home for her to realise the distance that she had [from] her own countrymen, who she wasn't listening to. The illusion and the infatuation she had with this international system was so strong until the end, when it all shattered.

How did you decide at which moments the characters speak Tagalog, Waray, and English? Was the triangulation of power flows a part of your process?

Yeah. English is the performative mask. For Michelle, her fluency and her command of English is a status symbol in the Philippines. So she can throw words like, “oppressive systems,” “patronage politics” and “siphoning public funds.”

Michelle: Tell me Jobert, will we still tolerate oppressive systems of corruption that keep us dependent on a broken political patronage system?!

Jobert: Yes!

Michelle: Huh?

Jobert: No? No to corruption!

Even if you speak it with a more Western accent, then people believe you're educated. You're smart. If you are speaking English and then you can hear a hint of a rural or provincial [accent], those are signifiers in the Philippines. When Jobert speaks in English, I was drawing from the call centre script of, “hello ma'am, sir, welcome to the…Happy to serve!” It's very scripted.

Then they switch to Tagalog, because Michelle doesn't speak Waray. Tagalog is the official language, even if there are more Visayan speakers. Because the capital is in Manila, then everyone from all other regions and provinces have to learn Tagalog, as well as their own local language. Even calling something a language versus a dialect is a very political thing. When Michelle speak[s] to Jobert in Tagalog, that's kind of her attempt to reach out to him—the boss can't understand us, so you can talk to in a more real way. You can also see it in the scene: Jobert lets go of his performative gratitude and “happy to serve!” when he tells Michelle that all the houses are destroyed.

When Filipinos see each other in another country there’s an instant connection. And then that connection is mirrored if you're from the same town or city. For example, Jana has family in Tacloban. So she’ll hear [Jobert] speaking Waray and jump in and be like, “Uy! Waray ka gihap! Oh my god, you're my sangkay” or “kaibigan”—someone from the same place as you. There’s a word for that in every Filipino language. There’s that instant connection. So I think it's about drawing out those different relationships. It’s funny because I realised yesterday that when they shifted to Tagalog, those are real moments of sadness, quiet grief, processing and finally admitting to yourself “yes, I'm tired.”

Jobert: Madaming nakakalat na katawan.

Michelle: [to Joe]. There are still a lot of dead bodies scattered.

Joe: [typing] Debris clearance still in motion. 

Jobert my friend, you are resilient and a true asset to the company.

Jobert’s monologue is in English because it’s directed to Joe. When I get angry, I switch to Tagalog straight away. But in this context it was about showing how, of all of them, Jobert speaks the most languages, [though] he has the lowest status. But Joe, who holds the highest status, speaks one language and appropriates all others to fit his idea of whatever communication means to him. I also wanted to give [Jobert] that moment of “why? Just because you think we're from the province that we're not fluent in English?” There are many people in Tacloban who speak Waray, Tagalog and English fluently.

That monologue occurs in the striking final scene, when Jobert’s on-the-ground reality and emotions finally take centre stage. However, it's mediated by SAVIOR’s camera and teleprompter. It was both humorous and disturbing to see Joe tamper with the script that Michelle had prepared, then proceed to re-edit the footage of Jobert’s impassioned monologue in order to appeal to SAVIOR’s funding bodies.

Hailley [Hunt], who was our set designer, was like, “yeah, that part in the video when Joe edits it and plays it back, it's not funny to me.” 

Then I said, “yes, that's exactly where I want you to be. Where it's like, ‘wait, this is not funny. I'm laughing but wait, this is actually really wrong.’”

In SAVIOR, “resilience” is a buzzword that is, at times, mocked. What is your relationship to the word, “resilience,” especially when you are writing narratives about disaster and devastation?

When Typhoon Yolanda happened, I remember watching the news and I swear every news report was like "Filipino resilience, Filipino resilience, Filipino resilience." The thing is, it was true. At the time, all the survivors were bouncing back so quickly. You would hear stories of people giving birth in the middle of rubble because there were no hospitals. These things just happened. You really couldn't deny that there is strength and power to that. I remember three months after the storm, people were already going back to school. Even if the classrooms were destroyed, they would gather where their school used to be and hold classes there. That does take a lot of emotional strength. Every day you're literally facing your trauma and living through that nightmare. Day in, day out, you're persisting. So there is no doubt that the resilience was there.

But then when politicians or international aid keep using “resilience” as a buzzword, almost as an excuse for inaction, it's like, "oh my gosh, we're tired of being resilient." You know? You have to also act; you can't just rely on our resilience. It's the over romanticising of resilience. We're resilient, but the system is also broken.

After Typhoon Yolanda, I think people became a lot more critical. It almost became a bad word, "resilience." So that's Michelle's monologue of "it's not, it's not a choice. This is what we have to do." A friend of mine put it nicely; after she watched the play, she was always having this question of, "is resilience a virtue?" Why are we turning our survival and resilience [into] a virtue when actually, it signifies the presence of an oppressive system?

Michelle: We don’t choose to sleep and seek shelter in an evacuation centre to take your relief goods. Resilience is not a response. It’s what we do because we have no choice.

The most harrowing irony is that Jobert, who can speak the most languages, is likely the most intelligent in the room. Yet he is the one having a script imposed on him. It feels like a huge, exploitive act of cultural violence, not to mention Joe’s production of disinformation. Jobert’s "resilience" is almost valorised and weaponised as symbolic capital to warrant this abstraction of atrocity and man-made disaster. Does the term risk normalising a very minimum standard of coping?

Absolutely. Resilience seems like a very passive thing. Like things are done unto you. In the Global South, we're resilient. But when it's the West, they're superpowers. They have strength. Why do we use the word “strong” for Western countries? Resilience is so passive; things just happen to us and we bounce back. Whereas when you talk about someone who is strong, it's someone who can make things happen. They have agency. They can act. 

But Filipinos are strong. Filipinos have power. Filipinos can make things happen.

Indeed, Janna’s and Jobert’s resourcefulness and social acumen, which manifests in wit, testifies to this strength. SAVIOR’s director, Kenneth Moraleda, articulates that comedy is “both invitation, but also provocation.” How did you envision your Filipino audiences receiving their humour?

It’s very Filipino—laughing at the trauma. I remember hearing from people who were literally incarcerated during martial law, and they're recounting it while laughing. They’re like, “oh remember the time we were tortured? Hahaha!” I’m like, “oh my god! what are you guys on?”

I think Filipinos are very joyful. To me, there is a Filipino sense of humour. On one level there's a lot of puns, like “what the pack!?” It's just very silly and ridiculous. A lot of us are bilingual. That's why I think the puns come naturally because it's very sound based.

Michelle: [Clara] doesn’t help pack those goods! Every pack is donated by someone else! Then she claims the pack but doesn’t give a pack!

Janna: What the pack!?

Were there any interpretations of SAVIOR that surprised you? Was there anything unexpected in the way this play was received?

I remember when I was first writing this, I was talking to my dramaturg Declan Greene (who's also the artistic director of Griffin Theatre), and I said, “in my head, the biggest struggle is I have two versions of this: one script that is for the Filipino audience, and one script that is for an Australian audience.” It’s so hard to know the base knowledge if you're writing a satire. I didn't want to have to over-explain all these corruption scandals and schemes. That will hit harder. If you say, “flood control,” we know exactly what you mean. But to someone who's not aware of how corruption happens in the Philippines, you'll have to overexplain. Then it becomes expositional. [Declan] actually advised, “don't have those two versions in your head. Just blend it.”

So I just said, “okay, you know what? I'm gonna trust my audience and I'm gonna write this in such a way where I will not water down any Filipino jokes. I will be very unapologetic about it.” There's something for everyone, even in the type of humour. There are corporate jokes. There are Filipino jokes. There is Catholic imagery. And the story is easy enough to follow, whether or not you understand the jokes.

It's a testament to the actors’ delivery as well. Even if you don't understand the language, the emotional candour is legible and resonant.

It’s funny. I was very scared, honestly, and thought “this can go either way.” My fellow Filipinos watching it could be like, “that was shit.” And like, “you're so disrespectful. Why did you do that to Jesus? You're a bad guy.” I was scared personally of the aunties being like, “why did you do that?” So I had all these mini meltdowns with Kenneth. I'm like, “should I take off the Jesus things? The titas might come after me!" But he was like, “it's fine. You're only alluding to the imagery, but you're not disrespecting it.” And I have like this cheat sheet of answers of what I'll say if a tita comes at me.

Secondly, I think just because of current events in Australia —all the heightening of racist narratives and anti-immigrant narratives—I was very scared. I am Michelle in that way. I catastrophize very easily. I was like, “oh my God, what if they come at me and be like, ‘why are we spending taxpayer money on this stupid play?’” I went straight to the worst-case scenario. So there was fear initially, but every time I would watch it in rehearsals, I just felt so validated and reassured. It was Filipino led and many of us were Filipinos, but there were also non-Filipinos who were there. White, middle-aged men with so much money, came to me and were like, “that’s the best thing I’ve seen in a really long time. You made us laugh, but it had a very strong message.”

Filipinos will react differently also. I think I appreciated how layered it was and depending on how much you know and how much connection you have to the Philippines, it can hit you very hard and very deeply. I watched people walking out and they're like, red, crying and they're like, “I don't know what I'm feeling anymore. I'm completely wrecked.” SAVIOR is based on Typhoon Yolanda, but people were coming from other parts of the Philippines and were like, “that's exactly what we went through with Typhoon Sendong or Typhoon Ulysses or Typhoon Ondoy.” I think it's very painful on that level because it's the same thing that we're going through all the time.

I do appreciate, without revealing too much of the ending, how the play plants the seeds to a more reparative path forward. What does decolonizing aid look like to you?

It’s interesting to hear you articulate the reparative nature of that closing scene, because I wanted it to end with a sense of redemption, no matter how small, and relief, because again we’re tired of being resilient. I'm tired of crying and feeling grief about this. The laughter all throughout is really designed for us to release that grief and frustration and anger.

When I started my own NGO, I had these conversations with myself like, “isn't the point of an NGO to not exist anymore?” When you don't exist, that means the problem has been solved. I was also revisiting and processing a lot of the naive things that I did as someone working in anti-corruption.

Joe: Right now, you have a real chance of making a difference here and now. Don’t throw it all away…you’ll face the same challenge of trying to secure funding. Nothing moves without it. 

Michelle: Things move without us.

That’s why I always cry at Jobert’s monologue, no matter how many times I've seen it. It’s this whole reckoning, even with myself and with the privilege that I have. Growing up in a Catholic, private school in Manila, we are so detached from actual reality and throughout our whole lives, we are told that yes, we are the most educated. That we are the ones who are in the best position to affect change by centering ourselves thinking that they are just, again, passive, resilient people who should just follow our suggestions because we are the educated ones. It sounds very simple, but I think it’s about admitting to yourself, or at least to institutions and the elite, that you don't know better.

Joe: We’re here to help. Just doing my part buddy!

Jobert: You who have never stepped foot in our land until now, when there are cameras …We survived the storm, not you. We help each other get through. We will rebuild, with or without you. We are not dead but you move us around like we are nothing.

[People in the Philippines] know how to get themselves out of poverty. They are just so pushed by oppressive systems that they can't catch a breath. They rebuild and then people destroy what they built and relocate them regardless. And so I think it's really recognising, not in a tokenistic or superficial way, but really recognising the strength of the community and the intelligence and expertise that locals do have. Maybe it sounds very simplistic, but I think it's a hard thing for many people in aid to believe that they are not experts.

I’m hesitant to say it because it's in the script, but it’s when [Michelle] says “local first.” It’s become such a buzzword that you hear it here in Australia: “First Nations first.” But how about you follow that? The solutions to those problems that people in the Philippines are going through exist. They're already happening. People will repair and rebuild with or without us intellectualising.

I see the aid workers’ solipsism materialise in the prop of the canned fish, which was extended to the audience. What compelled you to unearth the irony of distributing canned fish in a fishing village?

I was reading interviews of survivors when I was researching for this play. One of the articles that I read was about a survivor who was saying, “we need help because our whole village was destroyed, but do you know how humiliating that is for me as a fisherman? Canned fish as goods, really? I can fish this.”

So it came from that story. They always say, if you give a man fish, then he's satisfied for a day. But if you teach him how to fish, then he is set for life. [Jobert] is set for life, so let him live! Let him fish! Stop giving him canned fish. Stop pretending your canned fish is the solution.

It’s such a truism, which makes the situation so absurd when you put it like that. It’s an important critique of how NGOs insert themselves by also severing the community's relationship to the land as well. It feels fitting, then, that DOBBY opens the play with an Acknowledgement of Country, stating that First Nations people belong “80,000 years to the land and 80,000 years to the sky as well.” Then, over the speaker system, we hear the call of the Pied Butcherbird that also features in his song “Dirrpi Yuin Patjulinya.” How did DOBBY become the composer and sound designer for SAVIOR?

I'm such a fan girl. I think his music is fantastic. Listening to him, as a climate justice activist and land rights activist, I'm like, it's the same problem that we're facing in the Philippines. I really admired the way his music is just so sophisticated and very much rooted in activism and that call for social justice. Plus, he’s Filipino and Aboriginal. I always felt like he has had to do this. Griffin Theatre’s mandate is to tell Australian stories. I was always conscious if people were going to say “why is this an Australian story? It's set in the Philippines.” But it's the same problems that we’re going through in Australia. And I very much felt that there was an easy connection with that. DOBBY’s mom is also from Tacloban. I was just like, there's just too many parallels here and too many synergies happening. So I was so thrilled when he said yes to the project.

Happy, thank you so much for talking to me. I’ve watched audience members leave the theatre stunned, guffawing, and sobbing—sometimes all at once. I’ve spoken to people who have returned to watch the play as many as eleven times. SAVIOR has captivated local and international audiences alike and completely changed how I move through the world. I hope this show gets to run again in the future. Everyone must see your work.

Thank you too. This was so much fun and so healing.