0874: A Filipino-American Love Story
New York City, New York | Theatre
Musical
Oscillating between letters written between 1959-1963 and the present day, 0874 explores love’s relationship to distance, truth’s relationship to family, and home’s relationship to belonging. The show was selected by SheNYC Arts for an Off-Broadway debut this Summer, and we need your help!
0874: A Filipino-American Love Story
New York City, New York | Theatre
Musical
1 Campaigns |
Green Light
This campaign raised $9,122 for production. Follow the filmmaker to receive future updates on this project.
38 supporters | followers
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Oscillating between letters written between 1959-1963 and the present day, 0874 explores love’s relationship to distance, truth’s relationship to family, and home’s relationship to belonging. The show was selected by SheNYC Arts for an Off-Broadway debut this Summer, and we need your help!
About The Project
- The Story
- Wishlist
- Updates
- The Team
- Community
Mission Statement
The Story
Come see 0874: A Filipino-American Love Story off-Broadway at Connelly Theater this Summer!
Buy tickets here: https://shenycarts.org/she-nyc/
Eight years ago, my college boyfriend moved 3,000 miles away. When he left, my grandmother came over with a grocery bag containing every single love letter that she and my grandfather wrote to each other between the United States and the Philippines. At the beginning of the first letter, stamped in 1958, my grandmother wanted to be a nun. Eight hundred and seventy-four letters later, in 1963, she left the Philippines to come start a new life as a doctor and a wife in the United States.
While my boyfriend (now husband) moved to California to earn a PhD, I stayed on the East Coast to pursue a career onstage. Director Aria Velz and I met at the very beginning of both our journeys, when we worked together on our very first show after college. Our paths continued to cross, even down to getting married two weeks apart from each other. Although co-composer Baz King and I are cousins who pursued music careers, we didn’t get to know each other until my husband’s move-- about 45 minutes away from Baz in Los Angeles. Over the years we grew closer and closer, and one day I told him about my grandparents’ letters.
“That love story is a musical,” he said.
Like any self-respecting perfectionist, I held the idea under scrutiny. I’m a singer: what do I know about writing music? I’m a third-generation banana from the suburbs: what do I know about the Philippines? After doing my due diligence, I wisely decided that such a project was definitely doomed to fail and would bring great shame to my family and I would probably have to leave the theatre industry, if not the country if I tried to do this. So our conversation lay dormant for years. And instead, in the three years since graduating college and saying goodbye to my boyfriend, I continued to grind away at a career as an actor, finally culminating in a move to New York City, an Equity card, an agent, and an off-Broadway offer… in March 2020.
COVID-19 forced me to grapple with the fact that the career I had sacrificed so much for — love, financial stability, the respect of extended family, friends, and acquaintances— was zapped away in an instant. Then I noticed that people on the crowded subway shuffled into the thick of each other just to get away from me. A houseless person spat racial slurs in my face. My social media newsfeed ebbed and flowed with violence against people who look like me. Who look like my family. As all the world suddenly became long distance, I wondered what else there was besides this isolation, otherness, boredom, and fear.
“That love story is a musical,” I remembered. So I wrote.
0874 allowed me to discover an honest story— full of unwieldy truths, ordinary people and extraordinary tenacity— where love wins. A history that had lain dormant in my family for sixty years and that ironically revealed itself during a period of personal separation. While the COVID-19 pandemic ravaged the global theater industry, I pivoted from on-stage acting to molding my grandparents’ letters into a musical. My only hope for the show was that it would honor my family and allow me to find my own voice in the chorus of AAPI brilliance in the arts. I had no idea what lay in store after that.
But then, I was humbled to receive support from The Kennedy Center to develop and perform 0874 for a live audience. Their support was instrumental in bringing Baz, Aria, and other artists onto the project and provide them with a source of income during the shutdown. While the pandemic forced the world into hiding, especially Asian Americans, this project offered a chance to partner with Asian- and female- led businesses and cultural groups who were instead sharing and celebrating our identities.
Now, I’m so thrilled to bring 0874: A Filipino-American Love Story to New York City as a celebration of Asian American culture, immigrant love stories, femininity, and inter-generational journeys. 0874 will be presented at The Connelly Theater in New York City on August 4th at 8:30pm and August 5th at 3:00pm as part of SheNYC Arts’ Summer Theatre Festival.
Out of 300+ submissions and after making it through 40 readers, eight shows are selected each Summer to be part of NYC's premiere festival showcasing new, original works by gender-marginalized writers, composers and directors. Check out all the cool places the org has been featured!
Although SheNYC Arts is giving us access to the theatre, their network, and so much more, much of the financial weight of this project still rests on our shoulders. Check out what our fiscal goal of $8,740 (funny how that works out, right?) will go towards:
If you get us to 23% of our goal, $2000, you'll...
Build our set! Aria has some seriously cool ideas in mind inspired by Filipino vintage stamps.
Make our music! Baz, Isaiah, and I are playing with an interplay of acoustic sounds and electronic vibes, symbolizing the counterpoint between the past and the present. We need access to gear and time to prerecord some elements that will bolster the live performances.
Dress me! There's such a richness in Filipino fashion that deserves to be seen and celebrated. We also want to give our money to artisans who are working to pay their designers fairly, keep their cultures alive, and are committed to environmental sustainability.
Provide us with miscellaneous admin needs like binders, masks, clip lights, rehearsal and recording space rentals, flameproofing the set (yes, that's a thing, no, there are no pyrotechnics planned... yet...), insurance, etc.
If you get us to 34% of our goal, another $1000, you'll...
Put Baz on a plane! Put Aria on a train! Put Isaiah on another train! Or the same train... or bus... or car... or something.
As I'm the only NYC local, you'll help to house, feed, and caffienate the rest of the team!
If you get us to 74% of our goal, which is another $3,500 you'll...
Pay us! All of us have turned down other opportunities to work this Summer because we believe in this project and we think you might, too.
If you contribute to the last 26% of our goal, $2,240, you'll...
Allow us to spend time and effort on community engagement! We're actively in talks with AAPI youth groups, student groups, and nursing homes to share not just the show with them, but also the practical lessons for other young creatives, performances of the show for seniors in group homes, and so much more.
What if we SURPASS our goal???
If we stretch past our goal of $8,740, we can get to work recording an album of the show, as well as put our (woo!)manpower into finding the next theatre to do it all over again, baby.
Wow! You read this whole page!
Your fearless determination has been acknowledged and appreciated.
If you want to join us on this journey, here are some things you can do...
Come see the show! Purchase tickets here: https://shenycarts.org/she-nyc/
Donate! Check out the tiers and their perks (starting at just $8!) listed to the right on this site.
Connect with us on social media! We'll be posting music, bts (not the band) content, and interacting with all of you @0874musical on Instagram and TikTok. You can also copy and paste something like this on your own account to help spread the word about our show:
I just contributed to 0874: A Filipino-American Love Story, an off-Broadway bound one-woman musical! https://www.alexandramariapalting.com/0874
Follow this campaign! I'll be writing musical theatre numbers about dogs! Baz will be releasing one of our songs as a single! We have generous friends lined up to match your donation! So many possibilities!
Thank you for your interest in this project. We're so happy you're here!
Wishlist
Use the WishList to Pledge cash and Loan items - or - Make a pledge by selecting an Incentive directly.
Artist Salaries
Costs $3,500
As a team of women and BIPOC, it's crucial that everyone be paid for their time, effort and talent.
Team Transportation
Costs $1,000
Help get this national team to the greatest theatre city in the world!
Production Costs
Costs $2,000
Sets, props, and sound equipment (0874 is electronics-heavy!) so we can show NYC what we can do!
Community Engagement
Costs $2,240
Help us bring AAPI, youth, elderly, and women-centered businesses and charities along for the ride!
Cash Pledge
Costs $0
Direct link:
Share this update!
About This Team
Alexandra Palting is an actor and writer based in New York City. Last year, Palting was an Artist in Residence at The Kennedy Center where she wrote, composed and performed her original musical 0874: A Filipino American Love Story. She has performed her music at venues including The Lincoln Theatre, Merriweather Post Pavilion, and Olney Theatre Center. Favorite regional theatre acting credits include CATF, Olney Theatre Center, Imagination Stage, Chesapeake Shakespeare Company, The Keegan Theatre, InterAct Theatre Co. and Shakespeare in Clark Park. Her career as a classical singer has taken her from Baltimore to the Vatican. She is also a screen actor who can be seen on “Law and Order’s” 2022 season, in independent films, and in productions for clients like Apple, the NIH, and Home Depot. Her work as an audiobook narrator can be heard anywhere from NYT Bestsellers at MacMillan Publishers to Microsoft. She studied at the University of Delaware, RADA, and Harvard Online Business School. She supports nonprofits through storytelling, having raised over $60,000 for nonprofits since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, and empowers young professionals as they pursue a career in the arts through engagements at universities and conferences across the country.
Baz King graduated Magna Cum Laude from Berklee College of Music with a degree in Contemporary Writing and Production 2013. He’s featured prominently in the Los Angeles community producing, composing, arranging and performing without stop since arriving. Hans Zimmer’s Remote Control Productions was his first California-based employer. Notable collaborations are Carole King, Mateo Laboriel, Ahmad El Haggar, American Idol finalists David Hernandez and Effie Passero. As a touring guitarist and band leader, Sebastian has covered the USA as well as Eastern Europe. Today, Reunert has a new love for meditation, sound journey and sound medicine music.
Aria Velz is a director, dramaturg, and sound designer in the DC area. Her directing work has been seen at Theatre Allicance, Prologue Theatre, Spooky Action Theater, Imagination Stage, Flying V, Keegan Theatre, and NextStop Theatre. Aria was an Allen Lee Hughes fellow at Arena Stage. @AriaVelz
Isaiah Shim frequently engages in musical scenes as a collaborative pianist and conductor in the Baltimore-Washington metropolitan area. He served as the rehearsal pianist/assistant conductor for Young Artists of America at Strathmore (North Bethesda, MD), as well as Conducting Fellow with the Montgomery Philharmonic and assistant conductor for the Maryland Classic Youth Orchestras, Philharmonic. His gifts as a classical pianist and conductor are enhanced by his passion for and skills in improvisation and arranging. His creative improvisations in a variety of musical styles and insightful arrangements have been featured in several performances. Isaiah Shim received master’s degrees in conducting and vocal accompanying from the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University, where he studied with Marin Alsop, Joseph Young, and Eileen Cornett. He received bachelor’s degrees in piano and music education from Wheaton College in Illinois.
Current Team
Incentives
- The Story
- Wishlist
- Updates
- The Team
- Community
Mission Statement
The Story
Come see 0874: A Filipino-American Love Story off-Broadway at Connelly Theater this Summer!
Buy tickets here: https://shenycarts.org/she-nyc/
Eight years ago, my college boyfriend moved 3,000 miles away. When he left, my grandmother came over with a grocery bag containing every single love letter that she and my grandfather wrote to each other between the United States and the Philippines. At the beginning of the first letter, stamped in 1958, my grandmother wanted to be a nun. Eight hundred and seventy-four letters later, in 1963, she left the Philippines to come start a new life as a doctor and a wife in the United States.
While my boyfriend (now husband) moved to California to earn a PhD, I stayed on the East Coast to pursue a career onstage. Director Aria Velz and I met at the very beginning of both our journeys, when we worked together on our very first show after college. Our paths continued to cross, even down to getting married two weeks apart from each other. Although co-composer Baz King and I are cousins who pursued music careers, we didn’t get to know each other until my husband’s move-- about 45 minutes away from Baz in Los Angeles. Over the years we grew closer and closer, and one day I told him about my grandparents’ letters.
“That love story is a musical,” he said.
Like any self-respecting perfectionist, I held the idea under scrutiny. I’m a singer: what do I know about writing music? I’m a third-generation banana from the suburbs: what do I know about the Philippines? After doing my due diligence, I wisely decided that such a project was definitely doomed to fail and would bring great shame to my family and I would probably have to leave the theatre industry, if not the country if I tried to do this. So our conversation lay dormant for years. And instead, in the three years since graduating college and saying goodbye to my boyfriend, I continued to grind away at a career as an actor, finally culminating in a move to New York City, an Equity card, an agent, and an off-Broadway offer… in March 2020.
COVID-19 forced me to grapple with the fact that the career I had sacrificed so much for — love, financial stability, the respect of extended family, friends, and acquaintances— was zapped away in an instant. Then I noticed that people on the crowded subway shuffled into the thick of each other just to get away from me. A houseless person spat racial slurs in my face. My social media newsfeed ebbed and flowed with violence against people who look like me. Who look like my family. As all the world suddenly became long distance, I wondered what else there was besides this isolation, otherness, boredom, and fear.
“That love story is a musical,” I remembered. So I wrote.
0874 allowed me to discover an honest story— full of unwieldy truths, ordinary people and extraordinary tenacity— where love wins. A history that had lain dormant in my family for sixty years and that ironically revealed itself during a period of personal separation. While the COVID-19 pandemic ravaged the global theater industry, I pivoted from on-stage acting to molding my grandparents’ letters into a musical. My only hope for the show was that it would honor my family and allow me to find my own voice in the chorus of AAPI brilliance in the arts. I had no idea what lay in store after that.
But then, I was humbled to receive support from The Kennedy Center to develop and perform 0874 for a live audience. Their support was instrumental in bringing Baz, Aria, and other artists onto the project and provide them with a source of income during the shutdown. While the pandemic forced the world into hiding, especially Asian Americans, this project offered a chance to partner with Asian- and female- led businesses and cultural groups who were instead sharing and celebrating our identities.
Now, I’m so thrilled to bring 0874: A Filipino-American Love Story to New York City as a celebration of Asian American culture, immigrant love stories, femininity, and inter-generational journeys. 0874 will be presented at The Connelly Theater in New York City on August 4th at 8:30pm and August 5th at 3:00pm as part of SheNYC Arts’ Summer Theatre Festival.
Out of 300+ submissions and after making it through 40 readers, eight shows are selected each Summer to be part of NYC's premiere festival showcasing new, original works by gender-marginalized writers, composers and directors. Check out all the cool places the org has been featured!
Although SheNYC Arts is giving us access to the theatre, their network, and so much more, much of the financial weight of this project still rests on our shoulders. Check out what our fiscal goal of $8,740 (funny how that works out, right?) will go towards:
If you get us to 23% of our goal, $2000, you'll...
Build our set! Aria has some seriously cool ideas in mind inspired by Filipino vintage stamps.
Make our music! Baz, Isaiah, and I are playing with an interplay of acoustic sounds and electronic vibes, symbolizing the counterpoint between the past and the present. We need access to gear and time to prerecord some elements that will bolster the live performances.
Dress me! There's such a richness in Filipino fashion that deserves to be seen and celebrated. We also want to give our money to artisans who are working to pay their designers fairly, keep their cultures alive, and are committed to environmental sustainability.
Provide us with miscellaneous admin needs like binders, masks, clip lights, rehearsal and recording space rentals, flameproofing the set (yes, that's a thing, no, there are no pyrotechnics planned... yet...), insurance, etc.
If you get us to 34% of our goal, another $1000, you'll...
Put Baz on a plane! Put Aria on a train! Put Isaiah on another train! Or the same train... or bus... or car... or something.
As I'm the only NYC local, you'll help to house, feed, and caffienate the rest of the team!
If you get us to 74% of our goal, which is another $3,500 you'll...
Pay us! All of us have turned down other opportunities to work this Summer because we believe in this project and we think you might, too.
If you contribute to the last 26% of our goal, $2,240, you'll...
Allow us to spend time and effort on community engagement! We're actively in talks with AAPI youth groups, student groups, and nursing homes to share not just the show with them, but also the practical lessons for other young creatives, performances of the show for seniors in group homes, and so much more.
What if we SURPASS our goal???
If we stretch past our goal of $8,740, we can get to work recording an album of the show, as well as put our (woo!)manpower into finding the next theatre to do it all over again, baby.
Wow! You read this whole page!
Your fearless determination has been acknowledged and appreciated.
If you want to join us on this journey, here are some things you can do...
Come see the show! Purchase tickets here: https://shenycarts.org/she-nyc/
Donate! Check out the tiers and their perks (starting at just $8!) listed to the right on this site.
Connect with us on social media! We'll be posting music, bts (not the band) content, and interacting with all of you @0874musical on Instagram and TikTok. You can also copy and paste something like this on your own account to help spread the word about our show:
I just contributed to 0874: A Filipino-American Love Story, an off-Broadway bound one-woman musical! https://www.alexandramariapalting.com/0874
Follow this campaign! I'll be writing musical theatre numbers about dogs! Baz will be releasing one of our songs as a single! We have generous friends lined up to match your donation! So many possibilities!
Thank you for your interest in this project. We're so happy you're here!
Wishlist
Use the WishList to Pledge cash and Loan items - or - Make a pledge by selecting an Incentive directly.
Artist Salaries
Costs $3,500
As a team of women and BIPOC, it's crucial that everyone be paid for their time, effort and talent.
Team Transportation
Costs $1,000
Help get this national team to the greatest theatre city in the world!
Production Costs
Costs $2,000
Sets, props, and sound equipment (0874 is electronics-heavy!) so we can show NYC what we can do!
Community Engagement
Costs $2,240
Help us bring AAPI, youth, elderly, and women-centered businesses and charities along for the ride!
Cash Pledge
Costs $0
Direct link:
Share this update!
About This Team
Alexandra Palting is an actor and writer based in New York City. Last year, Palting was an Artist in Residence at The Kennedy Center where she wrote, composed and performed her original musical 0874: A Filipino American Love Story. She has performed her music at venues including The Lincoln Theatre, Merriweather Post Pavilion, and Olney Theatre Center. Favorite regional theatre acting credits include CATF, Olney Theatre Center, Imagination Stage, Chesapeake Shakespeare Company, The Keegan Theatre, InterAct Theatre Co. and Shakespeare in Clark Park. Her career as a classical singer has taken her from Baltimore to the Vatican. She is also a screen actor who can be seen on “Law and Order’s” 2022 season, in independent films, and in productions for clients like Apple, the NIH, and Home Depot. Her work as an audiobook narrator can be heard anywhere from NYT Bestsellers at MacMillan Publishers to Microsoft. She studied at the University of Delaware, RADA, and Harvard Online Business School. She supports nonprofits through storytelling, having raised over $60,000 for nonprofits since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, and empowers young professionals as they pursue a career in the arts through engagements at universities and conferences across the country.
Baz King graduated Magna Cum Laude from Berklee College of Music with a degree in Contemporary Writing and Production 2013. He’s featured prominently in the Los Angeles community producing, composing, arranging and performing without stop since arriving. Hans Zimmer’s Remote Control Productions was his first California-based employer. Notable collaborations are Carole King, Mateo Laboriel, Ahmad El Haggar, American Idol finalists David Hernandez and Effie Passero. As a touring guitarist and band leader, Sebastian has covered the USA as well as Eastern Europe. Today, Reunert has a new love for meditation, sound journey and sound medicine music.
Aria Velz is a director, dramaturg, and sound designer in the DC area. Her directing work has been seen at Theatre Allicance, Prologue Theatre, Spooky Action Theater, Imagination Stage, Flying V, Keegan Theatre, and NextStop Theatre. Aria was an Allen Lee Hughes fellow at Arena Stage. @AriaVelz
Isaiah Shim frequently engages in musical scenes as a collaborative pianist and conductor in the Baltimore-Washington metropolitan area. He served as the rehearsal pianist/assistant conductor for Young Artists of America at Strathmore (North Bethesda, MD), as well as Conducting Fellow with the Montgomery Philharmonic and assistant conductor for the Maryland Classic Youth Orchestras, Philharmonic. His gifts as a classical pianist and conductor are enhanced by his passion for and skills in improvisation and arranging. His creative improvisations in a variety of musical styles and insightful arrangements have been featured in several performances. Isaiah Shim received master’s degrees in conducting and vocal accompanying from the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University, where he studied with Marin Alsop, Joseph Young, and Eileen Cornett. He received bachelor’s degrees in piano and music education from Wheaton College in Illinois.