- RIKSHA RELAUNCH
Please join us for Riksha Returns, a multidisciplinary evening of Asian American, Native Hawaiian & Pacific Islander art, performance and community storytelling on Saturday, May 16, 2026, at the Rizal Center in Chicago.
First launched in 1993, Riksha began as a literary and cultural platform, including a print magazine and live performances, amplifying Asian American voices in Chicago. In 2017, Riksha evolved into an online magazine continuing its mission to showcase AANHPCI voices. After a period of quiet in recent years, Riksha returns—reimagined as a live gathering and evolving archive.
The night begins at 6:30pm with an artist reception. Come connect with the artists showing their contemporary artwork!
Performances will begin at 7:30pm featuring:
Banyan Asian American Writers Collective @banyanwriters
CIRCA Pintig @circapintigtheatre
Nothing Without a Company @nothingwithoutacompany
Sona Umbra @sonaumbra
Stir Friday Night @stirfridaynight
Poet Patty Cooper
Writer Vinh Hoang
Writer/Performer Hannah Ii-Epstein
Writer Dwight Okita @dwight.okita
Writer/performer Lani Montreal @fiercefemme27
Singer/songwriter Chika Sekiguchi
Writer PJ Temple @pjtemple7
Throughout the night, guests can participate in a Storytelling Booth. Attendees are invited to record a short story, poem, reflection, or song. These recordings will become part of the Riksha Living Archive and may be curated into future publications and releases.
Admission is free. Registration is encouraged and donations are accepted.
https://www.zeffy.com/en-US/ticketing/riksha-returns-a-celebration-of-aanhpi-art-music-and-community
Light bites will be served (dairy/nut/shellfish-free).
Event Details:
Riksha Returns: A Celebration of Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Art, Music, and Community
Saturday, May 16, 2026
6:30pm – Artist Reception
7:30pm – Performances
11:00pm – Evening’s end
Rizal Center, 1332 W Irving Park Rd, Chicago, IL
Featuring: Visual Art • Spoken Word • Live Music • Storytelling Booth
Art Exhibit runs from May 4 to June 5, 2026. By appointment or as Rizal Center public events allow.
CIRCA Pintig is a proud partner and sponsor of Riksha Returns: A Celebration of AANHPI Art, Music & Community, organized by Riksha Magazine. We are excited to announce that we are also accepting donations on behalf of this event. Link above.
While the Rizal Center building does not have an elevator, a chairlift is available to access the upper floor. Staff will be on hand to assist with navigating the steps and using the lift. We would also like to express our gratitude to the Rizal Center and the FACGC Board for making a “home away from home” for our artist community.
About Riksha Magazine
Founded in 1993, Riksha Magazine is a Chicago-based literary and cultural platform rooted in Asian American storytelling. Known for amplifying emerging and established voices, Riksha returns with a renewed focus on live performance, community storytelling, and the creation of a living archive. Contact rikshamagazine@gmail.com with any inquiries. www.riksha.com
- Community Outreach & Service
Niles West Students Lend Their Hands and Hearts at the Rizal Center
Earlier this month, the Rizal Center / Filipino American Council of Greater Chicago welcomed a lively and generous group of students from Niles West High School for a half-day of learning, service, and community building.
What began as a field trip quickly became a meaningful experience in history, culture, solidarity, and bayanihan.
Learning the Story of the Rizal Center
The visit opened with a warm welcome and an introduction to the Center’s history from Jerry Clarito, President of the Rizal Center and Chairman of the Board.
Students learned that the building was purchased in 1974, while the organization’s roots go back to 1953. Over the decades, the organization’s name evolved from the Filipino National Council of Chicago to the Filipino American Council of Greater Chicago, reflecting changes in immigration, new generations of Filipino Americans, and a community that now reaches beyond the city itself.
Jerry shared that the Center was created as a place where immigrants could:
- Come together
- Gather together
- Dream together
- Eat together
- Contribute to the development of Greater Chicago
Students were also introduced to the Center’s values framework, rooted in the Filipino alphabet, emphasizing action, bayanihan, concern for community, compassion, and mutual aid.
Outside the Center, students heard the story behind the mural honoring Filipino workers and community leaders, including Carmelito Llapitan, a postal worker and recognized as one of the founders of the Rizal Center in Chicago.
A portion of Wayne Avenue has been designated Carmelito Llapitan Court in his honor.
Discovering Community Partners in Action
Throughout the morning, students met several of the Rizal Center’s community partners and learned how collaboration strengthens the work of justice, care, and advocacy.
The Chinese American Service League shared information about its Anti-Hate Action Center, including the rise in anti-Asian hate incidents during and after the pandemic, as well as the mental health, safety, and financial impacts on Asian American communities.
Staff discussed:
- The difference between hate crimes and hate incidents
- The importance of reporting and documentation
- The need for culturally appropriate and trauma-informed support
- The power of cross-community solidarity
Intern Asia also spoke about her own journey into community work, including canvassing, youth workshops, and the use of art to open conversations about identity, belonging, and anti-hate advocacy.
Through these conversations, students saw how Filipino, Chinese, Asian American, and broader community partnerships help protect, uplift, and support vulnerable communities across Chicago and Illinois.
Art, Compassion, and Hands-On Service
Service was at the heart of the visit.
The Art for Hope Foundation invited students to roll up their sleeves and help assemble teddy bear and activity kits for children facing extended hospital stays. Since 2023, Art for Hope has delivered more than 4,000 kits to children’s hospitals and long-term patients.
During the visit, students:
- Worked in teams to pack teddy bear craft kits and other creative materials
- Learned how art, crafts, and tactile activities can ease isolation and anxiety during long medical stays
- Saw how their own time and creativity can bring comfort to children and families they may never meet
Building Bridges Across Generations and Neighborhoods
Throughout the visit, students had informal conversations with community elders, nonprofit leaders, artists, engineers, social service providers, and volunteers.
They heard about:
- The experiences of Filipinos in the Midwest compared to the West Coast
- Collaborations around Asian American Action Day in Springfield
- The role of young people in making the Rizal Center more visible to families who may not yet know it exists
- The importance of arts, culture, mutual aid, and advocacy working together under one roof
For many students, this was their first visit to the Rizal Center. For some, it was also their first time seeing how deeply connected community history, creative expression, service, and civic engagement can be.
One student shared that even Filipino family members they knew had never heard of the Rizal Center before this trip. Now, these young people return to their homes, schools, and neighborhoods as ambassadors, ready to share what they learned and invite others in.
A Shared Meal, A Shared Future
The visit closed with a group photo featuring students, partners, and volunteers, followed by a shared merienda of vegetarian pancit and egg rolls, symbolizing long life, nourishment, and community.
Students were invited to return for future programs, including:
- Book clubs
- Theater performances
- Open mics
- Dance classes
- Martial arts
- Cultural events
- Volunteer opportunities
The day was a beautiful reminder that when young people, elders, artists, organizers, and community partners come together, everyone gains.
Students gain a deeper sense of belonging and purpose. Community organizations gain new energy, ideas, and helping hands. Chicago gains another generation committed to action, compassion, solidarity, and bayanihan.
We are deeply grateful to the students, teachers, and chaperones from Niles West High School who made this visit possible. Special thanks to our friends from CASL, Art for Hope, artist Abby Mendoza, and Rizal Center volunteer JD for helping present to the students.
We look forward to welcoming everyone back to the Rizal Center, your home away from home, again soon.
Photos Folder: https://photos.app.goo.gl/YTzPFi6bRzepB4cX8
- Filipino American Stories Take the Screen at the Gene Siskel Film Center
This May, Filipino American stories will be celebrated on one of Chicago’s most respected film stages. The Gene Siskel Film Center will present KAPWA (Shared Identity): Filipino American Shorts as part of the 29th Asian American Showcase, an annual festival presented in collaboration with the Foundation for Asian American Independent Media.
Taking place on Friday, May 8, 2026, at 5:45 PM, the program brings together a powerful collection of short films from the United States, Canada, New Zealand, and the Philippines. Through English and Tagalog stories, these films explore the emotional, historical, and often unexpected ways Filipino and Filipino American communities carry memory, family, migration, identity, and survival.
The title KAPWA, meaning shared identity or shared self, offers a fitting frame for the program. Each film opens a window into the bonds that connect people across generations, oceans, and histories. Some stories look back to overlooked Filipino American histories in places like 1930s Ohio, 1940s Brooklyn, and 1980s San Francisco. Others turn toward the present, exploring caregiving, family expectations, illness, heritage, sports, and the ache of staying connected across distance.
Together, the shorts reflect the richness and complexity of Filipino and diasporic life. They show how families protect one another, misunderstand one another, disappoint one another, and still find ways to remain connected. With humor, tenderness, and honesty, the program invites audiences to see Filipino American storytelling in its many forms.
The evening will include several featured works, including The Little Farmers of Reynoldsburg, Ohio, which uses archival home-movie footage to illuminate an interracial couple’s life on a farm in 1930s rural Ohio. Other films include Awit Natin (Our Song), Veterano, Sands Street, Bridging Our Stories, You Could’ve Been a Nurse, Maybe It’s Just the Rain, and In the Morning Sun.
Select filmmakers are expected to be in attendance for dialogue with the audience, offering a special opportunity to hear directly from the artists behind the films.
The Asian American Showcase runs from May 7 to 12, 2026 and continues its mission of creating a platform for established and emerging Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander filmmakers. Now in its 29th year, the Showcase remains an important space for films that preserve community histories, challenge invisibility, and celebrate the creative voices shaping Asian American cinema today.
For our community, this program is more than a film screening. It is a gathering around stories that remember where we come from, honor where we are, and imagine where we are going together.
KAPWA (Shared Identity): Filipino American Shorts
Friday, May 8, 2026, at 5:45 PM
Gene Siskel Film Center
116 minutes
In English and Tagalog with English subtitles
Select filmmakers in attendance
https://www.siskelfilmcenter.org/kapwa
- Arts & Cultural Events:
- Will You Be My Other Half?
CIRCA Pintig and The Understudy presents a staged reading of the sapphic sordid tale of Glorianne by playwright Rose Gonzales as we celebrate AAPINH Month:
Insecure Mayari navigates through all the trials and tribulations of teen social life, budding queer romance, and her uncle’s suspicion that her would-be girlfriend is a monster from Filipino folklore.
@theunderstudychi @glorianne.theplay @grosegonzales
MAY 12th 7:00 PM
5531 N. Clark
$10 suggested donation to support the future season of CIRCA Pintig, or pay-what-you-can
https://zeffy.com/en-US/ticketing/glorianne-by-rose-gonzales-circa-pintig-x-the-understudy
- BOW DOWN TO THIS CAST!
From left to right:
Arvin Jalandoon – King Lear
Heather Jencks – Gloucester
Sabine Wan – Kent
Emily Rosales – Goneril
Jill Raz – Regan
Mari Joy – Cordelia/Fool
Rusty Allen – France/Oswald/Captain
Mab de Guzman – Edgar
Summit J. Star – Edmund
Rich Lazatin – Albany
Anh Nguyen – Cornwall/Doctor
https://www.zeffy.com/en-US/ticketing/king-lear
A New King Lear for Our Community: Shakespeare Through a Filipino Lens
This summer, our community will experience something Chicago has never quite seen before: William Shakespeare’s King Lear reimagined through a distinctly Filipino and Filipino American lens.
Presented in collaboration with Essential Invisible and CIRCA Pintig, the Center for Immigrant Resources and Community Arts, this adaptation brings together Shakespeare’s classic tragedy with the lived histories, languages, humor, grief, and resilience of the Filipino diaspora.
Adapted and directed by Noella Bonsol, this staged reading centers Filipino cultural experience while celebrating a team of Asian American artists. It invites audiences to encounter King Lear not as a distant classical text, but as a story that speaks directly to families, elders, caregivers, immigrants, and communities navigating questions of power, memory, duty, and love.
Why King Lear, Why Now?
In Shakespeare’s time, King Lear was a bold political commentary on power, succession, and the disruption caused by a ruler dividing his kingdom. This new adaptation honors that legacy while asking urgent questions through a Filipino and diasporic frame:
- What happens when Lear is imagined as a Filipino elder navigating age, memory loss, and authority?
- How do themes of filial piety, obligation, and saving face resonate within Filipino and wider Asian American cultures?
- What does it mean, in an immigrant community, to divide not just land, but legacy, language, and responsibility among the next generation?
Dramaturg Anne Marie and the creative team have grounded this production in research on Filipino immigration to the United States, family caregiving, and mental health, including the higher incidence of dementia among Filipino Americans.
While Lear’s specific diagnosis is never named in Shakespeare’s text, this adaptation invites audiences to recognize him through experiences many families already know: an aging parent whose memory, authority, and sense of self are changing, often behind closed doors and “within the family” because of stigma, shame, or hiya.
Through this lens, King Lear becomes more than a story of a fallen king. It becomes a story of a family struggling to care, communicate, inherit, forgive, and survive.
Language as Legacy: Tagalog, Taglish, and Deep Roots
At the heart of this adaptation is language.
Lear’s world has been relocated to the Cavite region of the Philippines, in Luzon, where Tagalog carries history, class, faith, hierarchy, and memory. The production uses language not only as dialogue, but as a marker of generation, power, intimacy, and distance.
Lear’s speeches often draw from deeper, older Tagalog vocabulary, echoing an older generation whose words carry ancestral weight. His daughters, by contrast, move more fluidly between English and Tagalog, speaking in contemporary Taglish or “conyo” rhythms that reflect education, class, and generational change.
Familial and honorific terms, such as how one addresses a father, king, elder, or sibling, help anchor the relationships in a specifically Filipino cultural context.
The script itself is a living document, constantly evolving as actors, translators, and native speakers refine word choices, rhythm, and register. Cast members are encouraged to suggest alternate terms, add language from other Asian languages they speak, and adjust how their characters move between English and Tagalog depending on who they are addressing and what they want.
For cast members who are not native Tagalog speakers, the production team is offering pronunciation coaching, recordings, and one-on-one support. In this way, the process of learning and struggling with language becomes part of the creative journey itself.
Costumes, Color, and Character
The production’s visual world is both contemporary and deeply Filipino. Costume designer and actor Mab has crafted a design language where clothing tells the story of power, kinship, status, and transformation.
Lear begins in a traditional Filipino barong, signaling status, heritage, and authority. As his power and clarity erode, his clothing becomes more stripped down and common, mirroring the unraveling of his mind and social position.
Cordelia appears in soft pastels, with a modest Filipiniana or shawl and minimal silver jewelry, creating a visual language of humility and quiet strength. The Fool, doubled with Cordelia, transforms into a playful figure with the energy of a Filipino parlor singer, bringing mischief, music, and hope into the tragedy.
Goneril and Regan share visual cues as sisters, while still revealing their differences. Goneril appears in strong golds and bold jewelry, signaling power and display. Regan moves in a more “princess” palette, with jewelry echoing Goneril’s, reflecting her desire to align herself with her sister’s force and status.
Other characters are tracked through subtle visual details:
- Edgar and Edmund shift through status symbols, such as watches, bags, or accessories, as their fortunes reverse.
- Kent begins as a proper and loyal servant, then reappears in a more “tourist” or Western-assimilated look as he tries to reenter Lear’s world unnoticed.
- Albany, Cornwall, and the Captain are distinguished through clear color palettes and security-inspired looks, helping audiences follow the story, especially those new to Shakespeare.
The goal is not decoration. It is storytelling through silhouette, color, and texture, allowing audiences to read power, relationship, and change at a glance.
Joy in the Midst of Tragedy
Although King Lear is one of Shakespeare’s darkest plays, this adaptation insists on making space for Filipino joy.
As the director shared with the company, Filipinos are among the most joyful people on the planet, even in the face of colonial history, migration, hardship, and loss. This production honors that truth by highlighting moments of warmth, humor, music, and tenderness.
Audiences can expect to see joy emerge through:
- The loyalty and affection between Kent and Lear
- The playfulness and whimsy of the Fool
- The emotional reunion between Lear and Cordelia
- The presence of food, laughter, music, and family rituals woven into the world of the play
These moments do not soften the tragedy. They deepen it. They remind us that even in grief, there may still be laughter at the table, music in the background, and family members doing their best to care for one another.
Community Roots and Who This Is For
This King Lear is not only for Shakespeare fans. It is for the communities whose lives and questions live inside the story.
This production is especially for:
- Filipino and Filipino American elders and families who have navigated aging, dementia, caregiving, and silence
- Immigrant communities who recognize the push and pull between old and new worlds
- Families balancing ancestral language and English, duty and self-determination, tradition and change
- Seniors, working families, and community members who deserve accessible, culturally grounded theater experiences
- Blind and low-vision community members who are often left out of mainstream theater access conversations
The creative team is working toward free or low-cost performances for seniors and community members, with a special invitation to elder communities to attend this Tagalog-rich production and see themselves reflected on stage.
At its heart, this adaptation asks: Who gets to see themselves in Shakespeare? Who gets to hear their language, their family dynamics, their grief, and their humor treated as worthy of the classical stage?
For this production, the answer is clear: our community does.
A Workshop, Not a Museum Piece
This adaptation is being developed as a workshop production, which means it is a space for experimentation, vulnerability, and collective authorship.
The script will continue to grow as the company discovers what is:
- Most truthful to Filipino cultural realities
- Most accessible to audiences new to Shakespeare
- Most musical, emotional, and alive on stage
Rather than treating Shakespeare as a museum piece, this process treats the play as a living work, one that can speak in new languages, hold new histories, and make room for new bodies on stage.
As CIRCA Pintig often reminds us, community is nourished from the inside out: through food, story, shared labor, and art that speaks both to our wounds and to our capacity for joy.
Event Highlight
King Lear: A Staged Reading
Written by: William Shakespeare
Adapted and directed by: Noella Bonsol
Produced by: Essential Invisible
In partnership with: CIRCA Pintig
Location: 1332 W. Irving Park Road, Chicago, IL 60613
General Admission: $15
Tickets: Reserve tickets here
Cast
Bow down to this cast! Essential Invisible and CIRCA Pintig are thrilled to announce the artists bringing this reimagined King Lear to life.
- Arvin Jalandoon as King Lear
- Heather Jencks as Gloucester
- Sabine Wan as Kent
- Emily Rosales as Goneril
- Jill Raz as Regan
- Mari Joy as Cordelia / Fool
- Rusty Allen as France / Oswald / Captain
- Mab de Guzman as Edgar
- Summit J. Star as Edmund
- Rich Lazatin as Albany
- Anh Nguyen as Cornwall / Doctor
This new King Lear is a story of power, aging, family, language, and legacy, retold in the languages of our community. It invites us to gather, listen, recognize one another, and imagine what becomes possible when Shakespeare speaks with a Filipino voice.
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