UCLA

The Pilipino Cultural Night (PCN) is perhaps most known for its impact on the lives of college-aged Filipinx American students across the United States and especially on the West Coast. However, most studies about the PCN have focused on larger universities where the critical mass of Filipinx Americans is quite high. This paper aims to build off the work of other scholars and take a closer look at the experiences of PCN through the lens of non-Filipinx American identifying students at a smaller, private, and Jesuit college campus. This work discovered how the PCN is a place for community building through the shared experiences of performing. Many respondents claimed that the PCN experience created deep almost familial like bonds that influenced the involvement level of many non-Filipinx American students. I utilize a concept deemed colloquially as “PCN magic” to highlight the unique experience of being a part of the PCN and what draws people into the PCN. The perspective of Filipinx American identifying students is also used to get a better sense of how the multiethnic PCN cast may impact the PCN experience for Filipinx American students. The various aspects of being a part of a performance such as the build-up of watching performers get better, wearing the costumes, and being on stage also influence non-Filipinx students to join the PCN and are often a large part of the experience itself. The work then veers into the realm of performance studies to look at the ways that the Asian American body is viewed when performing on stage when performing under the banner of the Pilipino Cultural Night both from the insider perspective and the outsider perspective.