Denise Estacio & Scarlette Pastorin The next generation of Filipino storytellers

by Oscar Pantaleon Jr.

	Denise Estacio	Scarlette Pastorin

Getting into the University of Winnipeg’s BA Honours Acting program is about more than earning a degree. It is also about stepping into a space where Filipino Canadians are increasingly seeing themselves not just as spectators, but as performers and production professionals.

Denise Estacio and Scarlette Pastorin are pursuing theatre at a time when representation in Canadian creative industries is expanding. Their experiences also reflect a changing attitude within the Filipino community, where careers in the arts are sometimes viewed as less practical than professions in traditional fields.

Filipino director Dennis Gupa, an assistant professor in the University of Winnipeg’s Department of Theatre and Film, sees their presence as significant.

“Denise and Scarlette are talented, intelligent and hardworking artists bravely embracing creative spaces,” Dennis says. “I see them as emerging leaders in Canadian theatre carrying the depth and complexity of our diasporic heritage.”

He believes having Filipino students pursue theatre professionally represents an important shift. “This demonstrates the changing ethos of our community with regards to thinking about arts beyond decorative culture but as a serious career for life and world making.”

From neuroscience to theatre

After arriving in Canada at age six, Denise learned English partly by watching movies with her mother. What began as childhood fascination with cinema eventually led her to every performing arts program her school offered. But she did not initially see theatre as a career.

“Growing up within the Filipino community, there’s this belief that artistic passion doesn’t pay,” Denise says. “It was almost taboo to consider a career that wasn’t within the sciences.”

She went on to study neuroscience while continuing to take theatre classes. It was not until she began seeing more diverse Asian roles on screen that something changed.

“It made me realize that there comes a time when you stop waiting for representation and become one yourself,” she says.

That realization eventually brought her to the Honours Acting audition. She chose a monologue that reflected her emotional range, allowing her to be flexible with the audition panel.

“I went there with the ‘go big or go home’ mentality,” she says. “The best and most profitable risk there is yourself.”

Love affair with musicals

Scarlette’s introduction to theatre started in Grade 10. She auditioned for High School Musical, initially drawn by her love of music.

“I had been playing and writing music prior to this,” she says. “It was there, through the work, community, and art, that I realized theatre was going to be an important part of my high school experience.”

By Grade 12, after closing night of Willy Wonka Jr., she knew she was not ready to give it up.

For Scarlette, theatre is ultimately about connection. “Both theatre and music are giant conversations happening on stage,” she says. “You form a special connection during performance with your co-actors, with the space, and with the audience.”

UW Associate Professor Christopher Brauer has seen that quality in Pastorin’s work. He describes her as “an excellent guitarist as well as an actor,” with a “lovely vulnerability and a quirky sense of humour” that bring “lots of life and interest” to her performances.

What comes next

The Honours Acting program combines practical training in voice, movement, and acting with courses in analysis and theory. Students also study areas such as stage combat, makeup, improvisation, musical theatre, filmmaking, and theatrical design. “It’s as intensive as a liberal arts program can be,” Christopher says.

The program also has strong connections to Winnipeg’s professional arts community. “If you go to any theatre production in Winnipeg, or watch any film or TV show shot here, you’ll see graduates from our program,” he says. “Our people are everywhere in the performing arts in Winnipeg.”

Now in her final year, the next step for Denise is to keep taking risks. She is preparing to play Masha in Chekhov’s Three Sisters and hopes to explore musical theatre while building a professional career. Scarlette is looking further ahead to studying education after completing her acting degree. She hopes to teach theatre and mathematics in high school. She also wants to explore screen acting.

For both young women, however, the significance goes beyond their individual careers. Their presence on campus, and eventually on Winnipeg stages and screens, helps expand the idea of who gets to tell Canadian stories.

And perhaps, for the next Filipino Canadian student wondering whether theatre is really a career worth pursuing, Denise’s experience offers a simple answer: sometimes you have to stop waiting to see yourself represented and become the representation yourself.