Dorothea Gloria: Bringing Social Issues to the Forefront of Self-Generated Theatre

Dorothea Gloria is an actress from the Philippines that found herself in New York City to further widen and globalize her audience. Back in the Philippines, she’s created and performed pieces that tackled different social issues that needed to be addressed.  

Her first taste of theatre with a cause was with her school, Assumption College. Her mentor, Ana Valdes-Lim, would bring her and several theatre students to the Bureau of Corrections to do theatre workshops.  This started a search for socially relevant theatre for Gloria.

Gloria then joined the Youth Arm of The Philippine Educational Theatre Association (PETA-MTTL) where they perform several theatre advocacies. Her first show with MTTL was called “MeIsYou” where she played a child sex worker. In this play, she wanted to address the continuing sexual exploitation of children in the Philippines. They then performed guerrilla theatre on the street for “Run2Read” to raise money for books for impoverished schools around Manila. Soon after, they then created the show “Path_Lang” where they tackled dysmorphia among teenagers.

Gloria brought her social convictions to her school and wrote her first play called, “AkoInLove” which dealt with issues like teenage pregnancy, abortion, bullying, bulimia, and anorexia. Gloria said, “I wanted to create a theatre piece that speaks to the students who were going through those things during that time and to let them know that no one is alone when going through these things.”

When Gloria moved to New York, she then started to write a stream of socially powered plays. Her New York debut was “The Sun Tries Dating” which garnered the title of ‘Best Work’ for Manhattan Repertory Theatre in 2018. In this play, she wrote about the objectification of women. After that, she wrote “Golden Girl By The Sea” where it dealt with a woman coming out to the world that she’s gay and learning how to love and appreciate herself. She then wrote “The Gift of Anxiety” which dealt with the trauma of being sexually abused. Gloria shares, “It was a journey for me to write, The Gift of Anxiety, because the issue was really close to my heart. I was sexually abused in the past and it really changed my perspective of the world. I grew to be fearful and scared. Nonetheless, I’ve had the love and support of many people and through this show, I wanted to let people who went through these things know that we can definitely rise above this.”

Gloria’s recent performance was called “Projections” which explores the psyche of an abuser. ‘Projections’ was a piece performed to fundraise for RAINN, USA’s largest anti-sexual assault violence organization. She, along with other artists around the globe, were able to raise $3,678 for victims of domestic violence.

Currently, Gloria is working on a web series called, “Lockdown Diaries” where she aims to lift the issue of racism against Asians due to the corona outbreak.