The Silenced Body of The Silent Soprano: The Overseas Filipino Worker as Silent and Erased in a Global City

This essay interrogates the traditionally gendered Filipino female domestic helper vis-à-vis her “constructed” role in transnational relations and the idea of globalization represented in the 2007–2008 musical The Silent Soprano. Through this musical, the essay explores how globalization and transnational relations are experienced and mediated on the stage of the developing city of Manila, which claims to be a cosmopolitan one. It is posited that the representations of transnational relations and globalization are predicated within methodological nationalism, inscribing a fear of participation in a globalized and cosmopolitan living.