It’s easy to dismiss “Next Fall” by Geoffrey Nauffts as another gay play, as another one of those that romanticize the narrative of love that is different, because it’s not heterosexual. But that would be to miss out entirely on what else is unfolding in front of you as spectator, it would be to miss out on the nuances that’s in the rest of this narrative’s necessary transformation of the ways in which we might view homosexuality on the one hand, religion on the other, love across the board.
To ask the question: but what was that ending about? Would be to miss out entirely on the fact that not all endings are closures, and especially for acts of loving and desire and belief, the default must be an open end.
And yet that question could be no surprise in this context, where we are made to imagine that Catholicism in all its contradictions and tragedies is an end in itself, where atheism is something we imagine doesn’t exist, as it is something we fear just in case Catholicism was right all along. In that sense it is precisely in Third World Philippines that “Next Fall” derives a power particularly about context. Which is here, where Catholicism is used to oppress women, sustain the impoverishment of a majority, and justify the shameless accumulation of wealth of a few; which means here, “Next Fall” is beyond just homosexuality, and becomes about love, and the brave disputation of Catholicism as we know it, as we might believe it in these shores.