On the Perseverance Theatre stage, a martial arts studio is being built. Ariel Estrada, author and one-man performer of Full Contact, says the set of his first play is more than a dojo.
“If I do my job right, the audience is going to experience this character trying to make his way out of an escape room,” he hinted.
Full Contact will premiere in Juneau on December 6th. The play is inspired by Estrada’s early years in New York City, when the actor joined a strict martial arts community during important milestones in American history. At the heart of Estrada’s story is his Filipino father’s immigration to Sitka.
Estrada isn’t a stranger to theater. He’s a trained actor who’s performed on numerous television, film and off-broadway shows. He’s also the founder of a creative studio for Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander performers called Leviathan Lab.
But, Full Contact is Estrada’s playwriting debut. He started writing the play seven years ago after watching a performance by Stephan Wolfert about unresolved trauma. The show prompted Estrada to wonder how his own trauma has impacted his body.
Similar questions had already begun bubbling before Estrada’s play brought them to the surface. He spent twenty years practicing strict martial arts before deciding to stop in 2008.
“This whole show is about my life as a fighter, right? Literally in the ring, getting hit and hitting, pretty intense violence that I’ve both given and received,” he said. “And all that time I was trying to fight, I wasn’t trying to discover who I was really fighting against.”
Estrada says there’s moments in the play where you can see the impact fighting has on his life. One of his favorite scenes is a fight he has with another black belt martial artist, who Estrada also plays.
But Full Contact isn’t only about martial arts. More deeply, it’s a play about embracing every part of yourself – regardless of whatever forces ask you to conform.
In 2006, Estrada’s father passed away. That moment catapulted Estrada into researching his identity as a Filipino-American. That’s how he learned about kapwa, a cultural concept about belonging that is the essence of his play.
“This play slowly became this sort of anthem,” he shared. “It started out as a love letter to my father, then it slowly became an anthem to Filipino pride and our Filipino power.”
That’s one reason why Leslie Ishii, Artistic Director of Perseverance Theatre, wanted to bring Full Contact to Juneau. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she attended a reading of Estrada’s play over Zoom. She knew that his connection to Alaska would resonate with the audience, along with his unique approach to storytelling.
“There’s a lot of things that come out for this character, but you also see this physical journey,” she stated. “It’s really interesting in that way.”
There will be a lot of action in Full Contact. Estrada will play 10 characters on stage, and his movements won’t be limited to martial arts. He says there will be funny moments, whether it’s him dancing on stage or joking around with his audience. He hopes the play will uplift the audience – and probe them to think about what’s next.
“If there’s any question I want the audience to ask themselves, it’s to look at the impact of these forces that I talk about in the play,” he said. “And I’m hoping people will ask, ‘What kind of world can we imagine without those forces?’”
Full Contact runs at Perseverance Theatre from December 4 to December 22, 2024. As part of its selection for the National New Play Network’s Rolling World Premiere, performances will also be held October 2025 by Leviathan Lab in New York City and April 2026 by Diversionary Theatre in San Diego. Estrada will also share a story that didn’t make it into his play at Juneau’s next Mudrooms event on December 10.
Tasha Elizarde
Tasha Elizarde is a photojournalist and curator from Juneau, Alaska interested in how culture, art, and community are formed. With a focus on uplifting underrepresented voices in storytelling, she’s also the co-founder of a Filipino media collective called Mana. Tasha has previously worked with KTOO Public Media and Juneau Empire.