There’s a brand-new TV sitcom ready to hit the air in early January—and it’s one that should hit close to home for Mennonites and Filipinos alike in southeastern Manitoba.
The pilot episode of Maria and the Mennos will air on Wednesday, January 3 on YESTV, a faith-based television Canadian station. The show can also be streamed online at no cost at www.yestv.com/streaming.
Winkler is the backdrop of the half-hour comedy. The cast features local actors Victoria Exconde as Maria, Kenton Dyck as Maria’s newlywed husband, Erna Peters as her mother-in-law, and Chuck Fefchak as father-in-law.
Maria is a young, recently married Filipino-Canadian woman who finds herself living alongside her new husband in the home of her in-laws. The show revolves around this bubbly yet independent woman as she attempts to maintain her own cultural identity in a world of pierogis, hymn sings, and rural prairie life.
Zany antics ensue as these two very different cultures collide under one roof.
Orlando Braun and Paul Plett are the executive team of Ode Productions, the producers behind the TV sitcom.
The show’s creative team consists of locals Paul Plett, Tina Fehr Kehler, and Hazel Wallace along with a writing team of which half are of Mennonite descent and the other half Filipino, for script authenticity.
Plett describes how the idea of Maria and the Mennos first took off.
“I’m a Mennonite, and although I’ve often seen Mennonites portrayed in the media, I have never seen my own experience represented,” Plett says. “Likewise, I’ve collaborated with many Filipino-Canadian artists in Manitoba who have never seen their experiences on screen. So that was the genesis of the idea for Maria and the Mennos. What if we were to make a show that shows Mennonites as we know them? Filipino-Canadians as we know them? What if we were to celebrate these cultures here in Manitoba and share our own experiences with the world? Take all of that and throw it into the context of a TV sitcom, and we have the beginnings of an idea here.”
While a good portion of the show was shot inside a house near the outskirts of Winnipeg, other filming locations are set in or near Winkler, including one episode that was shot at the Altona MCC Thrift Store.
To keep the show as true to the Manitoba Mennonite experience as possible, Plett says there’s episodes revolving around crokinole, faspa, thrift shopping, and borscht.
“We really wanted this show to feel familiar, so the Mennonite writers drew as much from their real-life experiences as possible,” Plett says. “And the Filipino writers did the same, giving us episodes that focus on Filipino festivals, karaoke, and as many flamboyant characters as we could fit in. We also tried to incorporate as much Low German and Tagalog into the show as we could, to make the show feel as authentic as possible.”
A favourite episode of Plett’s is the hymn sing episode, he says, since he grew up loving the hymns sung in church.
“But the Filipino karaoke episode is also completely hilarious, as are a number of other episodes,” Plett says. “I just don’t want to give anything away!”
From inception to completion, Maria and the Mennos took about a year and a half to produce. Plett says this is relatively quick for a show of its calibre.
Ode Productions has been in the film business for the last 12 years, telling stories from around the globe of human struggle and achievement.
Last year, the company produced a feature documentary called Surviving Suicide which told the stories of four people, all touched by suicide and yet still living for hope.
Plett says that not all of his company’s film creations are faith-centred, but they all hold deeper meaning that will touch the hearts of viewers.
“We try to make all of our projects touch on deeper issues, such as cultural identity, mental health, [or] environmental awareness.”
View the trailer for Maria and the Mennos:
