This essay interrogates the discrepant geographies of the American colonial enterprise in the Philippines. Orthodox versions of colonialism posit a center/capital from which it emanates; the record of Shakespearean performances in the Philippines, however, proves the opposite true. While Manila was unquestionably the center of colonial bureaucracy and its institutions, dramatic colonial culture, particularly Shakespearean drama, seems to have taken a trip to the peripheries of Negros Oriental. The cross-cultural costuming employed in Shakespearean performance in colonial Negros, however, opens up a potential, albeit subtle, site of subversion. The essay examines costumes, an intrinsic feature of drama, in the context of its locations, and exposes this aesthetic tool as a potential site of colonial counter-exoticization and resistance