Category Archive for: entablado

komentaryo

(mis)handling heritage

I am the last person to defend SM, and I do think we’ve got enough malls and condos in this country. But one of the first things I asked when the petition to save the Philam Life Theater began to gain ground was: why?

And no, not why did SMDC buy the Philam Life property, but why was this property sold at all?

Yet that doesn’t seem to be a question that many people are asking. Instead we are asking questions about why SMDC needs to build more condos, why it needs to build more malls. Instead we throw expletives at Henry Sy and his empire, and say he is greedy and nothing else, forgetting that while the latter might be true, what drives this greed is the fact that they can afford it. And that the government allows it.

This is not to say it’s right, as it is to ask: who allows oligarchs to buy this country’s lands and services? Why is it even acceptable that basic services are owned by one, two, three families? Whose fault is it that our oldest structures, the ones that are monuments to our past, are being sold, one after the other? Why is the only other option for these structures, neglect and forgetting?

And who is blameless in this oft repeated enterprise of a piece of heritage being lost to time or capitalists, and us all raising our fists too late?

read the rest here.

kultura

Frolic and fun in “No Way To Treat A Lady”*

Did I mention talent?

Because it’s true that the datedness of a text such as this, set in the 1970s, is wont to mean an amount of disengagement with its unfolding on a current stage. And yet, as with many things that are fiction(al) to us, there is the task of falling head first into an unfamiliar story’s telling, and finding that it can be absolutely enjoyable.The cast of ‘No Way To Treat A Lady’ reminds us that sometimes five is enough.  (more…)

kultura

Desire and disappearance in “Stageshow”*

It is rare that a stage production brings me to tears, and I remember two that have: Repertory Philippines’ “Next Fall” and Atlantis Productions’ “Next To Normal.”

An empty stage, a small group of actors, a filled heart for “Stageshow.”

Yet, it seems to be an injustice to “Stageshow” that I would compare it at all to these. Because here is a Mario O’Hara text, brought to life by Tanghalang Pilipino, making it an all-original Filipino production. And did I mention it’s a musicale, too? That it’s funny, at times risqué, absolutely what you don’t expect? This is reason enough to think this in a league different from those foreign productions staged locally; then you find yourself in tears at the end of it and you know this is something rare and wonderful.

Days since, this “Stageshow” hangover is beyond me. (more…)

komentaryo

Dolphy, national artist

It’s difficult to imagine childhood without Dolphy, even when all he was to me was the image of a father on television, even as who I identified with was Maricel Soriano or Claudine Barretto playing his daughters in two different sitcoms, across two different generations. At some point this father image became interwoven with that of Enteng Kabisote, father to Aiza.

The images are real to me, the characterization of fatherhood that was protective but had difficulty providing, that was faced with the rich mother-in-law who disapproved, that struggled financially but had a posse who depended on him, underground as the economy was that they all created and fueled. (more…)

kultura

so late but still valid: on “In The Heights”

because i saw Jackielou Blanco in some trailer for some soap today, and i thought: damnit i haven’t written about In The Heights Manila. and then Nyoy Volante was singing on TV, and i thought, damnit i haven’t written about In The Heights Manila. (more…)