Category Archive for: entablado

kultura

in the end, it is just about love

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. (more…)

kultura

love & clothes & western kawomenan

brought Angela to Love Loss and What I Wore, the local staging of a Nora Ephron and Delia Ephron original. mixed reviews in the US, but an interesting enough text owing to this third world Pinay’s class consciousness. and Bituin Escalante and Menchu Lauchengco-Yulo are equally brilliant in it. go see it, bring your mothers and girlfriends. will only run until Jan 22! :) saw it last year, and did this review. 

Five women in all black outfits, mostly in the same shape save for Bituin Escalante, all the same age bracket save for Jay Valencia-Glorioso, enter the stage and sit on bar stools. The central figure talks of age as Gingy (played by Glorioso) — the one monologue that’s a thread through the others, the one whose life of dresses is intertwined with memories of family and marriage and children, found and lost loves. (more…)

kultura

the question of CareDivas*

Because CareDivas was one of those plays that everyone was raving about, that got TV exposure because celebrities sponsored whole shows, that was celebrated for being an original Pinoy comedy musical. Of course that it dealt with homosexuality must have had much to do with those raves, though as with anything and especially a stage production, there is more to this than just the fact of its subject matter. (more…)

kultura

notes on TEDx Diliman: ideas worth spreading? #3!

TEDx Talks are independently organized TED talks across the world, which is about “riveting talks by remarkable people.” TEDx Diliman was my first. This is a review of each of the TED talks that were part of it, done in 18 minutes or less, because that’s the time limit of a TED Talk. Read more about TED here, and check out this really good video on TEDx here.

Glecy Atienza on Buhay: Theater for Life

what Ma’am Glecy had going for her TEDx talk were two things: (1) a life lived in theater, and (2) a theater life that has actually affected change in the spaces it has inhabited. these two should be in every TEDx talk, these are its most basic requirements. but also Ma’am Glecy had an anchor here, something that was the premise of and what drove her whole talk: theater as something that evolves from buhay (life) to buhay (live). i’d argue with that last one and say that it might have worked better had she used the term “alive” but that’s really just a matter of style. what’s important is that Ma’am Glecy allowed this concept to function not just as anchor, but as central idea that’s also a clear assessment not just of theater, but of her life lived within it.

this is what a TEDx talk requires, doesn’t it? because an idea worth sharing is not one that we pluck out of thin air, nor is it the stuff of just dreaming. an idea worth sharing is one that has been proven to work, one that has affected change in some form or manner, one that has, in the course of its existence come to terms with what needs to be done in order to reach a goal that’s about change of some form.

here Ma’am Glecy asserts that in the course of her years in theater, the notion of actor has since evolved for her: she is also artist, who does her own research, who teaches, who organizes communities around theater productions that can change the way they view their lives, the way they might see themselves. here, it will be difficult to question Ma’am Glecy’s assertions about the possibilities of change through theater, and this is precisely because she knows exactly from where she speaks.

but too, what Ma’am Glecy proves here is that it is not just years that a TEDx talk requires, it is more importantly about being self-reflexive and self-aware, where one’s limitations are clear, but even more so one’s ability at compromise, and role in change. these are the kinds of things we might all learn from, because these things are premised on concrete change done within real conditions of nation.

in the end, Ma’am Glecy would be one of the few who actually had proof of how art and culture can change our world, which was the TEDx Diliman theme. she would, in the end, be one of three people who’d do that here.

out of 11 speakers. go figure.

kultura

Menchu Lauchengco-Yulo & Jett Pangan FTW!

and on Next To Normal:

Which brings me to Pangan, who’s the best that I’ve seen him here. Without the trappings of a more complex because highly fictionalized or fantastic role, with only the seeming simplicity of a father and husband character, what’s here is pure unadulterated Pangan, and a voice that can move from optimism to helplessness to nostalgic in equal turns. But it’s in that breakdown scene that Pangan proves himself theater actor, with anguish that echoes with everything that has to do with male suffering in the hands of skillful denial, a rendering of patriarchy that we rarely see because it is so painful.

It is pain too, as it is insanity, but even more so clarity, that is in Lauchengco-Yulo’s portrayal of the complexity that is loss and grief in one woman. And when I say woman here, it is Lauchengco-Yulo as body. Her Diana moved across that stage and told this story, not just with words spoken or songs sung, but also and more importantly with movement, deliberately going against that one rational narrative line. Her frowns of confusion, her furtive steps, the questions she asks of doctor / husband / daughter, the routines she kept, the ones she forgot – all gestures not just words, all happening with the weight of her distress. And in the final moment, Lauchengco-Yulo allows Diana to clearly swing between uncertainty and control even as she makes logical the decision to favor self, the most powerful glorious moment in the whole musical, the one time the woman’s body is allowed lightness, is suffused with grace.

Suffice it to say that even just memory of the individual moments of Lauchengco-Yulo’s Diana and Pangan’s Dan brings tears, almost like a melancholia that’s always been and will always be yours as audience. Here is a brilliance that seeps into your spirit and makes you less spectator and almost co-conspirator in the story that unfolds.

Read the rest of it here.