Category Archive for: teatro

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…)

kultura

on Repertory Philippines’ “Leading Ladies”

was it fun? yes. was it funny? absolutely. but also it banks on layer upon layer of intertextuality. you need to know some Shakespeare to have a sense of how absurd it is that these two actors Leo and Jack are in Amish country performing two-man-excerpts. you need to have a sense of the context that is York, as old and rich and conservative suburban community so you’d know how while Meg is a woman who knows of a bigger world, she stays put and is engaged to be married to the minister. you need to have a sense of how this small cast and its dynamism is premised on 1950s America and its changing cultural landscape, where a family doctor, an aunt Florence who refuses to die, and the most random of bimbos on that stage are but symptoms.

of course without banking on all of these, Repertory Philippines’ Leading Ladies would still be that funny play about cross-dressing British men. but appreciating it as such would be to think this nothing but a 1980s Roderick Paulate movie. (more…)

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…)

komentaryo

yearenders and firestarters

because 2011 ended with some sadness, and the new year had me on a roll, which is to say it forced me to hit the ground running. one must be thankful.

the yearender for arts and theater and the one on popular culture were up before the end of 2011. though with the Metro Manila Filmfest happening at the end of the year, too, these could only be overshadowed by the notion of ending-with-a-bang and a foreboding of the year to come. the sadder thing might be that this has fueled discussions on Pinoy film from people who admit they haven’t watched it in a while. well what else is new with regards elitism in this country.

which is to segue too into the fact that i did see some of the MMFF films: the Asiong Salonga review and the My Househusband review are up, and i have two more to go. suffice it to say that as far as Asiong is concerned, what we might demand for at this point is a viewing of the director’s cut, if only so we can judge its creative team who were ignored / disrespected / dissed by the movie’s producers as they added removed scenes, changed music and/or sound, and messed with the editing of the film. that’s the work of director Tikoy Aguiluz, editor Miranda Medina, and musical score by Nonong Buencamino that we have yet to judge Asiong Salonga by. show us the director’s cut na!

in the meantime, the wish for 2012, has to be clarity and truthfulness and just our cards on the table. because it seems that between those faked-up magazine covers and press releases about objective journalism, between power-to-the-people rhetoric and the govt strategy of running a government campaign by not doing it themselves, 2012’s begun on very very rough ground.

<…> “good people do horrible things thinking they are doing something great,” Slavoj Zizek says, and yes he was talking about the violence of communism and stalinism, but in third world philippines, he could just be talking to you and me and our lack of a sense of the realities that define us. it could just be you and me refusing to get to the heart of any and all of this nation’s problems: a failure in the system that allows for the poor to get poorer and grow larger, and a minority to get richer. and i daresay, the middle class thinking they can save the world by working — admittedly or not — within the system the State has set up.

“The basic insight I see <with regards the Occupy Movement> is that clearly for the first time, the underlying perception is that there is a flaw in the system as such. It’s not just the question of making the system better.” — yes Zizek, not anymore.

we should all be reminded of this the rest of 2012.

quotes from Zizek via this Harper’s Magazine interview by J. Nicole Jones, November 2011.