Bernardo Bernardo was born in Sta. Ana, Manila, grew up in Singalong and studied journalism at the University of Santo Tomas (UST)—but never got to practice his chosen course even as he became editor of the UST Varsitarian.
“I thought I was going to be the Philippines’ next great journalist. You know how stupid and delusional one can be when you’re young. And then I saw my first professional theater production, a British Council-sponsored run of Robert Bolt’s ‘A Man for All Seasons’ at the Philamlife Theater. That’s when my life changed. I decided I wanted to be a stage actor.”
BB, as he is also fondly called, started by dabbling in classroom theater, acting out scenes from whatever reading assignment struck the teacher’s fancy. In his college years, he joined the Aquinas Dramatic Guild at UST where, during his sophomore year, he did three plays—“Imaginary Invalid,” “Let the Dogs Bark,” and “Between Two Thieves”—and was hooked.
Fabulous ride
He took a short hiatus from theater in Manila to get a master’s degree in Dramatic Arts at the University of California. Thereafter, he worked full throttle, acting in theater, television and movies.
Bernardo—who won the Best Actor Urian trophy for his role as Manay in the Ishmael Bernal landmark film “Manila By Night” (City After Dark)—has logged 44 years in theater and film, plus long stints in such popular TV sitcoms as “Flor de Luna,” “Vilma Tonight,” “Home Along Da Riles” and “Labs Ko Si Babes,” among others.
Now based in Los Angeles, Bernardo describes those acting years as “a fabulous ride.”
“That makes it 44 years of treading the boards, as they say, if you’re lucky enough to land a job. But, mostly, before the advent of the Internet and smartphones, it was trade papers, phone calls, auditions—basically, pounding the pavement. As a theater lapel button states, most of the time, ‘Life is a constant Audition.’”
Big break
When he started at Repertory Philippines in the late ’60s, he and his colleagues were getting P50 per show. They thrived on munggo and pork chop for meals prepared by Marietta (Zeneida Amador’s factotum) in between shows.
It was an active theater life that started from the Makati Insular Life Building to the defunct Rizal Theater, Meralco Theater and on to CCP.
“Now the budget has gone up to the thousands. It took time, but it got there. We also learned how to do simultaneous dinner shows and corporate events and product launches—and the word ‘racket’ was born,” he notes.
The big break on TV happened when he returned from his studies abroad. Johnny Manahan cast him as JC in “Jesus Christ Superstar” with Laurice Guillen as Mary Magdalene and Tommy Abuel as Judas. He soon appeared in plays mounted by the Alegre brothers (David, Gie and Dong), Nick Lizaso, and later, Zeneida Amador and Baby Barredo of Rep.
In less than a year, he had his turn as Rep’s “fair-haired boy,” appearing in lead roles season after season. That was also the time when film director-producer Cirio H. Santiago, a Rep regular, cast him as a gangster opposite Lotis Key in “Carnival Song.” He had other lead parts in “Story of Three Loves” starring Angelo Castro Jr., Hilda Koronel and Abuel.
“My theater training and acting experience proved very helpful in my control of my body and voice in acting. Hitting your marks, knowing cues, being aware of your key lights, movements, continuity of action/emotion for close-up and angle changes were easy enough to learn. But the key lesson was to be natural, or to underplay.”
From TV and films, he learned—“take your pick: Patience. Stillness. Compromise. How to conserve energy. How to laugh off delays. How to sleep while seated and waiting for your next scene.”
Special recognition
That 1980 Best Actor trophy was for him very special. He was up against two of his favorite actors, Dindo Fernando for “Langis at Tubig,” and Phillip Salvador for “Bona.”
The role was, from the start, a labor of love. He got a measly P15,000 talent fee, but he felt the hard work paid off.
“I initially turned down the role of Manay, feeling outraged at the absurdly low talent fee offered by Mother Lily through the late Douglas Quijano,” he recalls. “Not much later, Ishma (Ishmael Bernal) talked to me. And, of course, feeling epic disappointment and nursing my bruised pride, I stood my ground. Bernal replied, ‘Bernie, do it for P15,000—and do it for me.’ I relented and never regretted it.”
Indeed, the Bernal opus echoed Fellini’s “Roma” as an ode to a city. The actor was even more thrilled when director Peque Gallaga wrote after watching the film: “Bernardo Bernardo was ‘Marcello Mastroianni to Bernal’s Fellini.’”
After a long while doing theater in Manila, Bernardo came to grips with reality and decided to leave for California.
“Things were getting tired awfully fast,” he says. “It was becoming obvious that the local entertainment industry had very little respect for senior actors and I decided to go while the going was good. It didn’t help any that rampant lawlessness, endless corruption, crippling poverty of the masses, and growing tribe of new oligarchs were reducing the citizenry to mere statistics good only for votes and taxes.”
High point
His sojourn to America found resonance in three theater productions he did that highlighted the life of Filipinos abroad.
They were “Alaskeros,” about the lives of Filipino cannery workers in the early 1920s, staged at Perseverance Theater; “Voyage,” a play based on the lives of four generations of Filipinos in Alaska; and “The Romance of Magno Rubio,” staged in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York and Hollywood.
Bernardo says those plays were memorable because, for the first time, the stories of the Filipino abroad found expression in mainstream American theater. “Magno Rubio” he considers his lucky charm; the Los Angeles critics gave the production five nominations (Best Director, Best Choreographer, Best Actor, Best Ensemble and Best Fight Sequence), from a field of hundreds of productions. The LA Weekly Theater Award gave it the Best Director and Best Choreographer 2012 awards—major theater recognitions in the second largest city in the US, with the largest population of Filipinos.
“The award was a high point in my seven-year advocacy to pay tribute to the Manongs in America,” says Bernardo. “The acclaimed low-budget production became an effective platform to highlight the Filipinos’ contribution to the labor movement in California during the last century.”
This year, Bernardo is looking forward to the staging of Nonon Padilla, Bienvenido Lumbera and Ryan Cayabyab’s “Noli Me Tangere: The Musical” in LA.
“We’re also having meetings to form a production outfit to create talk shows and sitcoms that are LA-centered. Also on the back burner is the formation of a Filipino-American film club styled after Mauro Tumbocon’s highly successful FACINE (now on its 20th year) in San Francisco! That’s on top of all the annual events at Historic Filipinotown and Carson City—two major hubs of Fil-Am cultural events in LA county. Suffice it to say, we’re all geared up for a very busy and super-productive 2014!”
Magical agreement
All those years in theater, Bernardo has enjoyed that magical agreement with the audience that, for at least an hour and a half, he was somebody else.
“Theater acting is the closest one can get to living out the concept of reincarnation. With each new role, one gets reborn. You basically create a whole new human being’s life story until the final curtain falls. And, on top of the applause (the old addiction to acceptance and recognition), you get paid for it!”