There was really no music at first, or even an actual script.
The quietness eventually turned into an uproar—with a speed-dating sequence, a wedding and a dance party involving actors and audience all together. It ended as a show made from everyone else’s love story.
The country’s first-ever crowd-sourced theater production, Sipat Lawin Ensemble’s “Love: This is Not Yet a Musical,” which ran on Feb. 14-23, veered away from the usual Valentine’s Day stage fare and focused more on the viewers’ own romantic experiences.
“Our initial idea was to create a play about love. This time it’s not yet a musical, but will eventually turn into one,” Sipat Lawin’s company manager Sarah Salazar said. “LoveNot” revolved around four “love gods”—Init, Lamig, Alaala and Tanao—and how they applied in a modern-day setting.
Interactive
Sipat Lawin started to work on the show last year when it began to collect contributions from people attending its performances. The idea was to come up with a production that was highly interactive.
“I think what is interesting is that Sipat Lawin went to different places for performances and dealt with different crowds,” Salazar said.
The ensemble staged four mini open platform events to engage people for their crowdsourcing. In February 2013, Sipat Lawin held “LoveNot Sawi Edition: Eyeball Performance x Speed Dating” where the contributions were about love and despair.
Next was the “LoveNot: LagabLOVE Init Pool Party Edition,” which was about heat and passion, and the “LoveNot: Tirada Night,” about fighting for one’s love. And, lastly, there was a mass trial wedding held weeks before the actual run of LoveNot. The online crowdsourcing, meanwhile, began in August last year.
Along those events, the company also discovered talents who were willing to perform for LoveNot. One of them, Shielbert Manuel, also known as “OG Sacred,” did a freestyle rap performance at the last part of the show.
Different pieces
“What we did was to collect different pieces. Most of them weren’t from plays, but from poems, text messages [sent to us], social network statuses, and even one-liners that could be quoted,” Salazar explained.
Sipat Lawin believes this kind of approach to play-making is an easier way to reach out to young people, because with love as a subject, almost everyone wants to share.
LoveNot is also a site-specific production, staged at a four-story building of the Erehwon Center for the Arts in Old Balara, Quezon City.
“We had a site-specific production before with ‘Battalia Royale,’ but I think the interaction [with the audience] with this one was much heightened,” Salazar said. Audience members who felt awkward about the setup were free not to participate in the interactive portions of the show.
Aside from LoveNot, Sipat Lawin is preparing another major production, “Karnabal,” in October, and one-man/one-woman shows on Filipino classics. The group will also continue its “guerrilla” theater performances and children’s storytelling gigs all year round.