Every time the curtain rises, you see a few million dollars,” says Banaue Miclat-Janssen of her time with the Metropolitan Opera, a resident company of New York’s Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. She was supernumerary (or member of the acting chorus) from 2006 to 2009.
She’s being literal.
In the 2007 production of Vincenzo Bellini’s “I puritani,” for example, she played one of five bridesmaids to the female lead. Her costume alone was worth $10,000.
“Met Opera donors commit between $5 million to $20 million per season. And they have about a hundred donors, who want nothing but tickets to all the shows and, every now and then, walk-on roles in a big scene,” she says.
“I want to connect to the Filipino counterparts of these socialites and make them realize that Philippine theater needs them to sustain the availability of good work to younger people. Be responsible for the artist’s humble beginnings, so to speak.”
She’s now in a perfect position to do just that: Last Aug. 1, Miclat-Janssen succeeded Dexter Santos as artistic director (AD) of Dulaang Unibersidad ng Pilipinas (DUP) and UP Playwrights’ Theatre (UPPT).
“Dexter did huge things for DUP. For the first time in many years, we are out of debt,” she admits, “and I want to keep it that way.”
That’s nothing to shrug off, considering the unstable nature of local theater, where true-blue hits are few and far between, and never guaranteed.
‘Not in my lifetime’
“I don’t think we will ever be free of [financial problems],” she says, “unless the Philippine arts scene comes together to produce a high enough overall return of investment for government to notice and eventually deem worthy of financial support. As much as it makes me cry to say it, not in my lifetime.”
Still, four decades of uninterrupted existence is no trifle. Hurdles notwithstanding, DUP is now on its 43rd season. (UPPT is on its 27th.)
Miclat-Janssen herself is a product of DUP, which, she emphasizes, is professional mentorship theater that aims to continue giving forward, to give back.
“Those who were influenced by us know what we do best: mentorship of students while working with professionals. We give to our students—‘giving forward’—so that later on, they would give back.”
Before pursuing an MFA in Acting at the Brooklyn College of the City University of New York, she was a Theater Arts student at UP Diliman. As a freshman, she bagged the lone female role in DUP’s “The Trial” by Adrian Cristobal and its companion Filipino translation (by Alexander Cortez), “Ang Paglilitis,” playing Gregoria de Jesus in this dramatization of Andres Bonifacio’s prosecution by Emilio Aguinaldo’s government.
When Floy Quintos’ “…and St. Louis Loves dem Filipinos”—the original straight play, not the mid-2000s musical—embarked on a six-city Visayan tour, Miclat-Janssen was both actress and deputy tour director to DUP founder and former AD Tony Mabesa.
The two productions, she says, really trained her “in terms of discipline, organization, time management and multitasking, completely different roles without letting them bleed into one another.”
Nondirector
This year, as one of the qualified tenured professors from UP Diliman’s Department of Speech Communication and Theater Arts, she was the sole nominee for the artistic directorship. Only one other female artist, José Estrella, has held that position.
She has mammoth shoes to fill, but perspective is all Miclat-Janssen needs moving forward.
“I am the first nondirector to assume the position, [but] I am a mother. And I want my parenting to bring the most cooperative side out of each of my children, and not play favorites. The children I will be having all became my parent figures at some point, so I’ll know how to tickle my parents to get my candy, if I need to go there.
“These past few years of turmoil in the country have made a lot of us individualistic,” she adds.
“We want to take care of ourselves, forgetting our neighbors in the process. [Now] I’m challenged to lead DUP to think and move as a whole, and not as individuals.” —CONTRIBUTED
