The tradition of expanding artistic theatrical expressions to the online space is alive at UP Los Baños. Last August 17 to 23, 2021 and still uploaded in Facebook, TEKA LANG WAIT!, a play festival and collaborative project among BA Communication Arts students who specialize in Theater Arts, launched four one-act plays that tackle human relationship despite distance and in spite of destined personal and social disasters. Organized by students who took Theater Arts 151 (Acting) and Theater Arts 152 (Directing), the playfest wants to interrogate the limitations of online classes and succeeded in creating works of art that matter and mirror our conscious and subconscious worries and wonders.

The Theater classes, facilitated by Elmer Rufo, one of UPLB’s Outstanding Artists, are part of a new movement in mediating traditionally face-to-face theatrical encounters. Rufo, who earlier experimented with this approach a semester earlier, said that he has been able to move beyond familiarization and is slowly gaining momentum in using the medium as venue for artistic collaboration. “I now have more theoretical grounding on online teaching and learning as I have already read and perhaps live the foundations of UP’s remote learning teaching,” Rufo stated.

Rufo directed Eliza Victoria’s Ang Bahay sa Gitna ng Kawalan, one of the four featured short plays in the collection. Victoria’s work, set in the 90’s, looks into the relationship of the past to the present. It interrogates actions and reactions and how decisions, mindsets, and myths relate in time- whether we like it or not. Actors Shaira Carandang, Maya Sestoso, Sophia Soriano, and Emil Valenzuela were superb in channeling Victoria’s characters that one wonders if they were acting together in a face-to-space space. Add to their challenge is the fact that only four students were enrolled in the midyear acting class and all of them were newbies in the remote acting setup. They even made their own real setups in their own homes.

In the end, thru Rufo’s directing prowess, Victoria’s fervidly dark thriller, and the students’ passion for learning, the story shone. The students themselves said that the nostalgic and the eerie were captured and communicated to their audience.

The three student-directed one-act plays were equally impressive. One of these plays is the debut of directors Denise Macam, Jairus Francisco, and Roma Villareal interpretation of Maynard Manansala’s Dalawang Gabi. Manansala’s comedic yet painful text, as if telling the audience that time and timing are painful collaborators of love, was beautifully treated as a seemingly 90s television show. Erica Buenvenida was memorable when she channeled the funny but scarred Ma’am Debbie and Dan Pucyutan was an epitome of the blemished innocent youth. The directors were one in saying that romantic comedies are hard to be presented in online settings as supplements to the communal space of comedic banters need to be supported by cues. The team had to incorporate sitcom stingers and television-like aesthetics to portray the mood and feel of the text. The manipulation of the elements worked as the audience gets to see a familiar 90s mediated comedy yet still recognize the feel of the theater house.

Vladimier Gonzales’ shadowy yet conversant tragedy “Ang Awdisyon,” an adaptation of John London’s “The Audition,” speaks to us like we are eavesdropping to the painfully regrettable conversations of real life characters of our (post)modern society. Jefferson Macaraig’s Emilio and Eunice Sanguir’s Inang resonate the caricatured critiques of our self-centered political actors. Directors Chay Ardiente, Patricia Gregorio, and Darlene Villabriga’s decision to enable a collaborative directorial process among themselves and their actors resulted to a unity in style and substance. “We conducted a series of character workshops where we built chemistry and honed their body movements and vocal projections,” one of the directors said. The online collaborative process also included their analysis and individual interpretation so that they are accountable of the final artform. From the pre-show considerations such as the actors’ backdrop and blockings to the use of editing softwares up to the streaming process, the entire production was one in creating expressions that are unique yet fitting to Gonzales’ script.

Finally, the script titled Kublihan by Jerome Ignacio has shown the good and bad side of opening up deep-seated feelings that may result to an uncertain future. The play, cohesively directed by Ruben Belmonte J., Zairon Joshua Hijara, and Jheit Cyril Villareal, and stars David Clemente Alcala and Lord Jessie Huyo-a, allows the spectators to follow the life and lessons that Mike and Julio have as they open up about their hidden emotions under the metaphorical eclipse. Responsive to the role of the technology-based pre-production in creating theatrical productions in the time of COVID-19, the production team said that the technical aspect seems to be playing a more significant role among other production elements. It becomes hugely contributory to the narrativization of the play aside from the existing plot in the text — acting as another medium for storytelling through post-processing, edits, enhancements, and other like processes. They also emphasized that the use of greenscreen also transports the character to the world and location in the nearest conceivable envisioned graphic made possible by digital technologies. This goes as well with the play in lighting and other like effects to mimic what the directors imagined it to be.

Overall, the shift from face-to-face theater to an online viewing experience is a big shift to expert and new directors, actors, and production teams alike. There is also a budding process of theorizing about virtual theater as these create new ways of creating and critiquing realities.

You may still watch “TEKA LANG WAIT!” at https://www.facebook.com/WAITLANGUPLB from the UPLB College of Arts and Sciences Department of Humanities.