Lea Salonga, Dolly De Leon, and Clint Ramos share their thoughts about the art of theater and performance, personal learnings, and anecdotes at the recent “Conversations in Spotlight” ahead of their upcoming play, “Request sa Radyo”

It’s impossible to talk about Lea Salonga and Dolly De Leon without bringing up their accolades. We know Salonga for being the first Kim in “Miss Saigon,” for being the voice of beloved Disney princesses, for being a singer, and being an actress on film, Broadway, and the West End for which she had won awards.

De Leon, we know for her extensive work in film, TV, and theater, most recently being nominated (the first Filipina so far!) in the Golden Globes and BAFTA, and won several acting awards from local award-giving bodies like Cinemalaya, FAMAS, and Gawad Urian.

But despite being globally acclaimed artists, the two highly emphasize the importance of training and hard work.

In an exclusive talk held at the Samsung Performing Arts Theater in anticipation of their upcoming play “Request sa Radyo,” the actresses, alongside Tony Award-winning theater designer Clint Ramos, talked to theater students and practitioners about the arts as well as their respective career journeys.

Putting in the work

Asked how much of their career they think can be attributed to their hard work and their luck, De Leon answered, “For me, 90 percent hard work, 10 percent luck.” 

Even with a career as storied as theirs requires them to put in training to prepare for the demands of each new role. Salonga had a dialect coach for her role in the musical “Sweeney Todd” “to make sure everything was done properly.”

For De Leon, the hard work also includes the physical preparation to build her stamina. In “Triangle of Sadness,” she shares having had to train on the treadmill daily leading up to the shoot, knowing their director was the type who would shoot multiple takes of a scene. 

“It was really a physical preparation than anything else. I just trust in what I was trained to do in school, and in all of my experience. Babalik at babalikan mo ‘yong pinag-aralan mo eh. You have to trust that you are equipped with all the tools to be able to deal with all these crazy challenges (at work),” De Leon said.

Salonga, meanwhile, shared a statement from her brother that has stuck with her: “It’s not about rising to the occasion. Under great pressure, you do not rise to the occasion—you fall to the level of your training.”

The two actresses also agree that raw talent isn’t enough to make a sustainable career.

“If you have the talent… you can sing, you can act, you can dance. But the technique, the training to put on top of that, that’s the stuff that enables us to do eight shows a week,” Salonga said. 

De Leon added that training doesn’t necessarily mean having to take a formal degree or course in the arts. “Just go to workshops, find a teacher who will guide you and give you the foundation. I don’t think I could have survived without the foundation and without the training. I’d be lost,” she said. 

Safe spaces

The three artists also got candid on the environment in which they were trained, especially juxtaposed to the approach the new generation is exposed to.

“I don’t welcome any environment where there’s name-calling or screaming. I can’t. Even if I was brought up like that and I am who I am today because of [that],” De Leon said. “I can’t say that is the best method, but that was the method that I went through. It equipped me, it made me strong, it made me manhid. But if I witness people screaming—if I witness a director or people in production screaming or name-calling or insulting students, it really throws me off. It triggers me.

“So now what I do is, pag malakas loob ko, kino-call out ko. Sinasabi ko, let’s be nice naman. ‘Wag tayong ganon.”

“If you work in a space where fear is a commodity, it curtails the creative juices from flowing out,” De Leon said.

On “Request sa Radyo”

Their upcoming production, set to run for a limited engagement of only 10 shows, is an adaptation of the German one-woman play “Wunschkonzert” written by Franz Xaver Kroetz.

In this adaptation, the character, to be portrayed by Salonga and De Leon, is a Filipino migrant care worker. The play aims to shed light on the struggles OFWs face, especially in the difficulty of seeking connections.

Being a wordless play, creative director and producer Ramos describes “Request sa Radyo” as a hybrid between theater and performance art. 

Asked what excites them about the play, both Salonga and De Leon agreed that it is the wordless aspect that excites and terrifies them at the same time.

“There are no lines. It excites me the most, first of all, because the thing I hate the most about acting is memorizing lines. So I’m happy na walang lines,” De Leon said.

“But at the same time, I’m terrified about boring [the audience] to death, because… we’re moving around and doing things for the audience to get a hint of what we’re feeling, but no words are spoken, so that kind of terrifies me. At the same time, it’s a challenge I welcome. I’m excited about it, because that’s really how a person who lives alone lives.”

The project was also an “instant yes” for Salonga after she had heard about it. “The first thing I was excited about was hindi ako kakanta! There’s no 45-minute vocal warm-up [before the show]—but then it’s like, oh crud, I better figure this out. Because as you said, I don’t want to bore the audience to death. Even though there’s a lot happening in this tiny little apartment, how do we keep it interesting without saying anything? Without music?”

“I think it’s exciting that we’re going to tell the story of a woman, of a person, who has no one to talk to. I’ve experienced this!” De Leon added, sharing how while shooting a project in Munich, Germany, she felt the same yearning for connection her character has, as she couldn’t even call home to her children because of the time difference. “I had no one to talk to [then], so I know the feeling,” she said. 

Tickets for “Request sa Radyo” are currently on sale. Special offers for students will be available soon. Dolly De Leon and Lea Salonga will be alternating in performances from Oct. 10 to 20, with 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. shows on Wednesdays to Saturdays, and 6 p.m. and 8 p.m. shows on Sundays.