All eyes for the most awaited tandem of the year. Director Tuxqs Rutaquio and playwright Layeta Bucoy are here again to delight their fans in Tanghalang Pilipino’s “Walang Kukurap.” Here, the two explain their newest masterpiece. Video by INQUIRER.net’s Totel V. de Jesus

MANILA, Philippines—Layeta Bucoy’s newest work “Walang Kukurap,” a play that tries to explore and expose the minds of people in public office, successfully opened Friday night (September 14) at the Cultural Center of the Philippines’s Tanghalang Huseng Batute, coincidentally attended by a fearless militant lawmaker, a whistleblower who almost got killed a la desaparecidos and a senator robbed of his post for four years.

Bayan Muna Representative Teddy Casiño, fugitive government official-whistleblower turned private citizen Rodolfo “Jun” Lozada and Senator Aquilino “Koko” Pimentel chose to watch the recent offering of Tanghalang Pilipino as the well-dressed and overly perfumed hurriedly went upstairs at the Main Theater to watch a singing ghost and how a one-ton plastic chandelier falls.

For the uninitiated, Bucoy is the mind behind “Doc Resureccion: Gagamutin Ang Bayan,” one of the most critically acclaimed plays of recent years that gives a “fresh angle” on the filth and gore of local politics and how poverty, envy and revenge against the affluent could drive people to kill.

Bucoy has teamed up again with the young genius director-actor Tuxqs Rutaquio. Their earlier other acclaimed collaboration was Dulaang UP’s shocking adaptation (shocking talaga?!) of William Shakespeare’s “Titus Andronicus” titled in Filipino, “Tinarantadong Asintado (Titus Andronicus)”.

“Walang Kukurap,” is inspired by the Utopian concept that “public office is a public trust” as pointed out in Article 11 Section 1 of the 1987 Philippine Constitution. This means that—in a perfect world—government officials and employees must, at all times, be accountable to the people and should serve them with utmost responsibility, integrity, loyalty….the works.

Of course we know this doesn’t happen in reality.

In an earlier statement, Bucoy said:  “The questions that lingered in my mind: But what if the public office is taken as the extension of one’s private or personal interests or what if the public office is perceived as the means to further such interests? What if public trust is ignored for the public office is treated as a private trust fund?”

Tanghalang Pilipino explained it best: “Walang Kukurap” as a production will serve as a forceful reminder that if people do not take the responsibility to better this world, then there is no need to die just to experience hell.

The credible team of TP’s homegrown talents—the Actors Company led by Jonathan Tadioan (whose portrayal of the filthy Doc Resureccion haunts us till now), Marco Viaña, Regina De Vera, Nicolo Magno, Ralph Mateo, Remus Villanueva, Doray Dayao, April Joy Iñigo, and Jovanni Cada—is behind the production.

They are joined in by veteran and competent theater actors Suzette Ranillo, Sherry Lara, Mymy Davao, Crispin Pineda, Pewee O’Hara, Lou Veloso, Ding Navasero, Nars Cabico and Delphine Buencamino.

There’s also GLOC 9 on special dates of its run.

“Walang Kukurap” runs at 3 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays, 8 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays until October 7.

For tickets call TP office at (632) 832-1125 locals 1620/1621 or +639177500107 or call TicketWorld at (632) 891-999. For more details of the play please visit, Tanghalang Pilipino’s official website on tanghalangpilipino.org.ph or like their official account on Facebook.