Tanghalang Ateneo stages “Ang Bakkhai (The Bacchae)” by Euripides on September 12-14, and 18–21 at the Black Box, Fine Arts Annex, Ateneo de Manila University. The Filipino adaptation is by Guelan Luarca.
Some students may regard it as a hobby until they graduate, while others see it as a bona fide drama course for a long-term career. Regardless of its practitioners’ motivations, the recent developments in university-based theater organizations have transformed campus theater into a serious training ground for students’ professional, intellectual and moral growth once they leave the academe.
“I was delighted. Shocked. Couldn’t move. I was shaking,” says Miguel Antonio Alfredo “Guelan” Luarca, recalling his winning First Place in this year’s Palanca Memorial Award for Literature’s Dulang May Isang Yugto category.
Tanghalang Ateneo first staged Han Ong’s “Middle Finger” in 2006. This year’s version feels like a reboot that’s superior to the original.
If you want an evening of genuine surprise at the theater, the kind that makes you go, “I never thought they had it in them,” then the Ateneo is the place to be these days, where Blue Repertory’s “In the Heights” and Tanghalang Ateneo’s adaptation of “Waiting for Godot” prove nightly that youth and inexperience are never hindrances to putting up a show whose quality matches its ambition.
Its three best entries each features at least one bright new talent at the helm
New original plays, bigger audiences, a tighter community, more regional shows in the spotlight
Dulaang Unibersidad ng Pilipinas’ opening production for its new season is “Ang Katatawanan ng Kalituhan,” Guelan Varela-Luarca’s Filipino translation of...
‘The Comedy of Errors’ has become Dulaang UP’s ‘Ang Katatawanan ng Kalituhan,’ ongoing until Sept. 11
One offers rambunctious moments, the other terrific music-making
