It was recently a fad on Facebook to list your 10 favorite books, and a quick survey of the results confirmed what I’d known for years: “The Little Prince” is on everybody’s list. It’s at the top of mine.
There are children who are born physically disabled but are emotionally whole. Such is the condition of a little girl named Susie, the central character in “Sandosenang Sapatos,” a musical which will be restaged at the Tanghalang Huseng Batute, Cultural Center of the Philippines, on Aug. 28-31.
Tanghalang Pilipino’s “Kleptomaniacs,” written by Layeta Bucoy and directed by Tuxqs Rutaquio, is a brilliant experiment, a socially aware original Filipino rap musical. I wish it had worked out better. I was not happy with this play, for reasons that have nothing to do with its novel format and everything to do with storytelling.
As it celebrates its 10th year, the Virgin Labfest should perhaps rethink defining itself as just a festival of untried, untested, unpublished and unstaged plays. It is all that—but, more importantly, the Labfest has become an oasis for the Filipino playwright, whether fledgling or not.
The stench of the Janet Lim-Napoles pork barrel scandal has reached the theater circle, and it has galvanized playwright Layeta Bucoy to write the libretto of a rap-musical called “Kleptomaniacs,” running at the CCP Little Theater from July 11 to 27.