It used to be flowers for a special occasion—birthday, anniversary, convalescence, “just thought of you.” But flowers have become too expensive, and if you made a mistake and bought all white, my, my, that’s for the dead.
Performing arts veterans Fides Cuyugan Asencio, Nonon Padilla and Denisa Reyes join the ranks of Natatanging Gawad Buhay! Lifetime Achievement Awardees honored by the Philippine Legitimate Stage Artists Group, Inc. (Philstage), in ceremonies held at Star Theater at the CCP Complex on June 16.
Fides Cuyugan Asensio is the recipient of this year’s Philstage Gawad Buhay! for Lifetime Achievement in the Performing Arts, along with director Nonon Padilla and choreographer Denisa Reyes.
During halcyon days at Ateneo de Manila high school, one student, Paul Dumol, was so bold as to write three plays, two in Tagalog and one in English.
I HAVE no particular affection for the Japanese, since I was alive during the war when they were at their worst behavior. I have only one Japanese friend, Shoko Matsumoto, who is a lighting designer and has devoted most of her professional life trying to make such a calling viable for Filipinos.
The reprimands and raves from his colleagues have died down, and to Felix “Nonon” Padilla’s mind, he has said his final piece.
While a Filipino worker languishes in an Arab jail, awaiting execution, he decides to spend his days doing a play about another Filipino from a different century who also left the Philippines and suffered in another country: Lorenzo Ruiz.
In an interview months ago, director Nonon Padilla said he would challenge any member of the audience to have a dry eye once “Lorenzo,” a rock opera on the indio Lorenzo Ruiz who died for his faith in 17th-century Japan, closes its curtain.
It was 6 a.m. in Dubai when Lutgardo “Gardy” Labad first heard the worrying news. He was up early to prepare for a drama workshop he was conducting for the OFW community there. A cousin of his texted that a strong earthquake had struck Bohol, and that the floor in their ancestral house had cracked.
By his own reckoning, actor Fernando “Nanding” Josef—now artistic director of Tanghalang Pilipino—has spent 40 years in theater. This, he said, is instrumental in his getting the kind of unique education he would never have learned in the classroom.
