Since its founding in 2005, the Virgin Labfest (VLF) has had a major hand in the development of Filipino playwrights and playwriting. Its aim is to provide aspiring dramatists
Clear, coherent and sound storytelling above all else—that’s our tacit takeaway from this year’s Virgin Labfest, the annual festival of “untried, untested, unstaged” plays which ends the third and
It was on a rainy Wednesday afternoon, June 29, when 23-year-old playwright Soc delos Reyes lost his virginity, so to speak, when his first-ever play to be staged debuted at the Virgin Labfest 12 (VLF 12)—ongoing at the 250-seater Tanghalang Huseng Batute (Experimental Theater) of the Cultural Center of the Philippines until July 17.
Fringe Manila will showcase plays and musicals coming from big production houses to university theaters. It runs Feb. 12 to March 1 in venues such as the Cultural Center of the Philippines, school buildings and community cafés. Here’s your quick theater guide.
“There is a shifting of emotions in this play; emotions not easy to internalize. There is an American element, but during rehearsals this becomes universal. May mga umiyak. The actors would sometimes cry during rehearsals because they were affected by the situation they were rehearsing, and relating it to their own stories.”
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.
While I sat quietly in the front row of the Cultural Center of the Philippines’ Tanghalang Huseng Batute, still reeling from the mix of amusement and shock at the opening scene of Joy Ann Icayan’s “Last Ten Minutes,” my seatmate muttered, “writer na naman” when it was revealed that Eric, the protagonist in this dissection of sadness of promiscuity set inside a motel room, was an author of romance novels.
On Feb. 19-23, PResNt (Performance Research Network) and the Cultural Center of the Philippines will hold “MNL X,” a festival featuring new works in dance, theater and performance art by some of the most active independent artists and companies from Manila.
To review a play is normally a fairly precise matter. One reviews the plot, analyzes the characters, appraises the lighting, set design and a hundred other things, and from this forms a picture of whether the play succeeded or not at what it had set out to do. It is predictable, almost scientific and sometimes boring.
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