|
The Cultural Center of the Philippines’ (CCP) 2008 Virgin
Laboratory Theater Festival ends tonight. Give yourself a treat.
Perhaps you can still catch one of the trilogies of one-act plays or
at least a reading.
This year’s festival started on June 25. Like
last year, CCP gave the festival two Friday-to-Sunday weekends and
there were some shows also on Thursday.
The line-up of productions under the Virgin
Labfest 4 program—so named because this is the fourth such
festival—includes plays by the novelist and National Artist F.
Sionil Jose, award-winning playwrights Layeta Bucoy, Tim Dacanay,
George de Jesus 3rd, George Vail Kabristante, Allan Lopez, Job
Pagsibigan, Floy Quintos, Debbie Tan, J. Dennis Teodosio and Argel
Tuazon, as well as newcomers to the Festival such as Carlo Garcia,
Anna Maria Gonzales, Jovi Miroy, Khavn de la Cruz and Malaysian
writer Koh Jun Eiow.
From the time it was first held four years ago,
the Virgin Laboratory Theater Festival has been a venue for plays
that had never been staged or presented as a reading. It has offered
new and young playwrights opportunities. It has also allowed old
hands in the theater—actors, directors and propmen who have
decided to write—to prove that they have other creative talents
than the one they had become famous for.
Because it’s a CCP program—funded and
organized by CCP—veterans of the CCP stage congregate to help make
each play’s staging a success. You find veteran actors performing
in and veteran directors directing an old colleague’s or a young
playwright’s untested, untried, unpublished and never-been-staged
play.
The plays are usually 20 to 30 minute shorts.
When a panel finds that a play could be developed into a great
longer work, CCP then helps the author work on it to become a full
two-act or three-act play.
Despite the on-going problems being caused by
the steep climb of the prices of fuel, food and essential
commodities in the Philippines and the world, ticket sales have been
good all these four years. Of course a lot of tickets are sold at a
discount to student groups.
“The new playwrights for this season are more
sensitive, incisive, daring and straightforward than last year,”
says Fernando “Tata Nanding” Josef, veteran performer, director
and writer for both film and stage. He is happy that CCP’s Virgin
Labfest is a success and attracting young people.
This year, 18 thoroughly screened one-act plays
were grouped according to theme or subject matter into five sets of
one-act trilogies. The themes and subjects include comedy of
manners, politics, gender issues and even ghost stories. Besides the
18 that were completely produced and staged, six other plays were
presented as staged readings.
Social conscience à la Florentino
Josef finds it noteworthy that most of the
productions this year dwell on what is happening to our country.
“The message one gets from most of the
plays,” he said, “is that many leaders claim they are concerned
and doing something for our country especially for the poor, but the
truth of the matter is they’re just doing everything for
themselves and not for the Filipino people. They betray the poor and
the people.”
They are, in other words, plays with a social
conscience—like those of the excellent Alberto Florentino’s The
World is an Apple and Oli Impan.
More than 100 established actors performed in
this year’s plays. Among these veteran actors are Irma Adlawan
Marasigan, Nanding Josef, Bembol Roco, Tommy Abuel, Nonie Buencamino,
Sharmaine Buencamino, Lou Veloso, Bart Guingona, Jef-Henson Dy, Tess
Jamias, Nanding Josef, Mailes Kanapi, Skyzx Labastilla, Monica
Llamas, Russell Legaspi, Lorna Lopez, Clottie Lucero, Nicco Manalo,
Missy Maramara, Juliene Mendoza, Wenah Nagales, Jerald Napoles and
Madeleine Nicolas.
Directors who directed the plays are Virgin
Labfest veterans Jose Estrella, Njel de Mesa, George de Jesus 3rd,
Ana Valdez Lim, Nick Olanka Cats Racsag, Tuxqs Rutaquio, Roobak
Valle, J. Victor Villareal and Toshiisa Yoshida, and festival
first-timers Krystal Banzon, Jeffrey Camanag, Hazel Gutierrez, Chris
Millado, Floy Quintos, Paolo O’Hara and Leo Rialp. Rody Vera is
this year’s Festival Artistic Director.
These veteran stage celebrities don’t mind
getting a pittance for acting in these neophyte plays. They believe
in the project and are willing to help do justice to a script they
respect.
“The artists are all intelligent and thus
would only accept intelligent materials even though the monetary
compensation is paltry,” Josef told The Times.
In these four years, the Virgin Labfest has
earned a solid reputation for its exciting and provocative line-up
of never been staged or read plays by playwrights of all ages. Metro
Manila theatergoers now look forward to each Virgin Laboratory
Theater Festival season.
Theater arts are an important vehicle for the
human development of a people. We commend the CCP for sponsoring the
Virgin Laboratory Theater Festival program and urge government
officials and the general public to give it moral and material
support—and go to the CCP and see the plays.
|
