Therefore I am: At home… in the theater (review of Tanghalang SLU's "Ang Penitensiya ni Tiyo Renato")

*my column in the March 9, 2014 issue of Cordillera Today, photos courtesy of Lester Romulo Sotelo

I spent Friday night right at home... in the theater, that is. Thanks to Tanghalang SLU director, Dan Rommel Riopay, also the director of the night’s performance, the last show of “Ang Penitensiya ni Tiyo Renato,” for accommodating me and my family. I inquired about tickets the night before, but all tickets were sold out. That makes me very happy for that means theater continues to thrive in the City of Pines.

We entered the theater and were greeted by the wonderful set design by Paul Baldoza and Deomar Tiglao – they beautifully captured the look and feel of a typical home in the lowlands. We chose to sit right in the middle, a good distance away from the stage to have a full view of the set but not too far to miss those small nuances that make a great performance: a tiny smirk, eye movements, those subtle glances that actors do.

The script, a Palanca Award winner written by Luciano Valencia, tells the struggle of one Renato for self-preservation. It reminded me a bit of “Ang Paglilitis ni Mang Serapio” by Paul Dumol. In this family squabble many of us are familiar with, Renato, a child-less widower, was falsely accused of child abuse by his own niece who’s in cahoots with an older brother of the protagonist in an effort to extort money from him.

Sure, it all begins with the script, but an art work is not complete unless it’s experienced by an audience, and this is where a director’s vision and the actors’ sincerity come in. I met the director when he was still a freshman at St. Louis University. Eager to enter the world of theater, he has auditioned for a slot in SLU’s Center for Culture and the Arts and while waiting for the result, he joined my production of “Tonyo/Pepe.” We only got to work together for a couple of weeks since he passed the SLU-CCA audition and didn’t have the time anymore to do an outside production.

In my 18 years as a resident and a theater artist in Baguio, I rarely meet someone who tried out theater while in high school or college and stayed that long. But 15 years since meeting him, Dan’s still there, telling stories on stage. I’m proud to have known him and Baguio’s fortunate to have him.

I’ll get to the one thing that didn’t quite sit well with me out of the way – the use of lapel microphones by the actors. I don’t like lapels in straight plays for they get in the way of the suspension of disbelief particularly when you hear a subtle sigh of an actor 20 meters away from you but with the sound coming to you in full volume on the speakers. And when there’s a technical glitch – a mic going off during a couple of lines, then the illusion is totally ruined. They could’ve perhaps used condenser mics just to reinforce the actors’ voices a little. But I don’t blame them too, student audiences are not known to cooperate and help the actors deliver a good performance – they’re usually chatty and noisy, and I’ve stopped several performances myself when the noise have become simply too much and unbearable. But that’s for another column, back to the performance.

Malena, played by Dyan Britanico and Mikel, played by Handiong Kapuno who happens to be the son of two colleagues in the performing arts, Raffy and Jo Kapuno particularly caught my attention. As a director, and indeed as merely a member of the audience, sincerity is what I look for in an actor’s performance. I have never been a fan of theatrics for theatrics sake, I have a term for that that’s not fit to be printed here, but basically, I like performances where the actors are focused on who they are, what their stories are supposed to be, and nothing else. I love it when their stories break through the fourth wall of the theater to reach right inside of you – and that’s what both Britanico and Kapuno did on stage.

Never mind the shrieks that came out of teenaged girls in the audience when he came out in the final scene without a shirt, Kapuno was there not to show off but to tell a story. And I admired the way I felt every word uttered and every sub-text expressed by Britanico with subtlety, much ease and absolute sincerity.

The rest of the cast delivered too, and it made for a wonderful evening for me and my family. The discussion about the experience lasted during and long after our late dinner. And I congratulate the rest of them – Benjan Rusby Natividad, Trixie Anne Sampayan, Kenneth Aglubo, Mesach Casey Camtugan, Nico John Catallo, Ana Isabel Javier, England Castro, Rronyth Joy Sison and Christine Sagun for telling their respective stories well.

And last but not the least, and they rarely get mentioned in reviews but being one myself early on in my life in the theater, I congratulate the stage managers for a job well done. As we say back then and I still do now, if you hardly noticed their work in a particular performance, that’s because they, the stage managers, did their job very well. And to see another former student, Rainbow Gutierrez, who once attended our group’s creative expression workshop as a little girl, take her bow as one of the stage managers just completed a wonderful evening at home… the theater.
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