Plays that provoke, push boundaries

By Alvin I. Dacanay

Later this month the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP), its resident theater company Tanghalang Pilipino and respected playwrights’ group Writer’s Bloc will open the 11th edition of the Virgin Labfest, a three-week laboratory theater festival of untried, untested, unstaged and unpublished plays by new and veteran dramatists.

Established in 2005, the Virgin Labfest is considered by many theater practitioners and enthusiasts as, at the very least, a revitalizing force in Philippine theater, occasionally featuring works that go beyond what’s conventional, challenge the audience’s expectations and provoke one’s intellect. Through this festival, a new generation of Filipino playwrights has emerged, encouraged to take risks with the stories they like to tell and—in collaboration with their directors and actors—how to bring them to life.

A good number of the plays staged at the Virgin Labfest are collected in two books, the second being titled simply as Mga Piling Dula mula sa Virgin Labfest 2009–2012: Ikalawang Antolohiya (Selected Plays from the Virgin Labfest 2009–2012: Second Anthology) (CCP, 2013). This anthology, which has Palanca Hall of Fame inductee Rody Vera as its principal editor, contains 16 plays, most of which were remounted as part of the festival’s “Revisited” set.

Some of these plays have even won Palanca awards. One is Layeta P. Bucoy’s “Doc Resureccion: Gagamutin ang Bayan” (first prize, One-act Play in Filipino, 2009), about a married doctor running for mayor of his hometown who visits his boorish, impoverished cousin—also vying for the same position—to try to convince him to withdraw his candidacy. As the play progresses the cousin’s seething resentment of the main character’s deep shame of their humble roots and everything associated with them surfaces, leading to shocking acts of violence that helped made the play a sensation when it was first staged.

Another is Floy C. Quintos’ “Evening at the Opera” (first prize, One-act Play in English, 2011), which also deals with politics, but on the provincial level. In this drama, readers would see, through its characters—a thug of a governor; his well-bred wife, all ready to attend the staging of an Italian opera at the kapitolyo on her birthday; and her deceased, society-figure mother—how corruption is easily passed on from one generation to another, how it can be toxic to relationships, how it can prove to be too entrenched for those who could just walk away from its trappings. The insights may be nothing new, but these are presented in a compelling way.

The anthology also has comedies, like Nicolas B. Pichay’s audacious “Isang Araw sa Karnabal” (first prize, One-act Play in Filipino, 2010), about two former lovers whose relationship is heavily informed and haunted by the forced disappearances of loved ones: the man, of his younger sister; the woman, her father. Pichay’s unusual choice to set the play in an Enchanted Kingdom-like theme park actually makes sense, and his comic treatment of a very serious and sensitive subject—one that many people still feel raw about—is rather rare in Philippine drama, and the fact he pulls it off masterfully makes the play a standout in the book.

Also audacious is Dingdong Novenario’s revisionist “Kafatiran.” It uses contemporary Filipino gay wordplay, pop-culture references and sensibility to tell its story of four closeted Katipuneros—all members of a “special” faction of Andres Bonifacio’s organization—faced with this choice after learning that the secret society has been exposed and Spanish civil guards are closing in: come out and fight, not only for the country’s independence, but also the freedom to openly express their true selves; or remain exactly where they are—in hiding.

These titles may comprise only a fourth of Mga Piling Dula mula sa Virgin Labfest 2009–2012: Ikalawang Antolohiya, but they are enough to show the wonderful diversity of the plays mounted at the Virgin Labfest in those four years. If nothing else, the anthology offers proof that there’s always an audience very much open to envelope-pushing plays.

Mga Piling Dula mula sa Virgin Labfest 2009–2012: Ikalawang Antolohiya is available at the Cultural Center of the Philippines and will be sold beginning June 24 at the Virgin Labfest.