The Market Monitor Minding the Nation's Business
That question—or a variation of it—will be on the minds of beauty pageant-crazy Filipinos on Monday morning (Manila time), when Pia Alonzo Wurtzbach competes with 79 other women from around the world for the title of Miss Universe.
As any true beauty-contest fanatic would tell you, if the Filipino-German media personality and stylist from Cagayan de Oro City, Misamis Oriental province, captures the crown, she would be the first Filipina to do so since 1973, and the third (after Gloria Diaz and Ma. Margarita Moran) since the annual competition began in 1952.
Imagine the ecstatic response that would greet Wurtzbach if she succeeds. We would be seeing much more than the uproariously spontaneous jumping and screaming of four overjoyed guys in that unforgettable YouTube video five years ago, when Ma. Venus Raj secured a spot in the pageant’s Top Five.
Three of the four women who followed Raj—Shamcey Supsup, Janine Tugonon and Ariella Arida—had duplicated her feat. Only Mary Jean Lastimosa fell short (she landed in the Top 10 in the pageant’s previous edition in January), and not because she did something wrong. Many Pinoys blamed the white, beaded mermaid gown—by Colombian designer Alfredo Barraza, and which she was supposedly forced to wear during the contest—for ruining her chances.
Speaking of chances, Wurtzbach’s look good. If online commentaries and reports are to be believed, she has a solid shot of matching Lastimosa’s Top-10 placement, at the very least. Her performance in the Miss Universe preliminary competition, which was streamed live on the pageant’s website last Thursday, seemed to confirm it.
I wasn’t too optimistic about Wurtzbach when she won the Miss Universe-Philippines crown on her third try early this year—she was a bit underwhelming. But after watching last Thursday’s preliminaries, I have to admit: she left a lasting impression. Her intensive preparation for the competition showed in her performance.
Wurtzbach looked more Asian this time, partly because her hair is no longer dark brown, but jet-black. Her makeup, in general, appeared more understated. The way she stared at the audience, how she would smile at them at certain spots—more calibrated, yes, but not mechanical. She was cool, poised and regal. She seemed so sure of herself.
And Wurtzbach’s gowns? Thankfully, they did not embarrass her. Her white capiz and pearl-embellished national costume—made by local designer Albert Andrada and said to be inspired by the gowns worn by Philippine carnival queens in the last century—was a huge improvement from the cheap, Panagbenga-inspired dress Barraza designed for Lastimosa.
As for her elegant, crystal-encrusted, red-orange evening gown—an Oliver Tolentino creation that was a last-minute replacement for the one designed by Andrada that reportedly encountered problems (it either didn’t fit or came late for the event)—it banished lingering memories of Lastimosa’s ill-chosen white mermaid gown to the trash bin.
As terrific as her performance was in the prelims, Wurtzbach still faces tough competition from some of her fellow delegates. According to betting agencies, they include Colombia’s Ariadna Gutierrez-Arévalo, Peru’s Laura Spoya, Thailand’s Aniporn Chalermburanawong, USA’s Olivia Jordan, Venezuela’s Mariana Jimenez, and Vietnam’s Huong Pham.
When ABS-CBN starts broadcasting the 63rd Miss Universe Pageant on Monday morning, we Pinoys should feel secure in knowing that Wurtzbach has exerted every possible effort to win, just like what her predecessors had done. Whatever the result, she deserves our strongest commendation for a job very well done.
Newly ‘hatched’ theater group
As 2015 begins wrapping itself up, I am happy to report that supporters of Philippine theater will have more to look forward to next year, thanks, in part, to a, well, egg-citing new theater company that “hatched” recently: the Egg Theater Company.
Launched before its well-received restaging of George A. de Jesus III’s Palanca Award-winning theater satire Maniacal at the Pineapple Lab, a versatile exhibition/performance venue in Makati City, on December 15, the Egg Theater Company, its founders say, aims to “produce straight plays with a contemporary setting in the Filipino language, using original materials, translations or adaptations of both modern and classic works geared to showcase the Filipino actor.”
Seven longtime theater practitioners, who had worked with other theater organizations before, including Tanghalang Pilipino and Dulaang Unibersidad ng Pilipinas, are behind the new company. There’s not a single rotten egg among them: de Jesus, Kristine Balmes, Renante Bustamante, Martha Comia, Mara Marasigan, Paolo O’Hara, and Alvin Trono.
For its inaugural season, the Egg Theater Company will stage in February de Jesus’ adaptation of French playwright Molière’s The Misanthrope, titled Schism. It’s about a playwright who, after creating a brutally frank production that split his community, finds himself at a crossroads on what art truly means: an expression of his ideals or a reflection of society’s expectatons.
After Schism is a Filipino translation of Irish dramatist Martin McDonagh’s 2003 play The Pillowman, set for April. This one focuses on a fictionist who’s interrogated about a series of child murders in his town that are similar to those depicted in his short stories.
Capping the season is what the Egg Theater Company calls Moliere PMS, which will restage de Jesus’ adaptations of Molière’s comedies on hypocrisy: Praning, adapted from The Imaginary Invalid, which was previously staged at the De La Salle-College of St. Benilde School of Design and Arts Theater in August 2012; Maniacal, adapted from The Learned Ladies; and Schism. This trilogy is scheduled for September.
Based on that lean introductory lineup, it’s clear that the Egg Theater Company is one group that—hatching!—shouldn’t be sneezed at. It deserves encouragement and support.
With that in mind, I wish the Egg Theater Company great success and the best of luck!
Before I forget
As December 25 approaches, let me wish you and your loved ones right now a blessed and merry Christmas. As I write this, I realize there are things I should feel blessed and glad about.
When I accepted my editor-in-chief’s offer to write a column for this paper, I did so with some hesitation. After all, I’m not a mainstream entertainment or lifestyle-industry insider; I’m not fond of gossip (there are too many entertainment columnists who are, anyway); and most readers are probably not too interested in the things I promote in this column—Philippine theater, Philippine literature, independent films, domestic travel, and others.
But more than two months after publishing my first real column—on Heneral Luna’s chances of making it to next year’s Oscars (zero, it turned out; the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences recently released its shortlist of foreign-language film contenders, and Jerrold Tarog’s blockbuster historical biopic is nowhere on it)—I found it encouraging that there are a growing number of you readers who find what I write about worth reading.
In this cheerful and cherished season, thank you all for giving me the time of day, week after week. I hope that you’ll continue to do so well into 2016.