The Market Monitor Minding the Nation's Business
It takes a live stage to gather an illustrious array of theater, television and multimedia artists to draw in crowds both here and abroad.
It even takes a multiracial live production to announce to the whole world that Philippine theater is alive and well.
The drama project is titled “The Moon and the Bakunawa,” a piece on the emotional pains of a carer for a dementia patient and the intense life of the mentally afflicted.
The play was written and directed by Filipino dramatist Benny Chan, Jr. when it was initially produced in Perth, Australia a couple of years ago.
Fil-Aussie actress Cielo Waghorne has been playing Mamay, an Ilonggo mom suffering from dementia at Down Under and Filipino actor Phil Panganiban as Tonyong, as the son-carer of his mother not only in the Philippines but Australia as well.
Meanwhile, when the theater production was staged last year in Sydney, Australia, proud representatives of Philippine theater, aside from Panganiban, were tapped to perform on and off-stage roles.
At the time, Philippine Educational Theater Association (PETA) alumnus Arlene Abuid-Paderanga was vacationing and seeing her kid in Sydney where another PETA graduate and pride Mars Cavestany resides, was scouting a Stage Manager in their city’s edition of the play.
Both Arlene and Mars are respected theater persons.
No sooner said and done, the PETA synchronicity was working effectively when Arlene agreed to Mars’ request to manage the stage performance of the play.
What more engaging and prouder was the participation of Philippine theater in diaspora and the coming to Australia of Divina Cavestany, an illustrious stalwart of the now defunct National Artist for Literature Rolando Tinio’s Teatro Pilipino to portray Mamay, this time, with Panganiban reprising the role of the son.
“The Australian productions both in Perth and Sydney were hits among Filipinos and multiracial audiences because dementia as an issue resonates among us in Australia,” said Benny, a graduate of Theater Arts from the University of the Philippines in Diliman, Quezon City.
It was indeed a gathering of the gems of Philippine drama.
That gave Arlene an idea to produce the play in her school, the Asian Institute of Maritime Studies (AIMS) in Pasay City.
Here, “The Moon and the Bakunawa”—bakunawa is a Philippine folklore in the Visayas island which means monster that is used to frighten children and believed to be causing eclipse when runs into the moon—has premiered last week but will still have a regular run on April 25 and 26, 2026 with Cavestany as Mamay and Phil alternating with Remus Villanueva as Tonyong under the direction of Roobak Valle.
“I hope the Filipino public will take dementia as an important health issue to deal with. The play will open our eyes not only to the dementia patient but to the carer as well,” quipped Abuid-Paderanga.