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After 39 years, 180 productions, numerous artists and countless possibilities, Dulaang Unibersidad ng Pilipinas (Dulaang UP or DUP) is all set to begin its 40th season with the theme “20/20 Vision: Clarity. Originality. Perspective.”
With Dexter M. Santos as the theater company’s new artistic director, this season’s line-up puts premium on strengthening the DUP brand and continuing its legacy. The productions bring to the fore their directors’ signature styles that have defined the company through the years.
The season opens with #R</3J, a multimedial hallucination on William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, directed by Santos and adapted by Palanca Award-winner Guelan Varela-Luarca. It features the Dulaang UP Ensemble and the collaboration of choreographers, designers and artists. #R</3J retells the star-crossed lovers’ narrative, transforming Verona into a concrete jungle at the heart of Metro Manila. This production will run from August 26 to September 13.
DUP founding artistic director Tony Mabesa directs Shakespeare’s King Lear/Haring Lear, with Filipino translation by Palanca Hall of Fame inductee Nicolas B. Pichay. The play, this time set in the waning years of a Southeast Asian kingdom, will be replete with the appropriate music, movement, costumes and properties of the region without losing the themes, images and poetry of Shakespeare’s supreme achievement. King Lear/Haring Lear will run from October 7 to 25.
The third-season offering is a reimagination of Henrik Ibsen’s Peer Gynt, directed by José Estrella and adapted by Palanca Award-winners Rody Vera and Gilda Cordero-Fernando. Drawing from Philippine mythology and folklore, Gynt is now set in ‘Pinas, with Gynt traveling through historical and mystical time, and crossing landscapes as he wrestles with the eternal elusiveness of truth and deception, meaning and purpose. Peer Gynt will run from February 3 to 21, 2016.
Next is Shimuzi Kunio’s The Dressing Room: That Which Flows Away Ultimately Becomes Nostalgia, which was original translated by John K. Gillespie. The play will be directed by Alexander Cortez, with translation and adaptation by Chiori Miyagawa and Filipino translation by Pichay.
This play relives the aspirations, frustrations, memories and resolutions of four actresses waiting for their cue. By turns tragic and comic, the play becomes a comment on the fleeting nature of theater and of life itself as a form of performance. The Dressing Room will run from April 13 to May 1, 2016.
All four productions are staged at the Wilfrido Ma. Guerrero Theater, on the second floor of Palma Hall of the University of the Philippines Diliman.
Closing the season is UP Playwrights’ Theatre’s 25th offering, Yugto: Dalawang Maikling Dula, under the direction of Banaue Miclat-Janssen. It features Ginto sa Makiling by Luna Sicat-Cleto and Sparrow by Linda Faigao-Hall. Yugto will run from July 1 to 10, 2016 at the Teatro Hermogenes Ylagan, Faculty Center, UP Diliman.
For this season, DUP is committed to uphold its standards for education, training, artistic innovation and unfretted vision.
As a special treat for DUP patrons, the company is introducing the DUP Season Pass. It entitles the holder to watch four DUP productions for only P1500—that’s four DUP masterworks for the price of one commercial theater production.
For more information, call Samanta Hannah Clarin or Camille Guevara at (632) 926-1349, 433-7840 or 981-8500 loc. 2449, or send an e-mail to dulaangupmarketing@gmail.com.