The Virgin Labfest: A festival with a mission

By Nikki Garde-Torres 

Conclusion

In 2005 Rody Vera teamed up with Herbie Go, then the artistic director of Tanghalang Pilipino, the Cultural Center of the Philippines’s (CCP) resident theater company. Together, they conceived of a festival of new works, to be staged as part of the company’s season. Thus, the Virgin Labfest (VLF) was born. 

There were hardly any rules in the first edition of the Labfest. Since the theater was not full, actors would watch each other’s plays almost with impunity.

The CCP got involved in the VLF in 2006, providing a bit more in terms of financial and logistical support. Through the years, additional partners have come and gone, the most consistent of which was the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA). The Japan Foundation assisted a few times, whenever a play by a Japanese playwright was presented or a Japanese director was involved.

And given one or two innovations, that has been the Labfest.

So no, history does not answer any of the questions, really.

Perhaps, the answers lie in the extremely collaborative nature of theater. Yes, artists have been known to be divas, to be fairly selfish on occasion. But the people who were in the very first Labfest called each other “classmate.” Everyone knew everyone else. Everyone understood that they were significant cogs in what has become a very big wheel.

Through the years, there has been a lack of true financial remuneration for the participants of the festival.

This is clearly not a good thing, but it does reinforce the idea that, to join the VLF, you must first have a true love of theater and for the creative and production staff. You must have a sense of mission, a sense that these works are important.

And here we come to the crux of the matter. For some reason, well beyond the advertising and far, far beyond marketing slogans, every single participant has had the festival’s mission almost ingrained in their brains. The greatest success of the Labfest lies in the fact it has instilled a sense of mission in each and every person involved. The mission is not to produce the best play in the universe, or great actors or even great directors. The mission is to produce new works, period.

And this, perhaps, is the very reason that we have gone all the way up from fewer than 30 to almost 200 entries. From eight new works at the Tanghalang Huseng Batute to 12 new works and three restaged ones in the same venue, plus five readings at another venue, three site-specific works, and four films—Imbisibol (Invisible), David F., Hubad (Naked), and Gee-gee at (and) Waterina—based on VLF plays.

Because after 12 wonderful years, the word has gone out. This is the festival for new works. This is the festival that does not judge based on commercial appeal, message to the audience nor any other of the usual reasons a producer would work on a play. The work must simply be new—and well-written.

With hundreds of old, tried and tested works to choose from, are these new works relevant? Every single one of the 197 who sent their scripts, the 23 playwrights and 23 directors, the 23 stage managers and the hundreds of actors who took part in the VLF 12 will tell you that these new works are crucial to keeping Philippine theater vibrant. Every single one of the hundreds of actors and staff of Labfests past and present will tell you the same thing. And every single member of our growing audience will tell you that the Labfest brings to the stage new and relevant creations, some of which are destined to become classics.

This is what the VLF is: An annual fiesta of unstaged, untried and untested works.

Nikki Garde-Torres is the production manager of the Virgin Labfest. She has been involved in the festival since 2006.