My Annie Batungbakal Was Norwegian
A typhoon-flooded drive to Newport, three original Hotdog vocalists, and a Norwegian friend I nicknamed Annie Batungbakal when I was six — some songs just keep finding you.
All posts filed under: Theater
What We Flush Out: Notes from Septic Tank 4, Now That the Run Is Sold Out
Before the curtain even went up, there was a wall. Sticky notes, three colors, stacked over each other until the board underneath disappeared. The question at the top, in block letters: “Anong gusto mong i-flush sa bayang ito?” What do you want to flush out of this country? People had written names. Robin Padilla. Sara Duterte. Ramon Ang. Alan Peter Cayetano. Si Bato. A few feet away, a second wall — softer, messier, more personal — asked people to spill the real shit instead: “Self Love Stage.” “Ang malimutan siya =).” “Quarter Life Crisis T_T.” One wall wanted a country cleaned out. The other just wanted somebody to survive their twenties. Standing between the two, it was hard not to think: this is either going to be very smart or very tired. Ang Babae sa Septic Tank 4: Oh Sht! It’s Live sa Cheter!* is PETA’s stage leap for a franchise that’s spent fifteen years being a mirror to Philippine media — first to indie filmmaking, then to reinvention culture, and now, finally, to the …
Stay a Little Longer: A New Cebu Play Asks What’s Left When Memory Fades
Every caregiver of someone living with dementia eventually hits the same fork: correct the version of reality the person in front of them is living in, or step inside it with them. Stay a Little Longer, the newest production from 2TinCans Philippines, builds an entire play around that fork — and it doesn’t pick a side for the audience. The show runs August 29 and 30 at The Kabilin Center in Cebu City, and it arrives with a sturdier premise than most memory-loss narratives bother with. Instead of watching a woman disappear, the audience watches her stay whole — just accessible from a different angle in every scene. Grieving child. Young wife fighting to be chosen. Physician. Mother. An elderly woman trying to place the unfamiliar room around her. Same person, several timelines, one body doing all the holding. That’s a harder trick to stage than it sounds, and it’s the reason this one is worth knowing about before opening night rather than after. One Room, Every Version of Her The entire play is set …
Tanghalang Pilipino sweeps top prizes as Kisapmata leads 16th Gawad Buhay Awards
Tanghalang Pilipino was the company to beat once again at this year’s Gawad Buhay Awards. “Kisapmata” took the night’s top play honor while “Gregoria Lakambini: A Pinay Pop Musical” claimed the top musical prize — marking the second year running that the company has walked away with both. It’s a feat TP also pulled off at last year’s 15th Gawad Buhay Awards, where “Balete” won Outstanding Play and “Pingkian: Isang Musikal” took Outstanding Musical, part of a haul that saw the company collect 17 of the 26 competitive prizes that night. This year’s sweep was more concentrated, powered almost entirely by a single production — “Kisapmata,” which racked up 11 trophies spanning acting, direction, and design, making it the single most-awarded production of the night at ceremonies held Tuesday at the Aliw Theater, hosted by Reb Atadero. Its leads, Jonathan Tadioan and Lhorvie Nuevo-Tadioan, won Male and Female Lead Performance in a Play, respectively, while Toni Go-Yadao and Marco Viaña took the featured-performance prizes in the same category. The production also won Outstanding Stage Direction …
Carmen, Sung in Tagalog — Twice Now
Here’s a fact that tends to stop people mid-sentence: one of opera’s biggest, most famous titles — Bizet’s Carmen — has already had a full life in Filipino. Not subtitled. Not surtitled. Sung. In Tagalog. At the FEU Auditorium. In 1956. Most people assume that’s a typo the first time they hear it. It isn’t. On August 29, 1956, the Manila Symphony Orchestra staged Carmen at Far Eastern University using a Tagalog translation by Manuel Carballo Santiago and Vicente Liwag, under musical director Herbert Zipper (who’d inherited the baton from MSO founder Alexander Lippay) and directed by his wife, Trudl Dubsky-Zipper. In the title role: a young soprano named Conchita “Conching” Rosal, who would go on to become one of the defining voices of Philippine opera. Seventy years later, almost to the day, the MSO is bringing her back. “Opera at Kundiman: The Legacy of Maestra Conching Rosal” lands at the FEU Auditorium on August 29 — the fourth concert in the orchestra’s Centennial Season, and a deliberate double celebration: 100 years of the MSO, …
Mapanakit! Mga Dulang Bittersweet — Three Stories, One Ache
Some plays make you cry because they’re sad. Mapanakit! Mga Dulang Bittersweet makes you cry because it’s honest. I first heard about it at the press conference on July 17, before I’d seen a single scene staged. By the time I watched the opening show on July 25, I understood why the room that day had been so full of nervous, hopeful energy — this wasn’t just another premiere. It was Biñan’s first homegrown production to leave city borders, and everyone involved knew it. Where It Started Mapanakit! is the maiden production of YPC Stage, the professional touring arm of the Biñan Youth Performance Council (YPC) — a community theater group with more than two decades of grassroots work behind it. The show had already had a full community run in Biñan back in December 2025. What’s happening now at the KAL-IBG Theater in UP Diliman is its transition into something bigger: a tour-ready production, sharing a stage between Manila-based theater names and the YPC performers who built this from the ground up. Written by …
Biñan Is Sending Its First Homegrown Play to Metro Manila
For most Metro Manila theatergoers, Biñan isn’t exactly on the map when it comes to original stage work. That’s about to change. Later this month, Mapanakit! Mga Dulang Bittersweet — three one-act plays written by Eljay Castro Deldoc and directed by BJ Borja — becomes the first Biñan-grown theatre production to tour outside the city’s own borders, landing at the KAL-IBG Theater in UP Diliman. It’s also the maiden production of YPC Stage, the newly formed professional and touring arm of the Biñan Youth Performance Council (YPC), a group that’s spent two decades doing community theatre and youth formation work without ever quite leaving home. That’s the real story here — not just a new show, but a community company stepping onto an institutional stage for the first time, and doing it with a lineup of plays that don’t flinch from difficult, very human material. Three Plays, One Bittersweet Thread Mapanakit is built around three separate stories, each interrogating a different shape of love and the rules built to contain it. Ang Liknayan ng ating …
Eugene Domingo Returns in Septic Tank 4 Live at PETA Theater
Eugene Domingo returns as… Eugene Domingo, in the franchise’s boldest leap yet. The Philippine Educational Theater Association (PETA) is shaking up its own stage — literally and figuratively — as it announces the newest, wildest chapter in the beloved “Ang Babae Sa Septic Tank” universe. After conquering cinemas and streaming, the cult-classic satire is finally jumping into the world of live theater. Mark your calendars: from June 19 to August 16, 2026, the PETA Theater Center will be home to a production as messy, meta, and magnificently Filipino as the franchise itself. This fourth installment, cheekily titled “Ang Babae Sa Septic Tank 4: Oh Sh*t! It’s Live Sa Cheter!”, brings the franchise to an entirely new medium — one where anything can happen, and with PETA at the helm, it probably will. In true Septic Tank fashion, the show doesn’t just pull back the curtain; it shreds it. Expect a sharp, riotous commentary on the world of Philippine theater-making — its egos, its ambitions, its impossible dreams, and the everyday chaos that somehow, magically, still …
Jeproks: The Musical — Pinoy Rock, Privilege, and the Stories We Repeat
There are nights at the theater that feel like Manila is whispering an old story back to you — a story about youth, rebellion, privilege, growing pains, and the kind of music that refuses to die. Watching Jeproks: The Musical at GSIS Theater on November 23 felt exactly like that. It wasn’t just a show. It was a reclamation of memory. And backstage, as I met with the cast — seasoned OPM names returning to their musical roots — it became clear that Jeproks is more than a jukebox musical. It is a mirror held up to the Philippines, past and present, lit by the anthems of Pinoy rock legend Mike Hanopol. What “Jeproks” Really Means: A Word We Thought We Understood Most Filipinos know jeproks as a fun old slang word — retro, quirky, a callback to the hippie aesthetic of the 70s. But the word has teeth. Jeproks comes from “projects” — specifically the QC Projects, which in the 1970s were home to upper-middle-class and well-off Filipino youth. The aesthetic was long-haired, kalas, …
Uncomfortably Brilliant: Why ‘Anino sa Likod ng Buwan’ Still Matters
ON A QUIET Saturday night — I found myself entering a different kind of space. The air felt still, the audience hushed, and as the lights dimmed, it was as if the outside world dissolved. I was about to experience Anino Sa Likod ng Buwan, the award-winning one-act play written by Jun Robles Lana, first recognized in the 1993 Bulwagang Gantimpala Playwriting Competition. ANINO is an adaptation of the Cinemalaya film of the same title. I’m more than glad to have been able to catch tonight’s show — its closing show. This staging, directed with restraint and surgical emotional precision by Tuxqs Rutaquio, featured a cast configuration I now consider unforgettable: Edward Benosa as Joel, Ross Pesigan as Nardo, and Elora Españo as Emma. I didn’t just enjoy this trio — I adored them. Their rhythm, tension, and emotional shifts felt instinctive and lived-in. Nothing felt performed. Everything felt dangerously real. This isn’t the kind of cast you watch — it’s the kind that pulls you into their unraveling. The story takes place in a …