Emerging Cebuano theater artist Ciara Baricuatro writes and directs her first play, a family drama about grief, for 2TinCans Philippines’ Kulukabildo II series at The Kabilin Center on November 7 and 8.

Most families have one. The relative who fills every silence, laughs the loudest at dinner, and will turn an ordinary Tuesday into a reason to celebrate. Ask how they are and the answer is always the same: fine. Most of the time, everyone else at the table goes along with it.

I Am Normal, a new play written and directed by Cebuano theater artist Ciara Baricuatro, is about what that habit costs. It opens this weekend at The Kabilin Center in Cebu City for three performances, November 7 and 8, as part of 2TinCans Philippines’ monthly series Kulukabildo II: Stories in Direct Light.

A Family That Grieves Four Different Ways

The play follows the Dimaano family after a loss they all share and none of them talk about. Each one copes in their own way. Ian performs. Fern rages. Helen organizes. Lolo watches. Somewhere in the gaps between them is something nobody has said out loud yet.

Ian is at the center. He’s a boy who uses sitcoms to cope, borrowing their jokes, their timing, and their tidy fictional worlds to get through feelings he doesn’t know how to face head-on. Through him, the play looks at a pressure a lot of Filipinos will recognize: the expectation to stay positive, handle things on your own, and look okay while you’re struggling, until keeping up that front becomes one more thing to carry.

There’s data behind that pressure, especially for young people. A 2025 study that analyzed the University of the Philippines Population Institute’s nationwide Young Adult Fertility and Sexuality Study found that the share of Filipinos aged 15 to 24 with moderate to severe depressive symptoms more than doubled in eight years, from 9.6 percent in 2013 to 20.9 percent in 2021. The researchers called for wider access to youth-friendly mental health services and stronger implementation of the Mental Health Act of 2018.

The production advisory names its own themes plainly: mental health and grief. It’s rated for audiences 13 and up, and younger viewers have to come with a parent or guardian.

Nine Months From Premise to Stage

Baricuatro started writing I Am Normal nine months before opening. It began with one simple idea, a boy who uses sitcoms to deal with what he can’t confront directly. Over several rewrites it became a fuller story about grief, mental health, and the ways people protect themselves from painful feelings.

She has described Ian as a character written for people who have trouble acknowledging their own feelings and end up hiding behind something else. That personal connection is part of why the project matters to her. I Am Normal is her first production as both playwright and director. She developed it independently, with guidance from her directing mentor, 2TinCans managing director Charlene Virlouvet.

She’s no stranger to the company’s stage. In June 2025, Baricuatro played Patty Di Marco in 2TinCans’ production of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s School of Rock, directed by Sarah Mae Enclona-Henderson, in a cast that mixed young students from the 2TinCans Theatre Lab with company members, Vince Lopez among them. Lopez now plays the family patriarch in her play.

Writing her own script also sets her apart within the directors’ program. Most of Kulukabildo II’s directors were handed previously staged material to work with. Baricuatro chose to build hers from scratch.

The cast is Alexus Libarnes as Ian, Ernest Aleonar as Fern, Isabella Villarojo as Tita Helen, and Vince Lopez as Lolo Keith. Kjaran Dalay is stage manager. Production photos are by SHS Arts & Design, Southwestern University PHINMA (SWU PHINMA) School of Design + Communication, under the guidance of Prof. John Paul “Lakan” Olivares.

A Season That Keeps Returning to Grief

Kulukabildo II takes its name from a Bisaya word for an informal, candid exchange, the kind of honest talk that happens when people feel safe enough to speak freely. 2TinCans Philippines, the Cebu theater company Enclona-Henderson founded in February 2014, presents the series with The Kabilin Center. It doubles as the showcase for the company’s directors’ training program, with eight emerging Cebuano directors each getting a month to stage a socially relevant play in front of a real audience.

Followed from the start, the season keeps circling back to loss. It opened in March with The Second Eulogy, written and directed by company member Mario Alcoriza in his own debut as a director and playwright. That play turned the audience into guests at a wake and followed the people mourning a man they each turned out to know differently. Lopez and Virlouvet were both in that cast. In June came Ang Kawatan (The Thief), a tragicomedy written by journalist and playwright Maverick Avila and directed by Vanessa Fe, set during a live televised book launch.

ElysPlanet covered the August entry, Stay a Little Longer, a hospice-room drama about what’s left of a person as memory fades, with Virlouvet playing the daughter. Same company, same venue, and once again a family trying to hold itself together.

So I Am Normal arrives in the series’ final scheduled month as a kind of bookend. A season that began with a first-time writer-director putting a family’s grief onstage closes with another one doing the same, this time from inside the house instead of at the wake. Regional theater grows when young directors get a room, an audience, and a mentor, and Baricuatro chose to point her first shot at a phrase almost everyone says on autopilot.

Field Notes

I Am Normal
Written and directed by Ciara Baricuatro
Presented by 2TinCans Philippines Inc. and The Kabilin Center, as part of Kulukabildo II: Stories in Direct Light

Schedule:
November 7, 2026 (Saturday), 7:00 PM
November 8, 2026 (Sunday), 2:00 PM and 7:00 PM

Venue: The Kabilin Center, 35 Eduardo Aboitiz Street, Tinago, Cebu City
Cast: Alexus Libarnes (Ian), Ernest Aleonar (Fern), Isabella Villarojo (Tita Helen), Vince Lopez (Lolo Keith)
Stage Manager: Kjaran Dalay
Tickets: Available on 2TinCans Philippines’ Yapsody page
Advisory: Mature themes, including mental health and grief. For ages 13 and up; younger audiences must be accompanied by a parent or guardian.