Tanghalang Pilipino turns Cheeno Marlo Sayuno’s award-winning children’s book into a musical about a girl, a missing father, and the Manila Film Center collapse — one of Martial Law’s least-examined tragedies. The show runs at the Cultural Center of the Philippines through October 11.

Tanghalang Pilipino opened “Sayaw ng mga Ilaw” on September 18 at Tanghalang Ignacio Gimenez, inside the Cultural Center of the Philippines complex, and the musical runs Fridays through Sundays until October 11. It is the second production in TP40: Past Forward, the company’s 40th anniversary season, and it takes its source material from a picture book most Filipino households would shelve under children’s literature rather than Martial Law history.

The story follows Laya, a nine-year-old who wants to learn the traditional Pandanggo dance alongside her older sister. Her father, a construction worker, disappears after the 1981 collapse at the Manila Film Center — the venue rushed to completion ahead of the following year’s Manila International Film Festival. The musical stages what comes after: a child processing grief through the dance she was already learning, and a family finding light in each other rather than in what was lost.

An Award Before It Was a Musical

Cheeno Marlo Sayuno wrote “Sayaw ng mga Ilaw,” illustrated by Aaron Asis and published by Tahanan Books, well before Tanghalang Pilipino approached him about a stage version. The book won Best Read at the 9th National Children’s Book Awards in 2026 and made that year’s IBBY Honour List, the International Board on Books for Young People’s biennial recognition for outstanding children’s literature. Sayuno has said granting the adaptation rights made him realize the book “has breathed a new life” beyond the page.

Building the Musical Around It

Playwright Juan Ekis adapted the book for the stage. He’s a five-time Palanca Award winner whose credits include “Twenty Questions” and “Pingkian: Isang Musikal,” and he has described this material plainly as “pang-matanda at mabigat” — adult and weighty — despite its origin as a children’s story. Jonathan Tadioan directs, Krina Cayabyab composed the score (she previously wrote “Sa Duyan ng Bayan” for the 2023 film “Gomburza”), Al Bernard Garcia choreographs, and Kat Batara serves as dramaturg.

Wincess Jem Yana and Annika Co alternate in the role of Laya. Noel Rayos plays her father, Tatay Ondeng, opposite Shiela Valderrama as Nanay Lucia; Ynna Rafa and Earvin Estioco round out the principal cast as Kala and Tony, with Mark Lorenz Rey, Heart Puyong, Sarah Monay, and Lhorvie Nuevo-Tadioan in the ensemble.

What the Musical Is Built On

The Manila Film Center collapse happened around 3 a.m. on November 17, 1981, when scaffolding gave way during construction and workers fell into quick-drying cement below. The government’s official account, given by architect Froilan Hong, put the death toll at seven. Multiple retrospective accounts since have cited far higher figures — commonly more than 150 workers buried — and describe rescuers and ambulances being kept from the site for roughly nine hours while officials prepared a statement.

The rush that produced the accident was itself extraordinary: the site ran three shifts around the clock with roughly 4,000 workers, at one point finishing the building’s lobby with a thousand-person crew in 72 hours — work that would ordinarily take six weeks. The Manila International Film Festival opened on schedule that January, in the building the accident had delayed by only weeks. Design theorist Deyan Sudjic later called the collapse “the beginning of the end” of the Marcos era. “Sayaw ng mga Ilaw” doesn’t dramatize any of this directly. It follows one family in the disaster’s aftermath, without an official number attached to what they lost.

Where and When

“Sayaw ng mga Ilaw” runs Fridays to Sundays through October 11 at Tanghalang Ignacio Gimenez, Cultural Center of the Philippines Complex, Pasay City. Tickets are priced at ₱2,000 for VIP seating and ₱1,800 for regular seating.

The musical follows “Farewell, Let’s Go to the South,” TP40’s July opener, and precedes “Gregoria Lakambini, A Pinay Pop Musical” in November — a season built, so far, on turning real Philippine history into stage material. Tanghalang Pilipino enters the season fresh off a dominant run at this year’s Gawad Buhay Awards, where “Kisapmata” led the company’s haul of top prizes.