Thirty Years in the Theater - it all started with Brecht

Classes open this week, which means that it has been thirty years since I auditioned for my first play in Dulaang U.P. I still remember very clearly that the audition posters for Dulaang U.P. 1977-1978 2nd season opener, a translation of Bertolt Brecht's Der kaukasische Kreiderkreis (Caucasian Chalk Circle) went up on the third day of classes. Having been a part of theater and radio productions in high school, I was eager to try out my luck in the play which, the announcements said, was to be directed by Tony Mabesa. On the appointed day of auditions, I walked into the Wilfrido Ma. Guerrero Theater (which then til now is still referred to as the A.S. Theater -- A.S. for Arts and Sciences, which was the college housed in the Palma Hall before it was divided into three different colleges some years after) and was called to read a few lines from the play. I remember Tony Mabesa's booming voice and the loud banter among the other auditionees (who I would learn later were students from Speech and Drama and Mass Comm who had appeared in Dulaang U.P.'s inaugural season the year before). I also remember Tony Mabesa commenting how puny I looked. He could not have been more correct. I was then barely five feet tall. I was fourteen years old, though he nor the others know it then. A week after, the cast list was posted on the bulletin board beside AS Room 130. By the time I got to see the list, a question mark had been pencilled in beside my name. I was to learn later that Gino Marasigan had placed it there, thinking that there might have been possibly a mistake. Two Marasigans in the cast? And for the next month and a half, we rehearsed the production. Tony decided to take advantage of my size by casting me as a puny, pathetic Governor(the father of the child who would later be the subject of conflict between the two"mothers") as well as in a variety of other characters, including that of the nephew of the Prince (which gave me the chance -- in my very first play-- to be in the same scene with Dodo Crisol, Lou Veloso, Joeboy Almojuela , and Gino Marasigan). And what a privilege it was for me to work with other actors and staff members whose names I still remember to this day simply because of the sheer joy that I had in that production -- among them Tonette Buizon, Stella Ruiz (who played Grusha Vashnadze) Diana Legaspi, Monette Alfon, Antee Bass, Joy Sababan, Gerry Magnaye, Pitt Albano, Suzette Querubin, Curly Nuguid, Boyet Corpus, Lulu Cayabyab, Amy Flores, Carlo Pajar, Lissa Limson, Raul Recio, (as Simon Sashava, missed one performance, prompting Tony Mabesa to take on his role with a script in hand), Jun Farin (who was asked to take over Raul's role) -- and a topnotch production staff with Henry Strzalkowski as Production Manager, Fely Luz Marcos as Stage Manager, Chito Rono as Property Master. Salvador Bernal designed the production, still considered a milestone with his use of bamboo and jute sacks, with the late Egay Avila and Audie San Juan -- two people who would take me under their wings to train in lighting design -- as Lighting Designer and Technical Director. (Some of us met up a couple of months back when Curly came back from England, and as usually the case, the conversation will touch on the dead duck that Chito Rono brought home to his freezer after every performance, to bring back the following day. And to Chito's Brasilia that at one point managed to carry 18 people inside it -- go figure!) The play opened at the Guerrero a in the first week of August, running for two weeks, as Ang Pabilog na Guhit ng Tisa (using Leopoldo Cacnio's translation). The play's backstage theme song was Ann Murray's "Torn Between Two Lovers." :-) I celebrated my fifteenth birthday that weekend performing. A week after the play ended, I was back in rehearsals for Tony Mabesa's production of Amelia Lapena Bonifacio's Ang Paglalakbay ni Sisa, playing Basilio to Anton Juan's Sisa, but that would be another story.