A Life in the Theater

Remarks delivered on April 1, 2017 at the 1 st ISEssions: The Gerry Roxas Leaders Forum, Balay Expo Centro, Araneta Center, Quezon City. Former Secretary Dinky Soliman, Gerry Roxas Foundation Executive Director Monette Parado, Gerry Roxas Leadership Awardees Inc. Executive Director Glenda Carlota, fellow members of the GRLA Inc. Board of Trustees, my fellow GRLAs:               Thank you for the privilege to speak before you as we launch the ISE Sessions with this afternoon’s Gerry Roxas Leaders Forum.  I feel much honored to be given this opportunity, especially as I am sharing the stage with one of our country’s most distinguished public servants.               Perhaps because of my experience in the theater, my time with you has been appropriately named “Setting the Stage for Success.” Given this, I will share with you some of...

Representing the two major streams of contemporary Filipino drama, they broke ground and changed the scene for good—and for the better (Published in the Philippine Daily Inquirer, 1 April 2017. Also in http://lifestyle.inquirer.net/258785/peta-rep-turn-50-also-golden-moment-ph-theater/ ) Sometime in the first few months of 1967, Carmen “Baby” Barredo received a telephone call from her former classmate Cecile Guidote: Would Baby be willing to join in a new theater company that was being formed, envisioned to be the National Theater and which would be called the Philippine Educational Theater Association (Peta)? Baby politely declined, as she had previously committed to help Zeneida “Bibot” Amador establish what was intended to be the first professional theater company presenting a regular season of plays in the country. That company would be known as Repertory Philippines (Rep). As they say, the rest is history. Both Peta and Rep presented their inaugural productions th...