A Life in the Theater

After Guelan Luarca posted his list of theater productions that stuck with him, I was inspired to create my own list. As I went through my mind’s memory bank,  I realized I couldn’t limit my list to ten; as of now, it is made up of fifteen productions. In all of these, I watched as a member of the  audience. Excluded are productions where I was a member of the cast or the production staff, or later became involved in subsequent staging (that may be material for another list). As a foreword, I wish to narrate that my first theater production was a staging of the history of the Philippines for my second-year Social Studies class (under Ms. Rosaida Macuha) . I selected and adapted scenes from the Gregorio Zaide textbook and had my classmates perform these in the classroom as part of our requirements.  AS far as I can remember, our teacher and classmates liked our show.  Much later, the all-girls Canossa Academy put up a trilogy of plays that required...

SUSAN VALDEZ, the actress most famous for her role in Mike de Leon's "Itim", is in town for a short visit, her first after moving to New York in 1985. We met up last Saturday after the one-night performance of ART at the Music Museum, and together with Raquel Villavicencio, Gina Alajar, Rez Cortez, Bembol Roco, and for a brief while, Ricky Davao and Mark Gil, reminisced about all the productions and film projects done in the past and good naturedly ribbed her about what the future might hold for her if she decides to come back for good. I had the glorious fortune of working with Susan on a number of plays (that's us above flanking Barbara Perez, together with Tony Mabesa, Cris Michelena and Sonia Valenciano inBehn Cervantes' 1982 production of "Larawan" for UP Repertory, which we even toured to Cagayan and the Visayas) that included "Peer Gynt", "Hedda Gabler/A Doll's House", and Chris Millado's "Intermedyo" where s...