I was in for a good treat last Saturday night.That's because I had gone to watch Madonna Brava at the VIP theater in Gaisano Mall.
Sir Don Pagusara, a college mentor, had told me about this production in a chance encounter with him in a jeep ride last week. He also told me that admission was free (Who could ever resist that?) and that the play, a "restructured" rendition of Brecht's Mother Courage, was written by him ("This I got to see", I remember myself thinking).
According to Sir Don, the play had already done its rounds in Manila and the Visayas. Now, it was being done in home turf, in Davao City, as part of a weekend-long series of activities organized by the National Commission for Culture and the Arts. Featuring veteran actress Mrs. Shamaine Centenera-Buencamino as Madonna Brava, the play tells the story of a mother and her children, struggling to stay alive in the midst of the violence and conflict plaguing Mindanao.
I arrived early for the 7:30 PM show but the play did not start until well after 8:00 PM (The floor crew had to wait for the special guests to arrive who were, as usual, "fashionably" late).
But the wait was worth it. Heavily inundated with political themes (a necessary prerequisite in probably all of Sir Don's works), the play featured a strong cast, with superb acting from all the members, and a good musical score.
For instance, I was particularly impressed at how the actors delivered their lines. Foregoing the safer method of pre-recording the script, the actors made do with live acting, liberally inserting ad libs and changing dialogues as deemed fit. The dialogues also involved a lot of code-switching (although I cannot verify if Sir Don had purposefully done so in his screenplay) with actors delivering Tagalog lines, interspersed with Bisaya (and other dialects I don't know about).
I'm not really a critic so I won't delve into the other nitty-gritty details. Rest assured, I enjoyed the show. And other than that, the play was indeed an eye-opener for me, exposing perspectives which I would have simply glossed over back then.
I hope the producers are thinking of turning this play into a movie. That's a long shot, maybe, but this play ought to be kept for posterity.
Sir Don Pagusara, a college mentor, had told me about this production in a chance encounter with him in a jeep ride last week. He also told me that admission was free (Who could ever resist that?) and that the play, a "restructured" rendition of Brecht's Mother Courage, was written by him ("This I got to see", I remember myself thinking).
According to Sir Don, the play had already done its rounds in Manila and the Visayas. Now, it was being done in home turf, in Davao City, as part of a weekend-long series of activities organized by the National Commission for Culture and the Arts. Featuring veteran actress Mrs. Shamaine Centenera-Buencamino as Madonna Brava, the play tells the story of a mother and her children, struggling to stay alive in the midst of the violence and conflict plaguing Mindanao.
I arrived early for the 7:30 PM show but the play did not start until well after 8:00 PM (The floor crew had to wait for the special guests to arrive who were, as usual, "fashionably" late).
But the wait was worth it. Heavily inundated with political themes (a necessary prerequisite in probably all of Sir Don's works), the play featured a strong cast, with superb acting from all the members, and a good musical score.
For instance, I was particularly impressed at how the actors delivered their lines. Foregoing the safer method of pre-recording the script, the actors made do with live acting, liberally inserting ad libs and changing dialogues as deemed fit. The dialogues also involved a lot of code-switching (although I cannot verify if Sir Don had purposefully done so in his screenplay) with actors delivering Tagalog lines, interspersed with Bisaya (and other dialects I don't know about).
I'm not really a critic so I won't delve into the other nitty-gritty details. Rest assured, I enjoyed the show. And other than that, the play was indeed an eye-opener for me, exposing perspectives which I would have simply glossed over back then.
I hope the producers are thinking of turning this play into a movie. That's a long shot, maybe, but this play ought to be kept for posterity.
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